Mick Fleetwood Says It Was ‘Too Challenging’ Having Both Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in Fleetwood Mac

It’s been almost a year since Fleetwood Mac kicked legendary musician Lindsey Buckingham out of the band and cofounder Mick Fleetwood is still having to explain the group’s decision and has now revealed another reason why the other members agreed to part ways with their lead guitarist.

“We were not happy,” Mick, 71, confessed to Mojo. “It is no secret that Lindsey and Stevie [Nicks] are in a continuum Liz Taylor/Richard Burton type of life, and it went in and out of valleys and mountaintops and God knows what through the years — that support really could not be given to ask the situation to continue. It was too challenging.”

The drummer continued, “Someone in some interview said, ‘What’d you do, fire him? You can say that if you want but I think that’s an ugly word, knowing what this man has done in the ranks of Fleetwood Mac …” Mick added, “The truth is, call it what you want, a parting of company took place, and it had to take place, and it was supported by the remaining band members around something that for sure was a major problem to two people — Lindsey and Stevie.”

Mick wasn’t the only one who had a response to all that went down, as keyboardist Christine McVie also revealed that the group would’ve had to split if Lindsey, 69, wasn’t let go. “For whatever reasons, a lot being personal, it was the only route we could take, because there was too much animosity between certain members of the band at that point, there was just no way it could’ve gone on as a five-piece, a group with Lindsey in the band,” the 75-year-old said. “So it was either just completely break up the band or make the best of it.”

Even though Christine had no issues with Lindsey at all, she still commends Mick for bringing in replacements Mike Campbell and Neil Finn. “Mick is the grandaddy of the band. And he lives to make it survive,” she said.

She continued, “And he has a way of finding the right people at the right time … But it was a really bad time, I had no bones to pick with Lindsey, I loved working with him but I did see the point and I did see what the problem was.” She added, “And you know, we’re a democracy and we have to kind of make the best of a bad job. As it turns out, what we have now is better than what we ever had before.”

Late last year, Lindsey sat-down with CBS This Morning: Saturday and blamed the “Edge of Seventeen” singer for his firing. “It appeared to me that she was looking for something to hang on me, in order to instigate some kind of coup,” he explained, adding that he learned that Stevie was upset at him from the band’s manager Irving Azoff.

“Irving told me — a couple of days later — that she’d given the band an ultimatum, and either I had to go or she was going to go,” he revealed. Lindsey was a part of the band from 1974 to 2018.