Lindsey Buckingham says his ex-girlfriend and former Fleetwood Mac bandmate Stevie Nicks may still harbor romantic feelings for him.
“There were a number of years where I wasn’t over her,” Buckingham told the the Times in a revealing new interview. “It is possible that she has never been completely over me either.”
Buckingham’s statement comes after he declared that he was fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018 because Nicks gave the band an ultimatum that one of the two of them had to go. The band chose Nicks, and Buckingham, who originally joined the band with Nicks in 1975, was sent packing.
Nicks disagreed with Buckingham’s statement, instead claiming that she was not responsible for his termination from the legendary band.
“I did not have him fired, I did not ask for him to be fired, I did not demand he be fired. Frankly, I fired myself,” Nicks told Rolling Stone last month. “It’s unfortunate that Lindsey has chosen to tell a revisionist history of what transpired in 2018 with Fleetwood Mac. His version of events is factually inaccurate, and while I’ve never spoken publicly on the matter, preferring to not air dirty laundry, certainly it feels the time has come to shine a light on the truth. I could publicly reflect on the many reasons why, and perhaps I will do that someday in a memoir, but suffice it to say we could start in 1968 and work up to 2018 with a litany of very precise reasons why I will not work with him.”
Buckingham elaborated on the tumultuous history between himself and Nicks, saying the former couple never really dealt with the trauma of their breakup decades ago.
“The way we had to get through Rumours is part of the legacy and heroics of the whole thing,” Buckingham told the Times. “We didn’t have time to heal or move on in the traditional sense. I think — and she was the one who moved away from me back then — that we both had to compartmentalize our feelings. That is not a healthy thing to do because those little compartments can remain sealed up for years, until things start seeping out when you don’t realize.”
After the couple originally split, Buckingham went on to get married and start a family. But he said Nicks, who went on to have romances with Don Henley and their bandmate Mick Fleetwood following their breakup, instead focused on her professional life. He suggested that may play a role in her feelings.
“I met the love of my life late and that gave me a whole other take on the world,” he told the U.K. newspaper. “Stevie did not have children. She went down a different route and has placed more importance on her professional life. How that played out in the last three, four, five years… It’s hard for me to know what her mentality is towards me, but I know what mine is to her because I’ve been married for 21 years and I have three children and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Buckingham’s wife of 21 years, Kristen, filed for divorce this year. However, he says she’s “coming round” to a reconciliation.
“What I didn’t know at the time is that a lot of people file but they never follow through,” Buckingham said. “Since then she’s been softening, so we’re trying to work things out. I’m trying to be supportive and give her as much time as she needs, and I have optimism now.”
As for his 2018 firing from the band, Buckingham said “some people” were not flexible about his desire to delay the tour.
“I was only asking for three months,” he explained. “Three months! Everyone does that all the time. In this case it was something certain people were not willing to be generous about. I mean, c’mon. Fleetwood Mac is built on this.”
However, Buckingham didn’t rule out another reunion of the original band.
“It would be down to Stevie having that epiphany herself. And hey, stranger things have happened,” he said. “This is Fleetwood Mac. Anything is possible.”