Lindsey Buckingham shatters silence over Fleetwood Mac ousting

‘There were factions within the band that had lost their perspective…’

“There were factions within the band that had lost their perspective…what that did was to harm the 43-year legacy that we had worked so hard to build.” For the first time, Fleetwood Mac guitar slinger Lindsey Buckingham publicly addresses why he was fired from the diamond-certified ’70s pop rock quintet. Dressed casually in blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and cool black leather jacket in the accompanying still, a sweat-soaked Buckingham screams in ecstasy after soloing on a customized Rick Turner Renaissance guitar. Photography by Jeremy Roberts

Thirty-seven days after a tweet by late ’80s Fleetwood Mac guitarist Billy Burnette ironically divulged that the guy he replaced in the rock quintet, Lindsey Buckingham, had been unceremoniously fired at the insistence of Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood, the idiosyncratic Rumours mastermind broke his silence over the shocking revelation.

Not seen publicly since January 2018 when Fleetwood Mac was bestowed MusiCares Person of the Year by the Recording Academy, Buckingham was videoed on May 11 in between songs at a campaign fundraiser supporting Mike Levin, an environmental attorney and Democratic candidate who ultimately won election to the U.S. House to represent the 49th Congressional District of California.

“It’s been an interesting time on a lot of levels,” said Buckingham from the Los Feliz, California, backyard of fellow Levin donor Erica Rothschild. “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” [following 1987’s Tango in the Night, Buckingham left Fleetwood Mac voluntarily and did not return full-time until…