“It Wasn’t About Replacing Lindsey Or Replicating Him In Any Way”

Minus the persona non grata and now-incapacitated Lindsey Buckingham, FLEETWOOD MAC truck on towards a date with the UK in June. Their new line-up is controversial, but they claim it’s working and, what’s more, it was ever thus. “If you look at the history of Fleetwood Mac,” Mick Fleetwood tells DAVE DIMARTINO, “it’s a miracle that it survived. A miracle.”

IT IS MID-NOVEMBER OF 2018, FLEETWOOD MAC are performing at Moda Center in Portland, Oregon, and Stevie Nicks is introducing Landslide.

“This song was written in 1973 in Aspen, Colorado,” she tells the rapt audience. “just me and my little guitar, deciding what I want to do with my life. I want to dedicate this to my cousins Sandy and Eddie, who are here, and also to Lindsey Wilkinson, an old friend. Another Lindsey that I also really loved, you know.” There is a brief, barely perceptible pause. “Not like that.” The crowd laughs at her mixture of candour and innuendo, that wee wisp of Harlequin romance paperback covers long gone, and the band plays Nicks’ classic note perfect, as if it were 1975 all over again. But of course, it isn’t 1975 again.

Absent from the stage is guitarist/singer and one-time Nicks musical and personal partner Lindsey Buckingham, who with Nicks joined the band at the tail end of 1974 and helped guide them to an unparalleled level of fame. He’s not only gone, he’s really gone: a month previously Buckingham had filed suit in the Superior Court of Los Angeles claiming to have been unjustly booted from the band. Thus this long-planned, lucrative tour — which extends through 2019 and includes the States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK, Australia and New Zealand — now features replacements Neil Finn, of Crowded House, and Mike Campbell, of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, and no Lindsey Buckingham. Continue reading The Never Ending Story of Fleetwood Mac | MOJO Magazine →