Lindsey Buckingham Tried to Strangle a Fleetwood Mac Producer for Following Instructions

Working with Fleetwood Mac during the Rumours era was not easy, and Lindsey Buckingham’s temper made things even harder. The band dynamics were in disarray, and their drug use was ramping up. Producer Ken Caillat said his job became even more complicated when Buckingham physically attacked him. He shared how following Buckingham’s demands landed him in a dangerous position.

Lindsey Buckingham grew violently furious with a Fleetwood Mac producer

While recording “You Make Loving Fun,” Caillat said Buckingham worked to get in an “aggressive place.” He believed this would make his playing better. While it might have, it also made him a challenge to be around.

“So, we started recording over our least favorite tracks,” Caillat wrote in his book Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album. “Things got hot and heavy as he got into his guitar solo. He didn’t want to wait for anything. ‘I can do better than that,’ he said after one take. ‘I can do better. Tape over that last one!’ He was asking me to record over what I thought was a really nice take. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘That was really great.’ Frustrated, he shouted, ‘No! Go over it!’”

When Buckingham finished playing the new take, he realized he liked the previous one better. To record the new one, though, they had taped over it. When Caillat told Buckingham this, he flew into a rage. 

“Then he put his guitar down and charged into the control room, approaching me from the front while I was in my control booth seat,” Caillat wrote. “Lindsey placed both of his hands around my neck. ‘You’re an idiot!’ Lindsey screamed at me, his hands tightening around my throat. I was in an engineer’s chair that swivels and tilts back. Lindsey had pushed me all the way back in my seat, and his hands could have crushed my windpipe. At that moment, time slowed down for me. I didn’t feel fear or anger. I just thought that Lindsey was being really stupid, and I felt so regretful that he could so quickly cross this line with me, after all that we’d been through.”

Caillait didn’t think he was ever in any real danger. Buckingham’s bandmates were quick to reprimand him, and he stepped back.

Lindsey Buckingham pushed Fleetwood Mac’s music, but his anger made him hard to work with

Buckingham was a perfectionist who undoubtedly improved Fleetwood Mac’s music. He pushed them in the studio and wrote some of their greatest hits. His skill made him an asset to the band, but his temper did not.

“I didn’t really believe that Lindsey was sorry that he had tried to choke me,” Caillat wrote. “Maybe he was sorry that he had done it in front of other people, but, somehow, I think he thought he had the right to mistreat people.”

At this time, Fleetwood Mac was a hotbed of anger, resentment, and frustration. While they managed to work together and make a strong album, Buckingham’s behavior did not make it easy. He got into screaming matches with Stevie Nicks and shouted at engineers if they couldn’t recreate his vision. In 2018, the band fired him. Given his behavior, he’s lucky they didn’t do it earlier.

Ken Caillat said Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were hard to work with 

Caillat dealt with a lot while working with Fleetwood Mac. While he said he always liked Christine McVie, he found Nicks and Buckingham to be a challenge. He found them unbearable while working on the album Mirage. 

“We got there and Lindsey and Stevie [Nicks] became the biggest babies I’ve ever seen,” he told Tape Op. “It was like, ‘I don’t have any TV. I don’t have anything to do. I’m bored.’ We literally had a cook who would cook whatever you wanted. So they’d say, ‘We want steak. We want orange juice.’ I would walk by their rooms, they had separate rooms, and there would be pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice that they just didn’t like. There would be a steak that Lindsey said, ‘I didn’t like the way he cooked it.’ They were just little babies, and I’m like, ‘What is the matter with you guys?’”