Earlier this month, Fleetwood Mac fired Lindsey Buckingham ahead of their world tour, with rumors swirling that it was the result of a “disagreement.†But if the band is to be believed, it wasn’t the big blowout you were hoping for, and just the old scheduling conflict that did it. Stevie Nicks now tells Rolling Stone that Buckingham wanted to delay rehearsals for the tour until November 2019, which didn’t fly with her or any other members of the band, so they cut him loose. “Why would we stop? We don’t want to stop playing music. We don’t have anything else to do. This is what we do,†she says. Mick Fleetwood prefers not to call Buckingham’s latest departure a “firing,†per se, but it is what it is: “Words like ‘fired’ are ugly references as far as I’m concerned. Not to hedge around, but we arrived at the impasse of hitting a brick wall,†he says. “This was not a happy situation for us in terms of the logistics of a functioning band. To that purpose, we made a decision that we could not go on with him. Majority rules in term of what we need to do as a band and go forward.â€
The decision was business, but since this is Fleetwood Mac we’re talking about, it was still personal. “Our relationship has always been volatile,†Nicks says. “We were never married, but we might as well have been. Some couples get divorced after 40 years. They break their kids’ hearts and destroy everyone around them because it’s just hard. This is sad for me, but I want the next 10 years of my life to be really fun and happy. I want to get up every day and dance around my apartment and smile and say, ‘Thank God for this amazing life.’â€