Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham was attacked Wednesday by a woman who threw an unknown substance at him as he arrived for an appointment in Santa Monica, California.
He was not injured. The woman, described by law enforcement as a stalking suspect, fled the scene immediately after the attack.
Police have identified her and say they expect to make an arrest. No arrest had been reported as of Wednesday morning.
The story was first reported by NBC4 Investigates, citing multiple law enforcement sources. Both the Santa Monica Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department are working the case.
The detail that distinguishes this from a random attack is one law enforcement sources made explicit to NBC4. The woman is known to Buckingham from prior incidents.
This is not the first time she has appeared in his life in some troubling capacity. Investigators believe she found out the time and location of his Wednesday appointment specifically and positioned herself there to wait for him. How she obtained that information has not been disclosed.
Buckingham is 76 years old and was born in Palo Alto, California. His representatives had not issued a statement as of the time of this article’s publication.
Who Is Lindsey Buckingham?
Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975 under circumstances that have since become one of rock music’s most told origin stories. The band’s founder Mick Fleetwood heard a solo record Buckingham had made with his then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks and called to offer Buckingham the guitarist position.
Buckingham agreed on one condition. Nicks had to come with him. Fleetwood said yes, and the lineup that would record the band’s two most commercially successful albums, Fleetwood Mac in 1975 and Rumours in 1977, was assembled.
Rumours became one of the best-selling albums in history, eventually certified at 40 times platinum in the United States.
It won Album of the Year at the 1978 Grammy Awards. Buckingham’s guitar work and songwriting across those years, on songs including Go Your Own Way, The Chain, Tusk, and Big Love, defined the sound that made Fleetwood Mac a permanent fixture in the American musical canon.
His relationship with Nicks, both personal and professional, became the emotional architecture of the band’s most celebrated work.
They had broken up before Rumours was recorded, but remained bandmates, and the tension between them produced some of the most emotionally direct pop songs of the era.
Go Your Own Way, which Buckingham wrote, is widely understood as being addressed to Nicks.
Their dynamic has been discussed and analyzed for nearly fifty years and remains a subject of genuine public interest to this day.
Buckingham left Fleetwood Mac in 1987, returned in 1997, and was dismissed from the band again in 2018, this time reportedly at the request of Stevie Nicks, who had told management she would not tour with him following a backstage disagreement.
That dismissal led to a lawsuit, which was subsequently settled. In the years since, there has been ongoing speculation about whether the two would reconcile.
Fleetwood Mac co-founder Mick Fleetwood has said publicly he holds onto the hope that Buckingham and Nicks will eventually end their feud, though no reunion has materialized.
Beyond the band, Buckingham has maintained a solo career across more than four decades, releasing his first solo album Law and Order in 1981. In 2017 he collaborated with the late Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac’s keyboardist and vocalist, who died in 2022, on a joint album.
He also contributed two songs to the National Lampoon’s Vacation soundtrack and was among the artists who participated in the 1985 charity recording We Are the World.
What Happens Next?
The substance thrown at Buckingham has not been identified in any of the reporting.
The suspect’s name has not been released. Law enforcement described the arrest as expected soon, which typically signals they have identified the individual and are in the process of building a formal case or locating them.
The involvement of both the Santa Monica Police Department and the LAPD suggests coordination on jurisdiction or investigative resources.
Stalking cases of this nature, where a suspect has had prior incidents with a target, tracks their schedule, and escalates to a physical act, are taken seriously by California law enforcement and prosecutors.
California’s stalking statute, Penal Code 646.9, covers repeated harassment or following that causes fear, and the addition of a physical act like throwing a substance raises the potential charges to include criminal assault.
Whether the prior incidents involving this woman were previously reported to police is not known from the current reporting.
No statement has been issued by Buckingham, his representatives, or the Santa Monica Police Department beyond what was provided to NBC4.
The Broader Picture Of Celebrity Stalking In Los Angeles
What happened to Buckingham on Wednesday fits a pattern that law enforcement in Los Angeles has tracked with increasing concern over the past decade.
Celebrity stalking cases in the city range from obsessive fans who send letters and camp outside homes to escalating situations involving physical contact, threats, and targeted ambushes of exactly the kind Buckingham experienced, a suspect who researches a target’s schedule, travels to the location, and confronts them in a semi-public setting where security is lighter than it would be at a home or a formal venue.
The combination of factors in this case, a known suspect with prior incidents, surveillance of the victim’s movements, and a physical act involving a thrown substance.
It typically satisfies multiple elements of California’s stalking and criminal threatening statutes and tends to result in prosecution.
California courts have also increasingly issued criminal protective orders in cases like these, which can be sought by law enforcement independently of the victim’s own wishes if prosecutors believe ongoing risk is present.
For Buckingham specifically, who has been one of the most recognized figures in rock music for fifty years and whose history with Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks has kept him in entertainment news cycles continuously, the level of public familiarity with his life and schedule creates an inherent exposure that most private citizens do not face.
His appointments, his residence, his movements, the kind of information that a determined person can research through publicly available sources, are more findable than most.
The investigation is ongoing. An arrest is expected. The substance that was thrown has not been identified and no explanation for the choice of that particular act has been offered by law enforcement.
