When Irving told Nicks that now was her time to strike out on her own, she knew he was right. She was also the biggest female singing star in the world, had recently taken on a new manager, the all-powerful Irving Azoff, also then manager of the Eagles, and destined to become one of the major music biz players of the century.

She was 32 in 1980, and ready for “a big new adventure”. Nicks, however, appeared to have other ideas. And a statement that left the door nicely ajar for any future rapprochement. The chemistry is there – that’s what the band was all about in the first place.” “But if Mick and I see each other, there’s nothing wrong. “Mick was a little bit bitter about me leaving,” the famously strong-headed guitarist put it at the time. His next stop was Solo City – and a US Top 10 hit in his own right, Trouble. He wanted to make art, and Fleetwood Mac was no longer the place for him to do it. It was time for him to go it alone, unbound by such trite demands as hit singles and release deadlines.

If Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had been the catalyst for Fleetwood Mac’s evolution from has-been British bluesers into Californian soft-rock exemplars – the magic sauce that nurtured the hits and reinvented the Mac’s grizzly old image – it was Buckingham and Nicks who used the early-80s, post- Tusk era to parlay new, more exciting solo careers for themselves.īuckingham had sacrificed himself for Mac’s giant success for long enough, he now decided. The Behind The Mask Mac, now with guitarists Rick Vito (bottom left) and Billy Burnett (right) (Image credit: Alamy)

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