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Lindsey Buckingham’s ex-girlfriend, Carol Ann Harris, opened up about the abuse in her relationship with the Fleetwood Mac guitarist. She said it was so bad that a doctor had to order her to leave Buckingham. Here’s what Harris shared about her relationship with the musician and how it compares to Buckingham’s treatment of bandmate Stevie Nicks. 

Lindsey Buckingham, who was accused of abuse by his ex-girlfriends, poses for the camera at an event.
Lindsey Buckingham | Noam Galai/Getty Images

Lindsey Buckingham’s ex-girlfriend said the Fleetwood Mac guitarist physically abused her

Carol Ann Harris was in a relationship with Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 2007, she opened up to the Chicago Sun-Times about how Buckingham physically abused her.

“It was not like you’ve probably heard or seen domestic abuse portrayed,” Harris said, explaining why she suffered for so long before leaving the musician. “I never got the apology the next day, the bouquet of flowers and the ‘Sorry, I’ll never do that again.’ I got up the next day and he refused to speak about it, like it never happened.”

She said Buckingham’s mood swings and violence were unpredictable.

“It never seemed to happen for a concrete reason. It’s not that I was out too late or had done something or was being punished. It would happen out of the blue,” Harris said. “It didn’t make sense, so I thought it was my fault. I’m not a good enough girlfriend, I’m not relieving his pressure. I blamed it on the pressure of the music, this album or that album, being on the road.”

Carol Ann Harris said a hospital doctor ordered her to leave Lindsey Buckingham

Carol Ann Harris said it took a doctor’s concern to help her realize how bad Lindsey Buckingham’s abuse had gotten. She wrote about the incident in her 2007 book Storms: My Life with Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac.

“That episode at the end of the book, when he’d really hurt me and I went to Century City Hospital so badly injured. And I had to say it out loud: This was done, I was injured,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times, revealing what it took to make her finally leave the Fleetwood Mac guitarist. “That doctor – what I wrote was verbatim, I never forgot what he said – saying, ‘You have to leave him.’ It was a huge wakeup call.”

The guitarist also has a history of abuse with his former bandmate Stevie Nicks

Carol Ann Harris isn’t Lindsey Buckingham’s only ex-girlfriend to accuse him of physical abuse. Stevie Nicks, his Fleetwood Mac bandmate and former partner, has spoken of several occasions when Buckingham became violently angry. 

In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Nicks opened up about how Buckingham used to mock her on stage. And, during the New Zealand leg of the band’s 1980 “Tusk” tour, the “Dreams” singer claimed that Buckingham kicked her and threw a Les Paul guitar at her head.

Fleetwood Mac’s keyboardist, the late Christine McVie, corroborated Nicks’ story, but Buckingham said, “I’m not sure that happened.”

And in an April 2021 interview with Louder Sound, Nicks described a violent altercation with Buckingham. They were at McVie’s house and the rest of the band saw it happen.

“I flew off of the couch and across the room to seriously attack him,” Nicks said of the 1987 argument. “And I did. I’m not real scary but I grabbed him – which almost got me killed.” 

She ran out of the room, with Buckingham following closely behind her.

“He ended up chasing me all the way out of Christine’s maze-like house,” Nicks said. “Then down the street and back up the street. And then he threw me against a car and I screamed horrible obscenities at him. I thought he was going to kill me, and I think he thought he was probably going to kill me too.”

How to get help: In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.

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