Rolling Stone
By Daniel Kreps
12th April 2018

“This was not something that was really my doing or my choice,” guitarist says of exit from band

Lindsey Buckingham spoke about his firing from Fleetwood Mac for the first time when the guitarist performed Friday night at a California campaign fundraiser.

“It’s been an interesting time on a lot of levels,” Buckingham said at the fundraiser supporting Democratic congressional candidate Mike Levin (via Jeremy Roberts).

“For me, personally, probably some of you know that for the last three months I have sadly taken leave of my band of 43 years, Fleetwood Mac. This was not something that was really my doing or my choice.”

“I think what you would say is that there were factions within the band that had lost their perspective,” Buckingham continued. “The point is that they’d lost their perspective. What that did was to harm – and this is the only thing I’m really sad about, the rest of it becomes an opportunity – it harmed the 43-year legacy that we had worked so hard to build, and that legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfill one’s higher truth and one’s higher destiny.”

Buckingham, who weaved his remarks about the Fleetwood Mac firing into a speech supporting Levin, remained diplomatic about the rift with his now-former bandmates, even sidestepping an audience member who yelled “Fuck Stevie Nicks.”

The brief comments were Buckingham’s first on the matter since Fleetwood Mac announced in April that the band recruited the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Crowded House’s Neil Finn to replace Buckingham, who reportedly didn’t want to embark on a Mac tour this year.

“Words like ‘fired’ are ugly references as far as I’m concerned,” Mick Fleetwood told Rolling Stone in April. “Not to hedge around, but we arrived at the impasse of hitting a brick wall. 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.”

Watch Buckingham’s comments on the Fleetwood Mac situation below: