A timeline of Fleetwood Mac’s history and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham’s relationship

Thunder happened even when it wasn’t raining — and few bands went their own way quite like Fleetwood Mac.

Formed in London in 1967 by drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie and guitarists and vocalists Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer, the group cycled through numerous lineups before achieving widespread popularity in 1974 with the additions of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.

By the time “Rumours” dropped in 1977 — created amid troubled romances and crippling addiction — Fleetwood Mac had been catapulted into superstardom and etched itself into history. Having sold over 40 million copies worldwide, “Rumours” is one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Now, nearly 50 years later, Nicks and Buckingham are reissuing their 1973 joint album, “Buckingham Nicks,” a rare moment of unity from the duo whose rocky relationship defined the band’s most iconic era.

For more, scroll to read Fleetwood Mac’s official timeline.

July 1967: Fleetwood Mac forms in London, England

The original Fleetwood Mac — Fleetwood, McVie, Green and Spencer — was only the beginning. The band underwent several shifts in its roster over the years.

In 1968, just a year after its founding, Danny Kirwan, who died in 2018, joined as the group’s third guitarist. Two years later, founding member Peter Green, who passed away in 2020 at age 73, departed the band.

Green played a central role in forming Fleetwood Mac — he even named the band, telling “Peter Green: Founder of Fleetwood Mac” author Martin Celmins he chose “Fleetwood” because he thought it sounded “like an express train.”

In the documentary “Peter Green: ‘Man of the World,” Spencer recalled Green saying early on that he didn’t expect to stay in the band forever.

“They’re my friends, what are they going to have? I’m going to leave them with the name,” Green once said.

“That’s a perfect example of his lack of self,” Fleetwood said in the documentary. “When we actually formed Fleetwood Mac, he chose that name, and believe me, anyone and everyone around us [was] saying, ‘It’s got to be Peter Green ’cause you’re the dude.’ He said, ‘No, I want to be in a band.’”

February 1968: Fleetwood Mac releases their self-titled debut album

The band released its debut studio album shortly after forming. Despite Green’s refusal to be recognized in the group’s name, the album was originally titled “Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac” — much to his protest — though it’s also known simply as “Fleetwood Mac.”

It climbed to the No. 4 slot in the Official UK Album Charts, despite never producing a hit single.

August 1970: Christine McVie joins Fleetwood Mac

Christine McVie, formerly of the band Chicken Shack, joined Fleetwood Mac as a keyboardist and vocalist two years after marrying the band’s bassist, John McVie.

While answering fan questions for The Guardian in June 2022, Christine recalled the day she was invited to sit in on a Fleetwood Mac rehearsal, paving the way for her to officially join the band.

“They were rehearsing at Kiln House, and I was down there with all the wives,” she explained. “They came out of the rehearsal room and said: ‘Hey Chris, do you want to join?’ I couldn’t believe my luck. I said: ‘Are you serious?! I’m just a girl who plays piano.’”

Because she was a keyboard player, Christine said, “The style had to change.”

“It developed a more commercial bent,” she added. “It was thrilling, and I have to say, to this day, it still kind of is, knowing that I did that. Then it just got better.”

Shortly after joining the band, Christine was featured on Fleetwood Mac’s fourth album, “Kiln House,” and also illustrated its cover art.

1972: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham begin dating

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham met in San Francisco in 1966, when Nicks was a high school senior and Buckingham a junior.

They later attended San José State University, where Buckingham invited Nicks to join his first band, Fritz.

“I think there was always something between me and Lindsey, but nobody in that band really wanted me as their girlfriend because I was just too ambitious for them,” Nicks told Cameron Crowe in 1977 for Rolling Stone. “If anybody in the band started spending any time with me, the other three would literally pick that person apart. To the death.”

Fritz stayed together until the early 1970s, after which Nicks and Buckingham eventually became romantically involved.

“I’m not sure we would have even become a couple if it wasn’t for us leaving that band,” she once said, according to Stephen Davis’ biography of her, “Gold Dust Woman.” “It kind of pushed us together.”

September 1973: Nicks and Buckingham release their first — and only — joint album, “Buckingham Nicks”

Performing as a duo, Nicks and Buckingham signed with Polydor Records in 1973 and released their only joint album, “Buckingham Nicks.”

Though it included standout songs like “Crying in the Night” and “Frozen Love” — and even featured a cover photo of the pair posing nude — the album was a commercial failure, and Polydor dropped them soon after.

“That album holds up pretty well,” Buckingham told AXS TV’s Dan Rather in 2015. “It did not do well commercially, but it certainly was noticed. And more importantly, it was noticed by Mick Fleetwood.”

December 1974: Nicks and Buckingham join Fleetwood Mac

In 1974, Mick Fleetwood visited Sound City Studios in Los Angeles, California, where producer and sound engineer Keith Olsen played him “Frozen Love” from “Buckingham Nicks.”

The track alone was enough to prompt Fleetwood to ask Buckingham to join Fleetwood Mac following the departure of guitarist and vocalist Bob Welch, who had previously replaced Jeremy Spencer.

Buckingham, for his part, made it clear he wouldn’t join without Nicks.

“[I] didn’t think about Stevie one way or the other, ’cause I was looking for a guitar player,” Fleetwood said in a 2009 BBC documentary about the band. “And very quickly, we realized they were totally joined at the hip.”

But according to Nicks, she and Buckingham were already breaking up when the invitation from Fleetwood Mac came.

“When we joined Fleetwood Mac, I said, ‘OK, this is what we’ve been working for since 1968,’” she told Billboard in 2014. “‘Lindsey, you and I have to sew this relationship back up. We have too much to lose here. We need to put our problems behind us.’”

And they did, Nicks added. The couple moved into an apartment on Hollywood Boulevard and began patching things up.

“We weren’t fighting about money, we had a really nice place, and we were going to work with these hysterically funny English people every day, making great music,” she recalled.

The band’s second self-titled album, often referred to as “The White Album,” was released in 1975 and marked the first time Nicks and Buckingham were featured on a Fleetwood Mac record. It included two standout tracks written by Nicks: “Landslide” and “Rhiannon.”

1976: Nicks and Buckingham break up

Just a year and a half into their tenure with Fleetwood Mac, Nicks and Buckingham called it quits.

“I broke up with Lindsey in 1976,” Nicks told The New Yorker in 2022. “Something happened that was, you know, ‘We’re done.’ And he knew it. It was time. And the band was solid, by that time, so I could walk away knowing that he was safe. And that the band was safe. And that we could work it out.”

The then-power couple was nearing a breakup when they joined Fleetwood Mac, Nicks added, but they tried to hold things together.

“I was smart enough to know that if we had broken up the second month of being in Fleetwood Mac, it would have blown the whole thing,” she said. “I just bided my time and tried to make everything as easy as possible, tried to be as sweet and as nice to Lindsey as I could be. He wasn’t happy either.”

Their tumultuous relationship — and its eventual end — became the subject of many Fleetwood Mac songs. In a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, Nicks said, “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.”

February 1977: Fleetwood Mac releases “Rumours”

Nicks and Buckingham’s split unfolded during the recording of “Rumours,” the album that would go on to become Fleetwood Mac’s most successful release.

Released in 1977, it topped the Billboard 200 chart for 31 non-consecutive weeks and earned the band a Grammy for Album of the Year the following year.

The emotional turmoil behind the scenes, including John and Christine McVie’s divorce, fueled the album’s production.

“We had to go through this elaborate exercise of denial,” Buckingham told Blender in 2005, reflecting on his and Nicks’ relationship during the recording. “Keeping our personal feelings in one corner of the room while trying to be professional in the other.”

The ex-couple didn’t hold back in their songwriting, though. Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way” and Nicks’ “Dreams” took subtle shots at their breakup — with the latter ultimately becoming Fleetwood Mac’s only No. 1 song in the US, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Speaking to The New Yorker in 2022, Nicks said the two singles felt “like counter songs to each other.”

“I’m like, ‘When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know.’ And he’s like, ‘Packing up, shacking up’s all you want to do,’” she told the outlet. “He’s looking at it from a very unpleasant, angry way, and I’m saying, in my more airy-fairy way, ‘We’re going to be all right. We’ll get through this.’”

1980: Nicks and Buckingham clash onstage during the band’s “Tusk” tour

Though Nicks and Buckingham had been broken up for some time, the tension between them remained palpable — and eventually exploded both onstage and off.

During a Fleetwood Mac concert in New Zealand on the band’s “Tusk” tour, Buckingham allegedly kicked Nicks mid-performance, she told Rolling Stone in 1997.

“We stopped the show,” Nicks recalled. “He went off, and we all ran at breakneck speed back to the dressing room to see who could kill him first.

“Christine [McVie] got to him first.” McVie, for her part, told Rolling Stone that Buckingham might have been “the only person [she] ever, ever slapped.”

“I actually might have chucked a glass of wine, too,” she added. “I just didn’t think it was the way to treat a paying audience. I mean, aside from making a mockery of Stevie like that. Really unprofessional, over the top.”

July 1981: Nicks launches her solo career while remaining a member of Fleetwood Mac

In 1981, Nicks released her debut solo album, “Bella Donna,” featuring the soon-to-be hit single “Edge of Seventeen.” She continued performing with Fleetwood Mac despite branching out on her own.

The album, which included collaborations with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Don Henley, went No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

“Edge of Seventeen,” she told Billboard in 2014, was inspired not only by the murder of John Lennon but also by the late Tom Petty, who died in 2017.

“I asked Tom’s wife, Jane [Benyo], when she met him,” Nicks recalled. “She said, ‘I met him at some point during the age of 17.’ But I thought she said, ‘The edge of 17.’ I said, ‘Jane, can I use that?’”

She explained that the lyric “Well, he seemed broken-hearted / Somethin’ within him” was Benyo talking about Petty.

“I bet a lot of people thought I was talking about me, but I was chronicling their relationship as she told it to me,” Nicks concluded.

September 1987: Buckingham quits Fleetwood Mac

Just before Fleetwood Mac’s “Tango in the Night” tour — named after the album Buckingham co-produced — he left the band.

His departure came after he refused to join the group on the tour during a meeting at Christine McVie’s house to discuss the upcoming concerts.

“When Lindsey said, ‘I’m not going,’ I think I got up and ran across the room and tried to strangle him,” Nicks said in a 2009 BBC documentary about the band. “And then, he chased me out of the house through Christine’s driveway, and we had a huge fight. That was that. He was done.”

Buckingham, for his part, told Rolling Stone in 1987 that he had always planned to shift his focus to his solo career once the album was complete.

“Back in 1985, I was working on my third solo album when the band came to me and asked me to produce the next Fleetwood Mac project,” he recalled to the outlet. “At that point, I put aside my solo work — which was half finished — and committed myself for the next seventeen months to producing ‘Tango in the Night.’”

Buckingham concluded, “It was always our understanding that upon completion, I would return to my solo work in progress.”

September 1990: Nicks leaves Fleetwood Mac

Nicks’ exit from Fleetwood Mac was reportedly tied to her fan-favorite “Silver Springs.”

Originally recorded for “Rumours,” the track was scrapped and instead buried as the B-side to “Go Your Own Way” — Buckingham’s own breakup anthem.

Years later, following Buckingham’s departure from the band, Fleetwood Mac released “Behind the Mask” and launched a world tour. Nicks, for her part, worked on a solo greatest hits project, “Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks,” and fought to include “Silver Springs” on the track list.

Mick Fleetwood objected, insisting the song be reserved for the group’s upcoming box set, “25 Years – The Chain.”

“I told [Fleetwood’s manager] that I want ‘Silver Springs’ because it belongs to my mother,” Nicks told the BBC in 1991. “It didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t let me have it back. I said to his manager, ‘You find Mick, and you tell him that if I don’t have those tapes by Monday, I am no longer a member of Fleetwood Mac.’”

When Fleetwood wouldn’t budge, Nicks made good on her warning and quit the band.

May 1997: Fleetwood Mac famously performs “Silver Springs” at Warner Bros. Studios

Fleetwood Mac’s classic lineup — Fleetwood, the McVies, Nicks and Buckingham — reunited in 1997 for “The Dance,” a tour commemorating the 20th anniversary of “Rumours.”

The tour spawned a No. 1 live album on the Billboard 200 chart and earned the band a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Album in 1998. It was also filmed for a concert special.

During the band’s shows in Burbank, California, Nicks and Buckingham delivered their now-iconic performance of “Silver Springs,” in which Nicks turned from the crowd, locked eyes with Buckingham and belted the song’s vengeful chorus: “Was I just a fool? / I’ll follow you down / ‘Til the sound of my voice will haunt you / Give me just a chance / You’ll never get away from the sound / Of the woman that loved you.”

For Nicks, the moment was calculated. Her delivery, she told Rolling Stone at the time, was meant “for posterity.”

“I wanted people to stand back and really watch and understand what [the relationship with Lindsey] was,” she later told The Arizona Republic.

The scene remains one of the most talked-about moments in Fleetwood Mac’s history.

1998: Christine McVie departs Fleetwood Mac

A member of Fleetwood Mac for 28 years, Christine McVie officially left the band in 1998, though she returned 16 years later in 2014.

“I think that I was probably just burned out when I left, and I was frightened to fly,” she told People at the time of her return.

During her time away, McVie released her second and final solo studio album, “In the Meantime,” in 2004 and told the outlet she had no plans to rejoin the band, spending most of her years quietly in England.

But ultimately, she said, “The truth of the matter is the only people I wanted to play with were the people I had played with all my life — these guys — Fleetwood Mac.”

April 2018: Buckingham is fired from Fleetwood Mac

Though Buckingham rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 1997, his tenure ended once again in 2018 — only this time, he didn’t leave by choice.

Ousted from the band, Buckingham pointed the finger at his former flame, telling People in 2021 that Stevie Nicks was to blame.

“It was all Stevie’s doing,” he told the outlet. “Stevie basically gave the band an ultimatum that either I had to go, or she would go. It would be like [Mick] Jagger saying, ‘Well, either Keith [Richards] has to go, or I’m going to go.’”

Nicks, however, rejected Buckingham’s version of events, pointing instead to a disagreement over tour plans as the cause of his removal from the band.

“I did not demand he be fired,” she wrote in a statement. “Frankly, I fired myself. I proactively removed myself from the band and a situation I considered to be toxic to my well-being. I was done. If the band went on without me, so be it.”

Fleetwood, for his part, told The Post in 2019, “We weren’t happy — [happy] sounds almost like too light of a word to use. It just wasn’t a happy situation anymore, really, for everyone.”

November 2022: Christine McVie dies at the age of 79

Christine McVie, longtime Fleetwood Mac vocalist and keyboardist, died on Nov. 30, 2022, at the age of 79.

Her family announced the news on her Instagram, sharing that she passed away at a hospital following a “short illness.”

“She was in the company of her family,” the statement read. “We kindly ask that you respect the family’s privacy at this extremely painful time, and we would like everyone to keep Christine in their hearts and remember the life of an incredible human being and revered musician who was loved universally.”

Fleetwood Mac also confirmed the news on X (formerly Twitter), writing that there were “no words to describe [their] sadness” over McVie’s passing.

“She was truly one-of-a-kind, special and talented beyond measure,” the statement continued. “She was the best musician anyone could have in their band and the best friend anyone could have in their life. We were so lucky to have a life with her.”

It concluded, “Individually and together, we cherished Christine deeply and are thankful for the amazing memories we have. She will be so very missed.”

Nicks, for her part, posted a handwritten note on Instagram, calling McVie her “best friend in the whole world since the first day of 1975.”

The tribute included lyrics from Haim’s 2020 song “Hallelujah”: “I had a best friend but she has come to pass / One I wish I could see now / You always remind me that memories will last / These arms reach out / You were there to protect me like a shield.”

“See you on the other side, my love,” Nicks concluded. “Don’t forget me — Always, Stevie.”

Speaking to Vulture in 2023, Nicks said, “There [was] no reason” for Fleetwood Mac to continue following McVie’s death.

“When Christine died, I felt like you can’t replace her. You just can’t. Without her, what is it?” she told the outlet. “Who am I going to look over to on the right and have them not be there behind that Hammond organ? When she died, I figured we really can’t go any further with this.”

July 2025: Nicks and Buckingham announce the reissue of “Buckingham Nicks”

On July 17, Nicks and Buckingham sparked reunion rumors with coordinated Instagram posts quoting a lyric from “Frozen Love,” a track off their one and only joint album, “Buckingham Nicks.”

Nicks, 77, shared a handwritten note that read, “And if you go forward…” Buckingham, 75, followed suit with his own handwritten message: “I’ll meet you there.”

A week later, the former couple clarified their posts’ meanings, revealing they were teasing a long-awaited reissue of their 1973 album, announced in a joint Instagram video.

“Buckingham Nicks is available for pre-order now, out September 19th ✨ ‘Crying in the Night’ is yours now. Listen at the link in bio,” they wrote in the caption, which accompanied a video of a billboard promoting the record on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip.

The reissue marks the album’s first official release on CD and digital platforms.