Lindsey Buckingham has spoken publicly for the first time in regards to his firing from Fleetwood Mac, stating that the band has harmed their legacy by letting him go.

Last month, it was revealed that after a total of 35 years in the group, Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham had been fired from the band, with Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Crowded House’s Neil Finn joining the lineup in his absence.

“We are thrilled to welcome the musical talents of the calibre of Mike Campbell and Neil Finn into the Mac family,” the band said at the time. “With Mike and Neil, we’ll be performing all the hits that the fans love, plus we’ll be surprising our audiences with some tracks from our historic catalogue of songs. Fleetwood Mac has always been a creative evolution. We look forward to honoring that spirit on this upcoming tour.”

Despite this rather public split, Buckingham had remained silent on the matter until recently, where he addressed the firing publicly for the first time while performing at a political fundraiser in California, as Medium reports.

“It’s been an interesting time on a lot of levels,” explained Buckingham at the campaign fundraiser for US Democratic candidate Mike Levin. “For me, personally, probably some of you know that for the last three months I have sadly taken leave of my band of 43 years, Fleetwood Mac.”

“This was not something that was really my doing or my choice.”

“I think what you would say is that there were factions within the band that had lost their perspective. Well, it doesn’t really matter. The point is that they’d lost their perspective,” he continued. “What that did was to harm?—?and this is the only thing I’m really sad about, the rest of it becomes an opportunity?—?it harmed the 43-year legacy that we had worked so hard to build.”

“That legacy was really about rising above difficulties in order to fulfill one’s higher truth and one’s higher destiny.”

As Pitchfork recently noted, Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks addressed Buckingham’s firing from the group

“Our relationship has always been volatile. We were never married, but we might as well have been. Some couples get divorced after 40 years,” she explained. “They break their kids’ hearts and destroy everyone around them because it’s just hard.”

“This is sad for me, but I want the next 10 years of my life to be really fun and happy. I want to get up every day and dance around my apartment and smile and say, ‘Thank God for this amazing life.’”

Check out Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Go Your Own Way’:

The article was originally published on Tone Deaf