Lindsey Buckingham has admitted Fleetwood Mac "didn't - on paper - belong in the same group together."

The 72-year-old guitarist was ousted from the iconic Stevie Nicks-fronted band in 2018, and while reflecting on joining the 'Go Your Own Way' hitmakers in 1974, Lindsey admitted their "synergy" was far greater than their parts.

He explained: "Early on, soon after joining Fleetwood Mac, I realised that we were the kind of group who didn’t – on paper – belong in the same group together.

"But yet that was the very thing that made us so effective.

"There was a synergy there, where the whole became more than the sum of its parts. What happens is that you begin to understand that, and accept it as a gift."

Lindsey - who released his seventh self-titled solo studio in September - also discussed embracing change and claimed inside "politics" is why Fleetwood Mac haven't released any new music lately.

Their last studio album was 2003's 'Say You Will', while Stevie and Christine McVie were joined by Lindsey's replacement Neil Finn, of Crowded House, and Mike Campbell on guitar, on the one-off charity single 'Find Your Way Back Home' for the New Zealand homeless shelter Auckland City Mission.

On his solo career and having to be "willing" to lose some of Fleetwood's huge following, he told Clash: "Fleetwood Mac is this big machine, and my solo endeavours are this smaller machine.

"Within Fleetwood Mac, politics have essentially dictated that we haven’t made any new music in a while.

"But as a solo artist, I don’t have to push back against that.

"I’ve always done what I’ve wanted to do, basically, and I think the realisation I had to come to was being willing to lose some of the huge audience Fleetwood Mac have in order to pursue that.

"It’s just a trade-off you have to be willing to make in order to do things on your own terms."