By 1982, Fleetwood Mac was the biggest band in the world. Yet they were a 'band' in name only.
Following the conclusion of the Mirage tour that year, the five members who had crafted the definitive soundtrack of the seventies – Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood – drifted into a strange, prolonged state of fragmentation.
For five years, the 'Big Five' did not release a studio album together. While the public saw a hiatus, the reality was a desperate scramble for individual survival, marked by skyrocketing solo careers, catastrophic health crises, and a level of personal excess that nearly ended the band for good.
Tusk and the road to burnout
To understand why the band fell apart in the early eighties, we must track back to 1979’s wildly experimental double album, Tusk. While its predecessor Rumours was a multi-million-shifting soft rock phenomenon, Tusk was Lindsey Buckingham’s experimental manifesto. It was expensive, sprawling, and demanding. The subsequent world tour was a marathon of decadence and fatigue that spanned 113 shows across three continents.
The Tusk tour was exhausting not just because of the schedule, but because of the sheer scale. The band travelled with a massive entourage, private jets, and a legendary daily cocaine budget. By the time they played their final date in September 1980, the internal chemistry was fried. They had spent years living in each other's pockets while their romantic lives were being picked apart in the press. The 'lifestyle of excess' had transitioned from a rock-and-roll cliché into a dangerous, daily reality.
Mirage: rock's thorniest 'smooth' record
In 1981, the band reconvened at the Château d'Hérouville in France to record what would become their next album, Mirage. On the surface, this was a 'return to form': a deliberate attempt to move away from the jagged experimentation of Tusk and back toward the radio-friendly sheen of the mid-seventies. However, the sessions were anything but harmonious.
Recording in a remote French castle sounds romantic, and indeed Hérouville had been the midwife for some of great 1970s albums including Pink Floyd's Obscured by Clouds, Elton John's Honky Chateau and David Bowie's Low. For a band struggling with sobriety and interpersonal resentment, however, it was an isolation chamber.
The atmosphere was famously difficult. Buckingham was frustrated by the mandate to play it safe, while Nicks was already halfway out the door, fuelled by the staggering success of her debut solo album Bella Donna. The resulting record was a hit, featuring 'Hold Me' and 'Gypsy', but it lacked the cohesive soul of their earlier work. After a brief, month-long tour in late 1982, the band simply stopped. They didn't break up; they just ceased to exist as a unit.
Bankruptcy, mental illness: the price of success
The five-year gap between 1982 and 1987 was defined by a series of harrowing personal lows. The 'survival' the band spoke of wasn't metaphorical; it was physical.
Mick Fleetwood, the band’s founder and manager of their chaos, saw his personal finances collapse. Despite the millions generated by Rumours, his lavish lifestyle and poor investments led him to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1984. Simultaneously, the rhythm section's health was failing. John McVie, long known for his heavy drinking, suffered an addiction-related seizure during this period, a terrifying wake-up call that underscored how much the 'lifestyle' had taken its toll.
Stevie Nicks, meanwhile, was reaching a breaking point. Her reliance on cocaine had become so severe that it began to damage her nasal passages and, more importantly, her mental health. In 1986, at the urging of friends and doctors, she checked into the Betty Ford Clinic. Her struggle for sobriety was a lonely journey that took her away from the band’s orbit just as they needed to start thinking about a reunion.
Something had to give
By the mid-eighties, the romantic ghosts that had haunted the band since 1976 finally demanded space. The Buckingham/Nicks relationship remained a volatile source of friction, and the McVies’ post-divorce working relationship was increasingly strained.
The band was divided on musical direction. Lindsey Buckingham had become a meticulous, almost obsessive studio auteur, preferring to work in his home studio away from the distractions of the group. Christine McVie was gravitating toward polished, sophisticated pop, and Stevie Nicks was exploring her own 'High Priestess' rock persona.
The band needed distance not just to create, but to breathe. As Lindsey Buckingham later noted, the break was necessary for survival: if they had stayed together in 1983, Fleetwood Mac likely would have imploded in a far more permanent fashion.
1982–1987: The Solo Years
During the fracture, the members discovered they could thrive without the 'Fleetwood Mac' brand, though to varying degrees of success.
Stevie Nicks: The Solo Icon
Nicks was the undisputed winner of the hiatus. Her 1981 debut Bella Donna had already gone to number one, but she followed it with The Wild Heart (1983) and Rock a Little (1985). She became a global superstar in her own right, proving she didn't need the Buckingham/McVie songwriting machine to dominate the charts. Her solo success gave her a leverage and independence that changed the power dynamic of the band forever.
The Stevie Nicks of this era is all maximum: big hair, big energy, big passion. Live, she was mesmerising, as this version of Bella Donna's 'Gold and Braid' shows:
Christine McVie
Christine McVie also stepped out, releasing a self-titled solo album in 1984 that spawned hits like 'Got a Hold on Me'. It proved that her gift for melody was as potent as ever, even without the Fleetwood/McVie rhythm section behind her.
Lindsey Buckingham
Buckingham released Go Insane (1984), a brilliant, quirky album that allowed him to indulge the experimental urges that the band had suppressed during the Mirage sessions. While it wasn't a blockbuster, it solidified his reputation as a 'mad scientist' of pop.
The Rhythm Section
John McVie and Mick Fleetwood had a quieter time. Mick released a solo project, I'm Not Me (1983), but spent much of the period grappling with his bankruptcy and personal life. John McVie largely retreated from the spotlight, focusing on his health and his passion for sailing. For the two men who formed the literal name of the band, the five-year gap was a period of forced reflection and recovery.
The Reunion: Tango in the Night (1987)
The path back to the studio began in Lindsey Buckingham’s home. What started as a Buckingham solo project slowly transformed into a Fleetwood Mac album as the other members began to contribute. The making of Tango in the Night was an arduous process. Because of Stevie Nicks' stint in rehab and her touring schedule, many of her vocals were recorded separately or in brief, intense sessions.
The album was a technological marvel, utilizing Fairlight synthesizers and intricate layering. When it was released in April 1987, it was a massive success, containing hits like 'Big Love', 'Little Lies', and the serene 'Everywhere'.
Then there's the fascinating, jagged 'Welcome to the Room… Sara', inspired by Stevie Nicks’ 1986 stay at the Betty Ford Center to overcome her cocaine addiction. When she checked into rehab, she used the pseudonym 'Sara Anderson' (a nod to her classic 'Sara' from Tusk), and the song’s title reflects the greeting she received upon arrival.
Because Nicks only spent about two weeks in the studio for this album, her vocals have a dreamlike, almost detached quality. Critics often describe her performance here as 'spectral' or 'frayed', which perfectly suits the song’s theme of waking up in a hospital room. The lyrics are deeply confessional, featuring the line, 'This is a dream, right?'. And Buckingham’s production is a masterclass in 80s studio trickery. He used the Fairlight CMI to sample and loop textures, creating a 'lush yet claustrophobic' sound that mirrored the feeling of being in recovery while the band around her was still in turmoil.
Buckingham breaks free
However, the 'Big Five' reunion was short-lived. The tensions that had simmered for five years did not disappear; they had merely been suppressed by the walls of the recording studio. When it came time to plan a tour for Tango, Lindsey Buckingham hit his limit. He felt he had carried the weight of the production for a band that was still struggling with internal demons.
In a heated confrontation at Christine McVie’s house in 1987, the friction finally turned into a fire. The meeting was called to discuss the upcoming tour. When Buckingham refused to go out on tour, the room exploded. Accounts differ, but it is widely reported that the argument became physical between Buckingham and Nicks.
Stevie reportedly lunged at him, and the confrontation spilled out into the driveway. It was in this moment of total domestic and professional collapse that Buckingham announced he was leaving the band, famously telling the group they were 'all a bunch of f***ing crazies'. He was replaced for the tour by Billy Burnette and Rick Vito, ending the most successful era of the band just as it had reached a new peak.
The five-year fracture had shown that while the members could survive apart, the 'Mac' was a fragile ecosystem. They had managed to record one last masterpiece, but the cost of keeping the fragmenting pieces together had finally become too high for their creative architect to bear.
Why did Lindsey Buckingham quit?
There were a variety of slow-build irritations that fed into Buckingham's departure.
1. The 'Solo Album' Hijack
The biggest source of resentment was that Tango in the Night began as a Lindsey Buckingham solo project. After the five-year hiatus, Mick Fleetwood and the label pressured him to turn his private work into a Fleetwood Mac record. Buckingham relented out of a sense of duty, but he felt he was sacrificing his individual artistic growth to save the band once again.
2. Working in a 'Drug Den'
Buckingham had moved toward a sober, disciplined lifestyle, but much of the album was recorded in his home studio. He later recounted the agony of having his bandmates – who were at the height of their cocaine and alcohol dependencies – bringing 'hangers-on' and a chaotic energy into his personal living space. He famously told Mick Fleetwood later: 'I couldn't stand having you punks in the house… You were too f***ing crazy.'
3. Carrying the Dead Weight
Because of the band's personal struggles, Buckingham ended up doing the vast majority of the work. Stevie Nicks was in the throes of a severe addiction to Klonopin, a tranquilizer prescribed to help her kick the cocaine habit, and spent only about two weeks in the studio for an album that took a year to make. Buckingham had to painstakingly piece together her vocals and the rest of the arrangements, essentially acting as a one-man production crew for a group that was mentally absent.
4. The Fear of Death
In later interviews, Buckingham admitted that his anger was partly fueled by grief and fear. He truly believed that if the band went on a massive world tour in their current state, Stevie Nicks or Mick Fleetwood might not survive it. He saw his exit as a 'survival move' not just for his own sanity, but as a refusal to participate in what he saw as a slow-motion suicide for his friends.
