The six decades of the Fleetwood Mac saga has come to an end. In a new interview with Mojo, Stevie Nicks dashed any hopes of possible reformation due to the death of Christine McVie. “Without Christine [McVie], no can do,” she said. “There is no chance of putting Fleetwood Mac back together in any way. Without her, it just couldn’t work.”
The singer-keyboardist died in 2022 following a stroke. “It was all stunningly strange, because there wasn’t any lead up to it,” Nick said. “We got a call, and I was going to rent a plane and go see her, but her family said, ‘Don’t come, because she may not be here tomorrow.’ And the next day, she passed away. I wanted to go there and sit on her bed and sing to her — which definitely would have made her pass away faster. But I needed to be with her. And I didn’t get to do that. So that was very hard for me. I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
When McVie stepped away from the band in 1998, remaining members Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham carried on as a quartet. McVie returned to the group in 2014, but long-simmering tensions between Nicks and Buckingham boiled over four years later, and the group dismissed Buckingham. They toured in 2018-19 with Mike Campbell and Neil Finn covering his parts. Their last show was a benefit concert for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals at San Francisco’s Oracle Park on November 19, 2019.
Mick Fleetwood made peace with Buckingham in 2021, and expressed hopes he could return to the band one day, but Nicks told Mojo that isn’t going to happen. “Even if I thought I could work with Lindsey again, he’s had some health problems,” Nick said. “It’s not for me to say, but I’m not sure if Lindsey could do the kind of touring that Fleetwood Mac does, where you go out for a year and a half. It’s so demanding.” (Buckingham had heart surgery in 2019 that temporarily sidelined him from touring, but he made a complete recovery and returned to the road in 2021.)
Nicks has spent the past three years playing solo gigs at arenas all across North America. Her set is heavy on Fleetwood Mac classics such as “Gypsy,” “Dreams,” and “Rhiannon.” “When I walk on stage, I couldn’t be prouder of my band,” Nicks said. “I mean, I would rather not be freed up from Fleetwood Mac, because of Christine. But I’m in a place where I can concentrate on my solo work. I can do anything I want now, and not have to worry about stopping and going back to Fleetwood Mac… [But] Fleetwood Mac is all over my set. Now that there is no more Fleetwood Mac, that opens the door for me to do other songs, like ‘The Chain,’ that I’ve never done [solo]. I will keep the music of Fleetwood Mac alive, for as long as I can.”
From Rolling Stone US
