Stevie Nicks Admits She ‘Resented’ This Line in a Popular Fleetwood Mac Song
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham made rock and roll history as members of Fleetwood Mac, but they were also famous for their contentious love story. They wrote several songs about each other and their breakup, which they performed together on stage for decades. But there’s one line in a well-known Fleetwood Mac song that Nicks admitted she “resented.”
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were in a relationship before joining Fleetwood Mac
Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were lovers and collaborators before they joined Fleetwood Mac together. Nicks joined Buckingham’s band Fritz before they broke off and formed the duo Buckingham Nicks.
Mick Fleetwood was looking for a new guitar player for Fleetwood Mac when he heard the Buckingham Nicks song “Frozen Love.” He was so impressed by Buckingham’s guitar playing that he invited him to join the band. Buckingham accepted on one condition: that Nicks join, too.
The group reached new heights of fame and success with Buckingham and Nicks in the band, but the former couple’s relationship didn’t survive. Despite ending their romance, they still had to perform on stage together night after night. Many of their biggest hits were about their bitter breakup.
In later interviews, Nicks called Buckingham a “very powerful, controlling man,” and said their relationship made her realize she would never get married. And Buckingham has said it was “stupid” of him to ask Fleetwood Mac to let Nicks join the band with him.
Stevie Nicks said she ‘resented’ this line in the Fleetwood Mac song ‘Go Your Own Way’
“Go Your Own Way” is a popular song from Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours. Lindsey Buckingham wrote it about his breakup with Stevie Nicks. It features the line: “Tell me why/ Everything turned around/ Packing up/ Shacking up is all you want to do.”
Nicks, who sang backup vocals on the track, told Rolling Stone in October 1997 that she “resented” Buckingham’s lyrics. “I very, very much resented him telling the world that ‘packing up, shacking up’ with different men was all I wanted to do,” she said. “He knew it wasn’t true. It was just an angry thing that he said.”
She added, “Every time those words would come out onstage, I wanted to go over and kill him. He knew it, so he really pushed my buttons through that. It was like, ‘I’ll make you suffer for leaving me.’ And I did. For years.”
The singer got back at her ex-boyfriend and bandmate with the song ‘Dreams’
Stevie Nicks wrote plenty of songs about Lindsey Buckingham, too. The Rumours track immediately before “Go Your Own Way” is Nicks’ hit “Dreams.” It includes the scathing lyrics, “Thunder only happens when it’s rainin’/ Players only love you when they’re playin’/ Women, they will come and they will go/ When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know.”
“‘Dreams’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’ are what I call the ‘twin songs,’” Nicks told Mojo magazine in January 2013 (per Songfacts). “They’re the same song written by two people about the same relationship.”
