Skip to main content

Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood once had a passionate affair while touring with Fleetwood Mac. Here’s how the drummer’s ex-wife, Jenny Boyd, described the moment Fleetwood told her about his relationship with the singer.

Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood, who once had an affair, smile with their arms around each other.
Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood | Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images

Fleetwood Mac stars Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood had a torrid affair

Stevie Nicks famously dated her bandmate Lindsey Buckingham for years, but he wasn’t the only Fleetwood Mac member the “Gypsy” singer had a romance with. Drummer and founding member Mick Fleetwood had an affair with Nicks while he was married to Jenny Boyd.

“One night we had a party and everybody was drunk and everybody was gone and it was just me and Mick, and we ended up spending the night together,” Nicks told Q Magazine. “And I fell in love with Mick and I think Mick fell in love with me.”

The illicit romance began when Fleetwood Mac was finishing the Rumours tour (in 1977) in Australia. But Nicks said it didn’t take long for them to come to their senses. “Mick and I … talked about what a dumb-a** thing it was that we had done and that, basically, we were not going to break up Fleetwood Mac,” she said. “And we got on the plane, held hands all the way back to Los Angeles, and realized, when we got off that plane, that for all practical purposes it was over. It had its month of glory, which was fantastic and very romantic, and then when we got back to LA it was not romantic any more, it was horrifying. It should never have happened.”

Mick Fleetwood’s ex-wife, Jenny Boyd, revealed the moment the Fleetwood Mac drummer told her about his affair with Stevie Nicks

Jenny Boyd, who was married to Mick Fleetwood from 1970-1976, opened up about her life with the Fleetwood Mac musician in her book Jennifer Juniper: A Journey Beyond the Muse. Boyd is the sister of Pattie Boyd, who was married to Eric Clapton and The Beatles’ George Harrison. 

“‘There’s something I ought to tell you,’” Mick told her during a frank discussion about their relationship (via Cosmic Magazine). “‘I’ve been having an affair with Stevie for the last few months, since we were in Australia.’”

Boyd was even more surprised by Fleetwood’s admission because, at the time, Nicks was dating the Eagles’ Don Henley.

“At first I didn’t understand what he’d said,” Boyd wrote. “It took some seconds for it to sink in. I stared at him in silence, feeling as though I’d been kicked in the stomach; my mind and heart in complete turmoil as I struggled to make sense of his words.”

She recalled Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 Rolling Stone cover shoot, posing the band members in bed together. Nicks and Fleetwood were curled up next to each other with big smiles on their faces, front and center of the image. They have both since confirmed that the photoshoot planted the seeds of their romance.

“She had finally got her hands on him, I thought bitterly,” Boyd wrote. “And I had never suspected.”

The drummer still describes the ‘Dreams’ singer as a ‘soulmate’

Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks quickly ended their affair, never taking their romance any further. They remained good friends, and the drummer described his “devotion” to Nicks in his 2014 book, Play On.

“In terms of our relationship with each other, we still have the same connection to this day; we just love each other in the true sense of the word, which transcends passion,” Fleetwood wrote. “I will take my love for her as a person to my grave, because Stevie Nicks is the kind of woman who inspires that devotion.”

He also revealed that he considers Nicks a “soulmate,” along with his wife at the time of the book’s publishing, Lynn Frankel.

“I went to Hawaii recently with my wife Lynn and our kids, and Stevie rented a house just down the road,” he told the Independent Review in 2003. “My wife is a soulmate, but Stevie is a soulmate, too, and Lynn knows that. There’s so much you can enjoy with that dynamic.”

Frankel and Fleetwood divorced the year after his book was published.