Fleetwood Mac and drama may have been more familiar with each other for decades but according to Steve Nicks in a new interview, the band are well and truly done as a touring and recording entity. And for more than just one very good reason.
“There is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together in any way," Nicks tells Mojo in its new issue regarding the band's prospects of continuing in any form without singer-songwriter and keyboard player Christine McVie, who passed away following a stroke in 2022. "Without her, it just couldn’t work.”
The singer-songwriter was also candid about her distress at not being able to say goodbye to her friend and bandmate.
“It was all stunningly strange, because there wasn’t any lead up to it,” says Nicks of McVie’s passing in late November 2022. “We got a call, and I was going to rent a plane and go see her, but her family said, ‘Don’t come, because she may not be here tomorrow.’ And the next day, she passed away.
“I wanted to go there and sit on her bed and sing to her – which definitely would have made her pass away faster,”she joked to Mojo through tears. “But I needed to be with her. And I didn’t get to do that. So that was very hard for me. I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
She also referenced another potential obstacle for any reunion, as if one was needed; Lindsey Buckingham. Her former partner and creative muse exited the band acrimoniously in 2018 with his live roles covered by Neil Finn and Mike Campbell. He then underwent open heart surgery in 2019 and has since aired his belief that Fleetwood Mac might have unfinished business.
“If there’s more to come [from the band], if there’s a way to heal that, that would be great," Buckingham revealed on Conan O Brien's SiriusXM podcast last year. "It would be very appropriate to close on a more circular note.”
But Stevie Nicks isn't currently open to that kind of arrangement.
Fleetwood Mac Rumours album track-by-track with co-producer Ken Caillat
“Even if I thought I could work with Lindsey again, he’s had some health problems,” she told Mojo. “It’s not for me to say, but I’m not sure if Lindsey could do the kind of touring that Fleetwood Mac does, where you go out for a year and a half. It’s so demanding.”
Stevie Nicks is currently on tour in Europe, with a show in London's Hyde Park scheduled for 12 July. She told Mojo she's celebrating the legacy of the band that way and recent setlists have included the band's Dreams, Gypsy, Gold Dust Woman, Rhiannon and Landslide. She even told the publication that the door is open for her to play Fleetwood Mac Rumours classic The Chain in her solo set.
Read more at Mojo and check out our recent retrospective on Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album.
