Stevie Nicks Said if She Were a Witch, She’d Fix Her Unresolved Feelings for Lindsey Buckingham

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were one couple in the complex relationship web that is Fleetwood Mac. They dated for years before joining the band and broke up while recording their second album with the group. Since then, their relationship has been rocky at best, with periods of constant fighting tempered by cautious collaboration. Nicks once joked that if she were a witch, she would fix their dynamic.

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham dated for years

Nicks and Buckingham met as high schoolers in California. They were both at a party where Buckingham was playing guitar and singing.

“We were at some get-together and he was there, sitting, playing his guitar — [the Mamas and the Papas’ hit] “California Dreamin” — and I walked up and brazenly burst into harmony with him. It was cool, and I said, ‘I’m Stevie Nicks,’ and he said, ‘I’m Lindsey Buckingham,’” Nicks told MTV. “I never saw him again for two years, until he was in a band and he remembered that night and he called and asked me to join their band.”

Several years after this, when they split from their band to perform music as a duo, Nicks and Buckingham became a couple. They broke up while writing and recording the Rumours album.

She joked that she would fix her relationship with Buckingham if she were a witch

For years, Nicks has dealt with rumors that she is a witch because of the way she dresses and the lyrics of her songs. She has denied this, but the rumors persist. She once joked about it, saying that if she really were a witch, she would fix all the unresolved feelings between herself and Buckingham. Both have noted that continuing to work together after their breakup did not give them closure. This caused decades of problems between them.

“It’s a curse,” Nicks told The Globe and Mail in 2003. “And if I really was a witch, you know that’s the first thing that I would make stop. But there’s been nothing I could ever do to fix that.”

Buckingham agreed they needed to work through some lingering feelings, but he believed it could be solved through conversations, not witchcraft.

“I’m sure Stevie and I still have a few conversations to have,” he said. “There was certainly a period of time during the making of this album [Say You Will] where it felt like we were really going at it through the music. You can really feel the energy between us … I don’t think that’s ever going to go away.”

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham are no longer in Fleetwood Mac together

Nicks and Buckingham were cordial while recording Say You Will in the early 2000s. Their relationship took a turn for the worse in 2018, though. Fleetwood Mac fired him after Nicks reportedly said she could no longer work with him. 

“I think others in the band just felt that they were not empowered enough, individually, for whatever their own reasons, to stand up for what was right,” Buckingham told Rolling Stone. “And so, it became a little bit like Trump and the Republicans.”

Nicks responded to Buckingham’s version of events.

“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,” she wrote. “To be exceedingly clear, I did not have him fired, I did not ask for him to be fired, I did not demand he be fired.”