Stevie & Christine - The Guardian (12.12.2013)

Founder Mick Fleetwood was desperate to recruit the American Lindsey Buckingham as a guitarist. Buckingham, however, said he would only join if Nicks – his girlfriend at the time, as well as his musical partner in the up-and-coming Buckingham Nicks – was allowed to join too. The band arranged a meet-up, with Fleetwood, letting Christine have the decisive vote.

“We went for Mexican food with them,” Nicks recalls, “and we laughed and laughed, because you English people have a very strange sense of humour. Even Lindsey had fun – he didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help it.”

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“We were cool onstage,” Nicks says. “But offstage everybody was pretty angry. Most nights Chris and I would just go for dinner on our own, downstairs in the hotel, with security at the door.”

As McVie explains: “John and I used to be civil – ‘What key is this in? What do you want me to do on this song?’ – but Stevie and Lindsey were fighting all the time. Very volatile. Their relationship still is an ongoing battle.”

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The more you talk about life on the road with Fleetwood Mac, in fact, the more such double standards emerge. “We almost always had boyfriends, but they weren’t on the road because they’d just get stomped on,” Nicks says. “For me to have a guy out on the road with us, and have Lindsey glaring at him the whole time? Or for Christine to have a guy out and John just walk past and flip him off? No, we both learned very early on that we would never bring boyfriends on the road because it created arguments.”

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Pragmatism, and a sense that they really were above such petty things, seems to have kept the two women sane, and quite probably the band together. As Nicks says: “The boys brought girlfriends on the road but the thing about that was we didn’t care they had new girlfriends! Because we didn’t want to be with them! We were happy they had new girlfriends! Thrilled! Oh my God, they’re happy! The pressure is off!”