Fleetwood Mac are fighting again. Rock-star fur is flying. But this is no ordinary argument. For one thing, the contretemps is being conducted in three different countries.

Stevie Nicks fights her corner from an elegant apartment in Paris, Lindsey Buckingham boxes clever in his Californian study and Christine McVie counterpunches from her riverside penthouse in London.

Founder band members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie are keeping out of it. Fleetwood is licking his wounds after his fourth divorce and McVie is in hospital engaged in a more serious battle, with cancer.

The disagreement, believe it or not, concerns one of Fleetwood Mac’s few physical altercations. After 45 years of soft rock’s favourite soap opera, it’s astonishing that the players haven’t come to blows more often.

‘I was dancing on stage,’ begins Nicks, now 65, in the salon of her rented Parisian pied-à-terre. ‘It was the Tusk tour, 1980, Auckland, New Zealand. I was doing my thing with my shawl and Lindsey pulled his jacket up over his head and started mimicking me, behind my back. ‘I thought, “Well, that’s not working for me.” But I didn’t do anything. This must have infuriated him, because he came over and kicked me.  ‘And I’d never had anyone be physical with me in my life. Then he picked up a black Les Paul guitar and he just frisbee’d it at me. He missed, I ducked – but he could have killed me.’

Is it true that during their private-jet-and-pink-hotel-suite years, Fleetwood Mac would take cocaine while they were performing on stage? ‘Absolutely,’ said Stevie Nicks (the band on tour in the 1970s). ‘I’m not sure that happened,’ Buckingham, 64, states flatly at his gated LA estate.

‘Oh, it happened, all right,’ asserts Christine McVie, 70, drinking in a glorious view of the Thames. ‘I threw a glass of wine in his face.’ Continue reading Fleetwood Mac are back… and still settling old scores | Daily Mail (UK) →