Watch: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Make Surprise Announcement After Cryptic PostsStevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham are making peace at the silver spring. Indeed, the Fleetwood Mac bandmates-who performed as Buckingham Nicks before joining the now-iconic group in 1974-have often discussed their rocky dynamic over the past 50 years. And now, once again on better terms, they're looking back at how their tumultuous romance, which lasted from 1972 to 1976, served as the basis for some of their most groundbreaking music, including their song "Frozen Love." "Our relationship was up and down and up and down and up and down and difficult," Stevie confessed on the Oct. 29 episode of the Song Exploder podcast-which she appeared on alongside Lindsey-while discussing the song. "But at the same time fantastic." The 77-year-old added, "And what we were doing was so fantastic, that it was worth putting up with the trials and tribulations of a relationship that's difficult." But nearly a decade before they recorded "Frozen Love," off Buckingham Nicks' eponymous 1973 album-which saw a remastered version released in August-they were high school students in Northern California.readStevie Nicks Shares Sweet Message She Wrote About Ex Lindsey Buckingham on 25th Birthday"Lindsey and I started talking about it last night," Stevie shared. "This whole thing seems really like yesterday to us." Since mending fences, Stevie and Lindsey have been revisiting their early days together in the years leading up to their musical success. As the "Silver Springs" singer explained, it was Lindsey's voice that she was drawn to when she heard him singing back at their Northern California high school.
Lester Cohen/Getty Images for NARAS"I heard this guy singing from a long way away in this big room," Stevie recalled. "And he was singing 'California Dreamin'' and I thought, 'Oh I know that song.'" The Grammy winner made her way over to the now-76-year-old and decided she would start to sing backup. "I thought, 'I'm gonna walk up there and sing. Oh he's gonna hate me. I don't care, I'm going,'" she recounted. "I went up and I just smiled at him and I stood behind him and I sang the harmony to 'California Dreamin'.' And it was fantastic." But despite their duet to the then-newly-released The Mamas & the Papas track, the two didn't properly meet until two years when they both joined the group Fritz. And while that band didn't end up getting a record deal, as Lindsey explained, "it became a catalyst for Stevie and me to bond in a different way." Stevie added, "We probably never would have even had a relationship had it not been that we had to fire the rest of our band." As she remembered, "Then we fell in love and that was it." And as the two started working together, they quickly found that they became each other's muse when it came to songwriting for their 1973 album Buckingham Nicks-something that would continue when they joined Fleetwood Mac.
ShutterstockStevie explained that she and Lindsey told each other, "'Don't be afraid to write a poem that's a little bit about me. Because, what else are you gonna write about?' It was never, 'Was that about me? How come you wrote that about me?' Because we never went there. We were just like, 'That is great.'" Over the years, Stevie and Lindsey's relationship has ebbed and flowed, with the two often fighting during their time with Fleetwood Mac. And while they managed to work together mostly peacefully following the band's reunion in 1997, Lindsey was let go from the group in 2018 due to difficulties within Fleetwood Mac. Prior to the duo's recent reconciliation, Stevie and Lindsey had only casually been on speaking terms, with their last conversation taking place at the celebration of life for Fleetwood Mac's keyboardist Christine McVie, who died in 2022. "The only time I've spoken to Lindsey was there, for about three minutes," she told Rolling Stone in 2024. "I dealt with Lindsey for as long as I could. You could not say that I did not give him more than 300 million chances." For a deep dive into Stevie and Lindsey's relationship, keep reading.
Richard E. Aaron/RedfernsThe Start of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham's RomanceLong before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham formed a big love, they were high school classmates."When I was a junior in high school up in northern California, she transferred into my high school as a senior," Buckingham once told Dan Rather. "She did play guitar, and she and I interacted slightly on a musical level at a couple of social events."Nicks enrolled in San José State in the mid 1960s while Buckingham finished up his senior year. And once he graduated, he began attending the same university.
At this point, Buckingham was already in a band called the Fritz, which Nicks joined. And while he and Nicks "were not really romantically involved" at that time, he noted, there was a spark."I think there was always something between me and Lindsey, but nobody in that band reall