Stevie Nicks Said Her Affair With Mick Fleetwood Was ‘Fantastic,’ ‘Very Romantic,’ and ‘Horrifying’

Stevie Nicks dated several famous musicians, including her Fleetwood Mac bandmate, Mick Fleetwood. Here’s what Nicks said about her affair with the drummer and the song their romance inspired. 

Stevie Nicks had an affair with Fleetwood Mac founder, Mick Fleetwood

Rock star Stevie Nicks famously dated her bandmate Lindsey Buckingham for years, but he wasn’t the only member of Fleetwood Mac the “Gypsy” singer dated. She had an affair with drummer and founding member Mick Fleetwood while she was dating someone else. Fleetwood was married to Jenny Boyd at the time. 

Nicks has since said that she regrets her time with the drummer. “Mick and I would never have had an affair had we not had a party and all been completely drunk and messed up and coked out, and, you know, ended up being the last two people at the party,” she said for Oprah’s Master Class. “So guess what? It’s not hard to figure out what happened – and what happened wasn’t a good thing. It was doomed. It was a doomed thing, caused a lot of pain for everybody, led to nothing.”

Their relationship ended when Fleetwood started dating Nicks’ close friend, Sara Recor. 

Stevie Nicks called her affair with Mick Fleetwood ‘horrifying’ and ‘fantastic’

In 2008, Stevie Nicks opened up to Q Magazine about her affair with Mick Fleetwood. She said it started while they were finishing the Rumours tour (in 1977) in Australia. 

“One night we had a party and everybody was drunk and everybody was gone and it was just me and Mick, and we ended up spending the night together,” she said. “And I fell in love with Mick and I think Mick fell in love with me.”

Nicks said it didn’t take long for her and Fleetwood to come to their senses. “Mick and I … talked about what a dumb-a** thing it was that we had done and that, basically, we were not going to break up Fleetwood Mac,” she said. “And we got on the plane, held hands all the way back to Los Angeles, and realized, when we got off that plane, that for all practical purposes it was over. It had its month of glory, which was fantastic and very romantic, and then when we got back to LA it was not romantic any more, it was horrifying. It should never have happened.”

The singer said she wrote the song ‘Sara’ about her romance with the Fleetwood Mac drummer

Stevie Nicks wrote the Fleetwood Mac song “Sara” about her affair with Mick Fleetwood. 

“Sara was pretty much about Mick. So, he was the ‘great dark wing,’” Nicks told MTV Fanatic in 1998 (via In Her Own Words). “And, ah, it was about everything that was going on at that particular time, too, but he was the, the reason for the, you know, the beginning of it.”

Nicks has also said that there is an extended version of the song that fans have never heard. The lyrics contain more of the personal story. “Sara [is my most personal song], it’s about myself, and what all of us in Fleetwood Mac were going through at the time,” she reportedly told Us Magazine in July 1990. “The true version of that song is 16 minutes long. It’s a saga with many verses people haven’t heard.”