by Jeff Giles
April 10, 2015 10:44 AM
Ultimate Classic Rock Website

By the time they achieved massive mainstream success in the mid-’70s, Fleetwood Mac had already been through more lineup changes than most bands manage in their entire careers, and their best-selling album, Rumours, was partly inspired by a pair of collapsing relationships between bandmates.

They were accustomed to forging on in the face of personal and professional drama, in other words — but even so, the trials they faced before recording their 15th studio album, 1990′s Behind the Mask, proved particularly threatening.

All things considered, it should have been an easy time for Fleetwood Mac, who battled back from some early ’80s doldrums with 1987′s commercially resurgent Tango in the Night. With another multiplatinum hit at their backs and a fresh slew of Top 40 singles marching up the charts, the band might have been able to settle into the sort of groove that had proven difficult in the years after Rumours‘ unwieldy success, if not for one thing: the inconveniently timed exit of guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, whose songwriting and meticulous studio work had increasingly come to define their sound.

Buckingham’s departure was confirmed in the summer of 1988, causing the band to scramble to fill his parts before their tour for Tango. It was just the kind of painful and potentially disastrous conflict that the band had unfortunately become known for, but as drummer Mick Fleetwood later admitted, the split was a long time coming — and exacerbated by moves the other band members had made in the years leading up to it. Continue reading 25 Years Ago: Fleetwood Mac Release ‘Behind the Mask’ Without Lindsey Buckingham | Ultimate Classic Rock →