Fleetwood Mac is scheduled to perform at Boston’s TD Garden on April 12, 2019, with two new guitarists, Neil Finn and the very creative Mike Campbell, primarily known for his collaborations with Tom Petty in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. In early 2018, Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist and principal songwriter, Lindsey Buckingham, was fired and almost immediately replaced by Finn and Campbell. Later it was disclosed that it was mainly Stevie Nicks who had a problem with Buckingham, and not the rest of the band. Buckingham was Nicks’s former lover in the 1970s, and the two joined the band on New Year’s Eve 1974. At that time, Fleetwood Mac was in total disarray, having just fired guitarist/vocalist Bob Welch. Buckingham became the group's seventh guitarist in seven years. He also had leverage with the band’s drummer Mick Fleetwood and was able to convince him to allow his girlfriend and recording partner, Stevie, to join the band as well. The addition of Buckingham and Nicks led to the classic-era’s lineup of Fleetwood Mac. This lineup would last until the early 1980s and would produce some outstanding albums, including Fleetwood Mac, Rumors, Tusk, and Mirage.
One final album came in the ’80s, titled Tango in the Night, which began as a Buckingham solo project, but became the band’s, as they needed Buckingham’s creative output to release new music. With a ten-week tour scheduled, Buckingham refused to go at the last minute, saying he felt his creativity would be stifled if he toured and did not record more music. A band meeting at Christine McVie’s house on August 1987 resulted in turmoil, as tensions came to a head. Mick Fleetwood, in his autobiography, claimed there was an altercation between Buckingham and Nicks. Buckingham left the band the following day. After Buckingham’s first departure, Fleetwood Mac replaced him with two new guitarists, Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, without even auditioning them. This lineup of Fleetwood Mac released only one studio album in 1990 titled, Behind the Mask, which only made it to Gold Sales and did not achieve the lofty multi-platinum success the band had become used to with Lindsey Buckingham writing most of their material. Stevie Nicks grew frustrated with the band’s lack of success and quit following Behind the Mask’s commercial failure.
It took until 1997 to get Buckingham back in the band, and by this time a lot had changed in the music industry. Still, Fleetwood Mac continued to be hugely popular with many of the old fans who were eager for the band to do a reunion tour. Vocalist Christine McVie did not participate in a number of the reunions in the early 2000s, but later joined in 2014.
Everything seemed fine in the group’s camp until January 2018, when Stevie Nicks handed the band a “he or me” ultimatum after the MusiCares Person of the Year benefit concert, where she had felt slighted by Buckingham. As Buckingham told Rolling Stone, "A few days after the show he received a phone call from the band's manager Irving Azoff, who proceeded to list various issues Nicks had with his behavior that night, including his complaints about their intro music being Nicks' ‘Rhiannon,’ and that he may have ‘smirked’ while she was giving her acceptance speech.” (The band received an award that night.)
"The irony is we have this long-standing joke, that when Stevie talks, she goes on a long time," Buckingham said. I may or may not have smirked, but I look over and Mick and Christine were doing the waltz behind her as a joke." As for the choice of intro song that night, Buckingham admitted he was against it, but said Nicks took it the wrong way. "It wasn't about it being ‘Rhiannon,’" he said. "It just undermined the impact of our entrance. That’s me being very specific about the right and wrong way to do something."
Regardless of Buckingham's defenses, Azoff gave him a direct message: "Stevie never wants to be onstage with you again." Buckingham took this to mean that Nicks was quitting Fleetwood Mac, so he emailed Mick Fleetwood to discuss the band's future, but didn't hear back, so he called Azoff for clarification. "This feels funny," he recalled saying to Azoff. "Is Stevie leaving the band or am I getting kicked out? Azoff told Buckingham he was "getting ousted" because Nicks gave the band an ultimatum: “Either you go or she's gonna go."
Shortly after the April news release of Buckingham's departure, Fleetwood said, "Buckingham's unwillingness to tour this year was the reason for his dismissal.” The only other public comments Buckingham made prior to Rolling Stone's interview were at a May fundraiser, where he said the band had "lost its perspective.” He went on to say, “That harmed the 43-year legacy that we had worked so hard to build. The legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfill higher truths and one's higher destiny."
It has yet to be seen how Fleetwood Mac's 2019 tour will turn out. They are now in the midst of battling Lindsey Buckingham in a lawsuit over “how” he was terminated from the band. Will people still have the same lofty expectations of Fleetwood Mac's musical ability minus the creative output of Buckingham? Will this be another “greatest hits package tour” for people just wanting to see Stevie Nicks belt out such hits as "Rhiannon," "Landslide," and "The Chain"? We’ll have to wait and see how it all turns out, although it’s nice that Mike Campbell from The Heartbreakers now has a new musical opportunity since the death of Tom Petty in 2017. Can the combination of Campbell and Finn fill Buckingham's shoes for a successful 2019 Tour, or will this be similar to Buckingham’s departure in 1987, when replaced by Burnette and Vito the band's next album tanked big time? 2019 is sure to bring revelations about the current state of Fleetwood Mac, and their tour is worth catching despite the loss of Buckingham.
