Where Fleetwood Mac are now from Stevie Nicks to Lindsey Buckingham

Fleetwood Mac: Lindsey Buckingham joins tour in 1977

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Fleetwood Mac was founded in London back in 1967 by guitarist and singer Peter Green. The blues rocker, who left the band in 1970 amid mental decline and died in 2020, recruited Mick Fleetwood as drummer and John McVie as bassist – going on to name the band after a combination of both their surnames.

These two would become the longest-serving members of the band and continue to be to this day. A couple of years later John married Christine McVie who joined Fleetwood as singer and keyboardist.

And in 1974 folk-rock duo and lovers Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were recruited, completing the most famous line-up of the band. Together their self-titled 1975 album hit No 1 before 1977’s Rumours, written and recorded during the drug-fuelled breakups of both couples, went on to become one of the biggest records of all time. But just where are the big five bandmates now?

Mick Fleetwood

The 76-year-old drummer and co-founder has been a constant in the band for almost 60 years. Fleetwood Mac last performed together with himself, John McVie, Stevie Nicks, Mike Campbell and Neil Finn on November 20, 2019.

Since then he’s released his seventh solo album Mick Fleetwood and Friends Celebrate the Music of Peter Green, which landed in 2021. And just last year he was the face of Harry Styles’ beauty brand Pleasing. 

The drummer lives in Hawaii where his self-titled bar and restaurant have been closed until further notice, having sustained damage in the Maui wildfires. 

He’s been married four times to three women with whom he has four children and was most recently divorced from Lynn Frankel in 2015 after 20 years of marriage.

John McVie

The 77-year-old has been in Fleetwood Mac almost as long as its drummer. The bassist was married to bandmate Christine McVie in 1968 and the two were together for six years before separating mid-tour.

John later remarried to Julie Ann Reubens in 1978 and the couple had their first child Molly in 1989.

Having been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2013, the band cancelled the remaining dates of their world tour that year so he could undergo treatment. At the time a statement from fellow band members Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham said: “We hope our Australian and New Zealand fans as well as Fleetwood Mac fans everywhere will join us in wishing John and his family all the best.”

The bassist has as of 2017 been completely clear of the disease.

Christine McVie

Having started out as a session player for Fleetwood Mac in 1968, Christine joined her husband John’s band two years later.  After divorcing the bassist in 1976, she went on to marry Eduardo Quintela in 1986, before they too divorced in 2003.

She stuck with the band until 1998 when she left, citing that she’d developed a fear of flying. But then, in 2013, Christine performed with Fleetwood Mac in London before officially rejoining a year later ahead of the On With the Show tour.

In 2017, she released a duets album with Lindsey Buckingham and last performed live with Fleetwood Mac at their latest concert in 2019.

The singer and keyboardist died on November 30, 2022 at the age of 79 following a stroke.

Lindsey Buckingham

The 74-year-old was lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist with Fleetwood Mac from 1975 until 1987 following the release of Tango in the Night. His departure was largely because he didn’t want to tour anymore and since he was feeling strain within the band. 

He later reflected: “I needed to get some separation from Stevie especially because I don’t think I’d ever quite gotten closure on our relationship. I needed to get on with the next phase of my creative growth and my emotional growth. When you break up with someone and then for the next 10 years you have to be around them and do for them and watch them move away from you, it’s not easy.”

Buckingham would return to Fleetwood Mac in 1993 for a one-off performance at the request of President Bill Clinton, before rejoining the band in 1997.  That was until 2018, when he was fired from the band following a disagreement with Nicks. As for the reason, he later told PEOPLE: “Stevie basically gave the band an ultimatum that either I had to go or she would go. It would be like [Mick] Jagger saying, ‘Well, either Keith [Richards] has to go or I’m going to go.’”

Having initially filed a lawsuit in October 2018, this was settled and he has since reconciled with Mick Fleetwood. But then in 2019, he suffered a heart attack, requiring emergency open-heart surgery.

According to his wife Kristen Messner, whom he married in 2000, this life-saving procedure caused vocal cord damage and at the time it was unclear how permanent this would be. Following news of his heart attack, Nicks wrote her former lover a letter telling him: “You better take care of yourself”.

Buckingham has said that Mick knows he would return “in a shot” to Fleetwood Mac, but of course, he’d need to reconcile properly with Nicks first.

In June 2021, the guitarist’s wife Kristen filed for divorce but by September it was reported that the couple were working on their marriage.

Last year, Buckingham guested during Killers concert in Los Angeles, which included a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way. 

Stevie Nicks

The 75-year-old singer broke up with Buckingham in 1976 and had a brief affair with Mick while he was still married to first wife Jenny Boyd. Nicks later dated Eagles’ Don Henley who got her pregnant, before she had an abortion in 1979.

Her only marriage was in 1983 to Kim Anderson, her best friend Robin Anderson’s widow, soon after she died from leukaemia. The singer puts down the “terrible mistake” of a three month relationship to not being in love, but because they were both grieving. Nicks also had a partner in Eagles’ bandmember Joe Walsh from 1983 to 1986.

In 1991 she quit Fleetwood Mac over a dispute with Mick, who wouldn’t allow her to release the 1977 track Silver Springs on her album Timespace: The Best of Stevie Nicks, since he planned to save it for a Fleetwood Mac box set.

Following the one-off 1993 performance at Clinton’s Inauguration Ball with a briefly reunited band, Nicks returned to the group in 1997 and has been with them ever since.

In 2019 she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist and in recent years has collaborated with the likes of Miley Cyrus.

Following Christine’s death last year, she cited Taylor Swift’s You’re on You Own, Kid as helping her process “the sadness of how I feel” of losing her “best friend”.

As for Fleetwood Mac’s future following the loss, she told Vulture recently: “When she died, I figured we really can’t go any further with this. There’s no reason to.”

A pretty final answer from the singer regarding Fleetwood Mac’s touring future, but who knows? Perhaps a mini-reunion with Lindsey is still possible.

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