Lindsey Buckingham says Mick Fleetwood is open to his return to Fleetwood Mac

The former Fleetwood Mac guitarist and vocalist Lyndsey Buckingham has said that drummer and co-founder Mick Fleetwood would welcome him back to the band he was fired from in April 2018.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Buckingham revealed that he has been speaking on and off with Fleetwood, and that the mood music was positive. 

“There have been intimations from Mick [Fleetwood], who I've talked to several times, that he wants to try to get the five of us back together,“ said Buckingham. 

Buckingham, who has a self-titled solo album due out in September, has been speaking a lot about Fleetwood Mac of late, telling Marc Maron on his WTF podcast that “pretty much everyone“ would like to see him reunite with the band, insisting that the split has harmed the band and its legacy. 

It is a theme Buckingham returned to with EW, noting that he hadn't seen the band's last tour but believing it to be “probably very mellow by comparison“.

“They were covering so much other Fleetwood Mac material, and they were doing Crowded House songs and Tom Petty songs,“ he said. “That was the politics of the situation that led to that.“ 

The politics remain the sticking point, namely Buckingham's relationship with vocalist Stevie Nicks, with whom he hasn't spoken to in years. At the time, it was reported that Nicks instigated Buckingham's exit. Months later, Buckingham sued the band. Making his peace with Nicks would seem key to engineering his return, but perhaps Fleetwood can help on that front.

“[Mick] didn't want to see me go in the first place,“ said Buckingham. “It's really going to take Stevie coming to that point of view, and I haven't spoken to Stevie in a long, long time, so I don't know where that's at. It's certainly something that more than one person who is close to the situation has brought to me.“

Rating the chances of all five back onstage again, Buckingham said that perhaps there was now a “slim possibility,“ and he expressed regret at how the situation unfolded, saying that in the grand context of Fleetwood Mac Drama – and there has been no shortage of that – this contretemps was small potatoes, and that the band had risen over worse.  

For Buckingham, however, it is all systems go as a solo artist, with his new album available to preorder and out on 17 September through Rhino Records. Buckingham's first solo headline tour in three years kicks off on 1 September at the Pabst Theater, Milwaukee, WI.