Age, Biography, and Wiki
Lindsey Buckingham, born Lindsey Adams Buckingham, is the youngest of three brothers. He grew up in Atherton, California, and developed an early interest in music, starting with a toy Mickey Mouse guitar. His parents, recognizing his talent, soon upgraded him to a $35 Donald Duck guitar. Buckingham's musical journey began in high school, where he played folk and psychedelic rock without any formal training. He later invited Stevie Nicks to join his band, marking the beginning of their long-standing collaboration.
| Occupation | Rock Singer |
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| Date of Birth | 3 October 1949 |
| Age | 75 Years |
| Birth Place | Palo Alto, California, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Libra |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Height: Unfortunately, there is no publicly available information on Lindsey Buckingham's exact height. Weight: Details about his weight are also not widely disclosed. Measurements: Specific body measurements are not available in the public domain.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Lindsey Buckingham was married to Kristen Messner for over 21 years before she filed for divorce in June 2021. The couple had three children together. His personal life has been somewhat private, but the significant settlement from his divorce has had an impact on his net worth.
Buckingham and Rutheda, née Elliott. Morris H. Buckingham, who was a football star at San Jose State College, by 1963 served as President of Alexander-Ballert Company of San Francisco, a producer of roasted coffee beans, and ran a coffee plant near Palo Alto. California's popular Alta Organic Coffee remains one of their brands. Buckingham had two older brothers, Jeffrey and Gregory. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area community of Atherton, he attended Menlo-Atherton High School where Buckingham and his brothers were encouraged to swim competitively. Though Buckingham dropped out of athletics to pursue music, his brother Gregory went on to win a silver medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Though he did not graduate, Lindsey attended San José State University, like his brother Greg and father Morris.
Buckingham's first forays into guitar playing took place on a toy Mickey Mouse guitar, playing along to his brother Jeff's extensive collection of 45s. Noticing his talent, Buckingham's parents bought their son a $35 Harmony guitar.
From 1966 to 1971, Buckingham performed psychedelic and folk rock with the high school rock band originally named the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band as a bassist and vocalist. The band regrouped in 1967 due to band member changes and shortened their name to Fritz. Buckingham invited friend Stevie Nicks to join Fritz as a backing vocalist. Their romantic relationship began after both left Fritz five years later.
Buckingham and his then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks recorded seven demos in 1972 on a half-inch 4-track Ampex recorder kept at his father's coffee-roasting plant in Daly City, then drove to Los Angeles to pursue a recording contract. In 1973, Polydor Records signed the pair. Their studio album, produced by Keith Olsen and second engineer Richard Dashut, Buckingham Nicks, was released in September 1973; however, soon after its release Polydor dropped the duo because of poor sales. To help make ends meet, Buckingham toured with Don Everly's backing band, singing Phil Everly's parts.
In 1984, after ending his 7-year relationship with Carol Ann Harris, he released his second solo studio album, Go Insane. The title track was a modest hit, reaching No. 23 on the Hot 100. In 2008, he revealed the title track was about his post-breakup relationship with Stevie Nicks; however, Harris claimed in her memoir Storms that the song was written about her breakup with Buckingham. The last track of the album, "D.W. Suite", was a tribute to the late Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, a close friend of Fleetwood Mac who was briefly engaged to Christine McVie. Also that year, Buckingham played guitars and sang harmony vocals on the track "You Can't Make Love" from Don Henley's second solo studio album Building the Perfect Beast.
Propelled by a string of hit singles, Tango in the Night became the band's biggest studio album since Rumours a decade earlier. However, following its release, Buckingham left Fleetwood Mac largely because of his desire not to tour and the strain he was feeling within the band. "I needed to get some separation from Stevie especially because I don't think I'd ever quite gotten closure on our relationship," he said. "I needed to get on with the next phase of my creative growth and my emotional growth. When you break up with someone and then for the next 10 years you have to be around them and do for them and watch them move away from you, it's not easy." Fleetwood Mac continued without him, and Buckingham was replaced by two guitarists, Rick Vito and Billy Burnette.
Following his departure from Fleetwood Mac in 1987, Buckingham spent much of the next five years in the studio, working on his third solo studio album, Out of the Cradle, which was released in 1992. Many of the songs deal with his relationship with Nicks and his decision to leave the band. "There were things lingering for years having to do with relationships and the band, hurtful things, that were impossible to deal with until I left. If you were in a relationship and split up, then had to see that person every day for the next 15 years, it might keep you from dealing with some of those things. While we made Rumours (in 1977) there were two couples breaking up in the band (Buckingham and Nicks, and John and Christine McVie), and we had to say, 'This is an important thing we're doing, so we've got to put this set of feelings on this side of the room and get on with it.' And when you do that long enough you forget that those feelings are even there. On this album, I'm putting all these feelings in the healthiest possible perspective and that, looking at it broadly, is a lot of what the album is dealing with. It's a catharsis, absolutely." "Wrong" was a gentle rebuke of former bandmate Mick Fleetwood's tell-all biography, published in 1990. Out of the Cradle received some favorable reviews but did not achieve the sales levels associated with Fleetwood Mac. However, Buckingham toured throughout 1992–93 for the first time as a solo artist; his band included an army of seven other guitarists (Buckingham himself calls them "the crazy band" on his Soundstage DVD), each of whom he individually taught the entire two-and-a-half hours of music from the concert (Lindsey Buckingham: Behind the Music documentary for VH1, 2001).
Buckingham was in the same high school as Stevie Nicks but a year behind her. He started a relationship with Nicks after the breakup of their band Fritz. He then suffered from a bout of mononucleosis, which delayed their move to Los Angeles in 1971. They recorded a studio album together before joining Fleetwood Mac in 1975, while their relationship had broken down by 1977. The breakup was chronicled in a number of songs written by the two, such as "Silver Springs" and "Dreams" by Nicks and "Go Your Own Way" and "Second Hand News" by Buckingham.
Buckingham underwent emergency open heart surgery in February 2019. His wife said that "the life-saving procedure caused vocal cord damage, the permanency of which is unclear", though he ultimately recovered.
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Lindsey Buckingham's net worth is estimated to be around $150 million. His wealth primarily comes from his successful career with Fleetwood Mac and his solo music projects. At one point, his net worth was over $250 million, but it has decreased following his divorce settlement and other financial adjustments.
In August 2018, Reprise issued a press release for a new solo anthology Solo Anthology: The Best of Lindsey Buckingham that focused on Buckingham's solo career since 1981. The anthology was released on October 5, 2018, followed two days later by a solo tour throughout North America. In 2020, Buckingham collaborated with the Killers on their studio album Imploding the Mirage, playing guitar on the first single "Caution". In 2021, Buckingham played on a new version of "The Past Is the Past" by Brandy Clark, issued as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of her album Your Life Is a Record.
Career, Business, and Investments
Buckingham's career with Fleetwood Mac has been incredibly successful, with hits like "Dreams," "Go Your Own Way," and "The Chain." He has also had a thriving solo career, releasing several albums and live performances. In 2012, he sold a portion of his music catalog to Kobalt for an estimated $30 million. Investments in music royalties have been a significant source of income, as Kobalt was later acquired by Hipgnosis Songs Fund for $323 million in 2020.
Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, replacing guitarist Bob Welch, and convinced the group to recruit his musical (and, at the time, romantic) partner Stevie Nicks as well. Buckingham and Nicks became prominent members of Fleetwood Mac during its most commercially successful period, highlighted by the multi-platinum studio album Rumours (1977), which sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Though highly successful, the group experienced almost constant creative and personal conflict, and Buckingham left the band in 1987 to focus on his solo career. Hit songs Buckingham wrote and sang with Fleetwood Mac include "Go Your Own Way", "Never Going Back Again", "Tusk", and "Big Love".
Unlike most rock guitarists, Buckingham does not play with a pick; instead, he almost exclusively plays fingerstyle and tends to strum with his middle and ring fingers. Initially after joining Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham used a Gibson Les Paul Custom. Before the band, a Fender Telecaster was his main guitar, and was used on his first Fleetwood Mac studio album alongside Fender Stratocasters fitted with an Alembic Blaster. In 1978, he worked with Rick Turner, future owner and founder of The Renaissance Guitar Company, to create the Model One guitar. He has used it extensively since, both with Fleetwood Mac and for his solo efforts. He uses a Taylor Guitar 814ce or a Rick Turner Renaissance RS6 for most of his acoustic performances but uses a custom-made Gibson Chet Atkins guitar for his live performances of "Big Love". He has also used an Ovation Balladeer in the past from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. In the 1980s, he also extensively used the Fairlight CMI sampling synthesizer.
Social Network
Lindsey Buckingham maintains a low-key social media presence. He does not actively engage on platforms like Instagram or Twitter but is occasionally featured on fan accounts and music-related profiles.
"I've always believed that you play to highlight the song, not to highlight the player. The song is all that matters. There are two ways you can choose to go. You can try to be someone like Eddie Van Halen, who is a great guitarist, a virtuoso. Yet he doesn't make good records because what he plays is totally lost in the context of this band's music. Then there are guitar players like Chet Atkins, who weren't out there trying to show themselves off as guitarists per se, but were using the guitar as a tool to make good records. I remember loving Chet's work when I was a kid, but it was only later, when I really listened to his guitar parts, that I realized how much they were a part of the song's fabric, and how much you'd be going 'Oh, that song just isn't working' if they weren't there."
"I started playing very young and from early on, the people I was listening to had some element of finger style. Probably the first guitarist I was emulating was Scotty Moore, when I was maybe 6 or 7. And he played with a pick, but he also used fingers. And a lot of the session players, like Chet Atkins, they played with fingers or a pick. Then I listened to a certain amount of light classical guitar playing. And of course later on, when the first wave of rock 'n' roll kind of fell away, folk music was very popular and very influential in my style. So it was really less of a choice than what I fell into. I use a pick occasionally. I certainly use it more in the studio when you want to get a certain tone. But it's just the way I came up. I wasn't taught. I just sort of figured things out on my own terms. I guess that was one of the ways that I became comfortable and it just kind of set in."
Education
Buckingham attended Menlo Atherton High School, where he began his musical journey. He never pursued formal music training, instead learning through self-study and collaboration with other musicians.
In summary, Lindsey Buckingham's enduring legacy in music, coupled with his savvy business decisions, has solidified his position as one of the most successful musicians of his generation.
