WATCH: Lindsey Buckingham breaks his silence on being fired from Fleetwood Mac

The British-American rock icons shocked fans at the start of April when they announced they had replaced Lindsey with Crowded House’s Neil Finn and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell for their upcoming world tour dates.

Two weeks later, the band confirmed that Lindsey was ousted over a touring dispute, with Mick Fleetwood telling Rolling Stone “we arrived at the impasse of hitting a brick wall. This was not a happy situation for us in terms of the logistics of a functioning band. To that purpose, we made a decision that we could not go on with him.”

Appearing at a campaign fundraiser for Democratic congressional candidate Mike Levin in Los Angeles over the weekend, Lindsey broke his silence on his exit from Fleetwood Mac.

“It’s been an interesting time on a lot of levels,” Lindsey told the audience. “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.”

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 fulfil one’s higher truth and one’s higher destiny.”

Lindsey also used his appearance to comment on the current political climate in the US, saying: “The loss of perspective we see now is indeed threatening to harm the legacy that is the United States.

“In the context of that you’ve got to think of what needs to be done. It is not going come from the top down, it is going come from the ground up. This is why we are here.

“And so, I am most honoured and most pleased to have been asked in my own small way to help in that pushback which very, very much needs to happen in order to continue the legacy that we all have come to value.”

Fleetwood Mac’s 52-date North American ‘An Evening with Fleetwood Mac Tour’ opens at the Tulsa BOK Center on 3rd October and continues through to April 2019. No UK dates have been announced yet.