Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac as a couple but broke up shortly into their time with the band. In the years that followed, their relationship was, to put it mildly, tumultuous. Their relationships with new romantic partners caused some problems within the group. It likely didn’t help that Buckingham rolled his eyes at Nicks to get closer to a future girlfriend, Carol Ann Harris.
Lindsey Buckingham’s new girlfriend could recall the first moment she saw Stevie Nicks
Harris met Fleetwood Mac while working as a studio manager. She had a slightly flirtatious relationship with Buckingham, who informed her that he’d broken up with his girlfriend, Nicks. The next day, Harris met her for the first time.
“The day after Lindsey told me about breaking up with Stevie, I was sitting on the floor in the reception room of Studio B when a tiny hummingbird of a woman brushed past me in a blaze of color, on a cloud of patchouli and ylang-ylang,” she wrote in her book Storms: My Life With Lindsey Buckingham and Fleetwood Mac. “I stared. I’d never seen anything so bright and dynamic before, so compelling, so intensely certain of the vibe she created.”
Harris recalled everyone in the room turning their attention to Nicks. She began describing her recent vacation in lyrical detail.
“I’d just met Stevie Nicks,” Harris wrote. “She was without a doubt the most mesmerizing woman I’d ever encountered. I didn’t need to be told that she was a star. Her light was blinding. People gathered around. I sat transfixed, still on the floor, looking up at this five-foot-nothing exquisite firebrand.”
Lindsey Buckingham used Stevie Nicks’ behavior to get closer to Carol Ann Harris
Shortly after Nicks made her dramatic entrance, Buckingham came into the room. He was not on good terms with his ex-girlfriend.
“There was a moment’s hesitation, then he barked at her and she bit back, and I knew instantly that the two were familiar old sparring partners, with a history of love and loathing, and a sharp professional jealousy that would spark up and wound for as long as they lived,” Harris wrote.
When they finished snapping back and forth at each other, Buckingham turned to Harris.
“‘Hey,’ Lindsey whispered suddenly, as Stevie’s voice sang on in the background. I looked up and he was right next to me, crouched beside me. ‘See what I have to put up with?’ he said.”
Harris responded that they should “compare notes,” thinking about her fizzling relationship with a boyfriend. Buckingham immediately took the opportunity to ask her on a date.
The ‘Rhiannon’ singer was reportedly cold towards Harris
While Harris didn’t initially agree to go on a date with Buckingham, they eventually got together. Nicks reportedly did not warm to her because of this. According to biographer Stephen Davis, Nicks once told Harris she shouldn’t wear black.
“Stevie had a quiet word with her, informing Carol that it was she, Stevie, who wore black within the Fleetwood Mac bubble, that it was an exclusive thing, and maybe Carol might want to think about wearing a different color the next time she hung around the band,” Davis wrote in the book Gold Dust Woman.
Despite this, Nicks has said that she loved it when Buckingham had other girlfriends, because it took the pressure off of her.
