(Credits: Far Out / TIDAL)
Mon 12 May 2025 16:00, UK
Surely, making music should be a joyful process, one rooted in fun and play. Is that not what all creativity is? Let the imagination run wild, and then figure out how to use your skills to bring whatever vision might have come to life. Really, the studio should be a kind of playground where musicians get to mess around and make a masterpiece from the freedom of that, but Stevie Nicks never saw that in the eyes of one of her key collaborators.
That introduction rings true, but it’s also true that it’s a tricky balance. Creativity as play is one thing, but then it hits a point where work has to be done. Especially when an artist is purposefully trying to do something new and pioneering, that joyful experimentation will eventually have to give way to real focus and figuring things out. While an idea might strike in a moment like a gift from up above, the actual technicality of it and the ability to make it happen don’t appear in an instant. At some point, things have to get serious.
The golden land lies between the two, though. An artist should be able to have fun and get stuff done. In Stevie Nicks’ experience, Lindsey Buckingham never managed that. Instead, he was all work all the time, taking everything deadly serious. He’s a perfectionist to an almost miserable degree – and that’s why, in the end, Nicks knew they’d never work.
When asked if Buckingham is a perfectionist, Nicks laughed at the understatement. “Utter,” she said to ABC, “To the point of ‘why can’t you just come and play?’, and it’s like, ‘well I can’t just do that.’” The guitarist simply couldn’t allow himself to let loose when it came to their music, and in that, Nicks saw the ultimate issue in their romantic relationship, too.
“That’s the reason, and I love Lindsey, but that’s the reason that Lindsey and I aren’t together. It’s because I’m radical, you know, it’s like, I just want to play,” she said. It translated across every corner of their life together, from their love into the band. In Fleetwood Mac, it came up at every turn of how the group make their music. “I just want us all together here, and set up some microphones, and a camera, and I just want to play. And Lindsey, it needs to be perfect for Lindsey,” she said.
That’s probably seen clearest on Tusk, an album where Buckingham’s perfectionism and control took such a tight grip that the producer called him a “maniac”. Sure, it led to some incredible work, both for the group and in his solo career. However, it was also his complete downfall when it came to his connection with Nicks.
It became a key argument that would come up again and again as these two creatives tried to collaborate in music and life. “His perfection drives me crazy because I think he doesn’t have any fun, and my radicalness drives him crazy because he thinks I’m not as good as I should be,” Nicks said. While sometimes that yin-yang brings opposites together in harmony, that’s not how it worked for them.
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