Stevie Nicks Described Fleetwood Mac As A “Scandalous” And “Incestuous” Soap Opera

Romance And Trouble In The Band

Fleet­wood Mac has nev­er been just about music. The group became almost as famous for their messy per­son­al rela­tion­ships as for their hits. And no one knew this bet­ter than Ste­vie Nicks. When romance mix­es with cre­ative work, things can get tense, and Fleet­wood Mac had no short­age of those ten­sions.

Nicks her­self was involved in sev­er­al com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships. She had a brief romance with drum­mer Mick Fleet­wood after end­ing things with gui­tarist Lind­sey Buck­ing­ham. Around the same time, she was also linked to Don Hen­ley from The Eagles. Mean­while, Chris­tine and John McVie divorced while still play­ing togeth­er in the band.

A Soap Opera Set To Music

The tan­gled love lives inside Fleet­wood Mac start­ed to resem­ble some­thing you might see on day­time tele­vi­sion. Ste­vie Nicks once com­pared the band’s dra­ma to an actu­al soap opera. She wasn’t exag­ger­at­ing.

I’ve been close to leav­ing Fleet­wood Mac since I joined Fleet­wood Mac,” Nicks said in a 1990 inter­view with US Mag­a­zine, as quot­ed by Rock a Lit­tle. “But so has every­body else. […] To be in Fleet­wood Mac is to live in a soap opera. And it has been pret­ty scan­dalous and pret­ty inces­tu­ous, and pret­ty won­der­ful in a lot of ways.”

Stevie Thought About Leaving Often

By 1990, the band was falling apart. Lind­sey Buck­ing­ham had already left, and both Nicks and Chris­tine McVie were con­sid­er­ing their exits. The ten­sion behind the scenes was hard to ignore. Still, despite all the dra­ma, Ste­vie nev­er want­ed to be the one to end it all.

“I threat­en to quit all the time. I threat­en to quit once a month. But I’m nev­er gonna be the one to break up Fleet­wood Mac,” she said. “Some­body else will break it up, not me. And it’s hard for me to imag­ine Fleet­wood Mac ever break­ing up. It’s kind of like, you know, it’s just an enti­ty that just seems to go on and on and on. I fig­ure Fleet­wood Mac will go on until it doesn’t want to go on any­more.”

Her Prediction Was Right

Though Nicks often felt the urge to leave, the band kept going. Fleet­wood Mac con­tin­ued through line­up changes and peri­ods of rest. Her words proved true. The band last­ed in some form until Chris­tine McVie’s pass­ing in 2022.