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Mon 29 December 2025 11:15, UK
By the time of Rumours, Fleetwood Mac were starting to use their songs as musical weapons. After both relationships within the band collapsed in on each other, every songwriter channelled frustrations into the songs, either making peace with their past or growing more spiteful as time passed. Although Stevie Nicks tried to take the dignified approach with ‘Dreams’, her writing partner wasn’t as kind.
Before they joined The Mac, Nicks had been working alongside Lindsey Buckingham on her first solo efforts, which would turn into Buckingham Nicks. Although the record was given a dismal mainstream reception, Mick Fleetwood saw potential in Buckingham and recommended that he try out for the group. Once he passed the audition, Buckingham knew he couldn’t leave Nicks behind, bringing her on to play tambourine and contribute her own songs.
Although half of the songs on Rumours are comprised of each songwriter’s heartbreak, some of the Buckingham Nicks songs survived, with Nicks’ ‘I Don’t Want To Know’ being reworked with a full band arrangement. When creating what would become their next knockout single, Buckingham held nothing back about their separation.
Starting with a nervy electric guitar, ‘Go Your Own Way’ is practically a kiss-off to Nicks, as Buckingham sings about how she won’t accept any of his advances. If Buckingham was a bit more willing to excuse the French, this track might well have been called “fuck right off”. It is a full hammer blow of heartfelt fury, and it has only one target, the target being the woman who lends fantastic backing vocals to the bullet with her name on it.
While Buckingham had originally tried to hide the lyrics to the song from Nicks during the recording, Nicks was livid when she heard the second verse. “Packing up/Shacking up is all you want to do” is the line that sliced Nicks the cleanest with its tinge of domesticity, but let’s face it, hardly any of the couplets are glowing. The line would go on to be one of the few lyrics that Nick truly ever took umbrage within the myriad of music written about her, claiming “he knew it wasn’t true”.
After turning down his advances, Buckingham claims that Nicks only wants to shack up with anyone she fancies. According to Nicks, that’s not how the relationship fell apart at all, telling Classic Rock Stories, “I want you to know, that line about ‘shacking up’? I never shacked up with anybody while I was with him. I was the one who broke up with him. All he wanted to do was to fall asleep with his guitar.”
The claims Nicks made about Buckingham’s musical obsession do check out, though. After honing his craft for years, Buckingham had grown accustomed to trying to get the sound of the band as perfect as possible, which led to him almost strangling one of the album’s engineers when he wiped out one of his solos.
As for Buckingham, his resentment towards Nicks started to bleed into his attitude in the studio, telling Behind the Music, “I was the one sorting out her songs and making them into records, and there were times when I had the urge not to want to do that. Stevie and I talked, but it was difficult for it not to be combative or confrontational.”
That artistic tension would eventually become too much for the core lineup, leading to an infamous band meeting where Nicks and Buckingham got into a physical confrontation. That ended up being the final straw, with Nicks and Buckingham continuing their careers solo and Fleetwood Mac continuing with different members. The band were able to harness that creative spark, but it always came at a high price.
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