After Lindsey Buckingham wrote “Go Your Own Way” about his split from bandmate Stevie Nicks, Nicks did what any musician would do: she wrote another Fleetwood Mac hit in response. In an ironic twist of fate, Nicks’ follow-up song became the more commercially successful track.
And considering Buckingham’s song contained the one Fleetwood Mac lyric Stevie Nicks hated with a passion, we’re sure there must have been some poetically justified satisfaction in knowing that her break up track ranked higher on the charts than Buckingham’s.
The Former Duo Joined The Band On The Verge Of A Break Up
Former folk-rock duo Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, forever changing the creative scope and legacy of the British blues band. They also ushered in a new, band-defining era of complex romantic hardships, which, according to Nicks, had started even before their first rehearsal with their new band.
“Lindsey and I were lovers,” Nicks told Blender in 2005. “But we were on the point of breaking up when we joined Fleetwood Mac. For the greater good of the band, though, we decided to put our break up on hold. We were beginning to become rockstars, and we had to get another album together.” Buckingham added, “We had to go through this elaborate exercise of denial, keeping our personal feelings in one corner of the room while trying to be professional in the other.”
Yet, despite their best efforts to compartmentalize their feelings, Nicks and Buckingham’s tumultuous relationship made its way into their music one way or another. The band’s 1977 smash-hit album ‘Rumours’ contained several songs written about each other, including Buckingham’s iconic breakup track “Go Your Own Way” and Nicks’ instant success, “Dreams.”
Stevie Nicks’ Response To Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way”
It didn’t take long for Stevie Nicks to realize Lindsey Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way” was about her. “I very, very much resented him telling the world that ‘packing up, shacking up’ with different men was all I wanted to do,” Nicks said in a 1997 Rolling Stone interview. “He knew it wasn’t true.” But as much as Nicks might’ve hated the song, it did help inspire her to write a Fleetwood Mac hit of her own: “Dreams.”
Nicks told Blender that one fateful day in 1976, she ventured into a vacant studio while the rest of the band worked on ‘Rumours’ parts elsewhere. “It was a black and red room with a sunken pit in the middle, where there was a piano [and] a big black velvet bed with Victorian drapes. I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me. I found a drum pattern, switched my little cassette player on and wrote “Dreams” in about ten minutes.”
In a 2009 interview with Daily Mail, she described handing that cassette tape off to Buckingham later that night. “Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it and then looked up at me and smiled. What was going on between us was sad. But as musicians, we still respected each other.” And according to Nicks, “Dreams” harbored no ill will.
““Dreams” was open and hopeful, but in “Go Your Own Way,” his heart was closed,” Nicks told Blender. “That’s how I felt. That line, When the rain washes you clean, to me, that was like being able to start again, and that’s what I wanted [for] Lindsey. I wanted him to be happy.”
Photo by Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock
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