If there is one video that haunts the rock scene, it’s Fleetwood Mac’s 1997 live performance of Silver Springs.
Once one watches it, it is easy to see why. Through the haze of 1970s rock, tension pierces the band. Halfway through the song, the lead singer’s gaze pins the guitarist to the stage for a full minute. And when you hear her belt, “You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you,” you know it’s a condemnation.
In just 5 minutes and 33 seconds, the video sums up the internal turmoil that served as the catalyst for Fleetwood Mac‘s success and, eventually, its undoing. It’s no wonder we’re still talking about the band–there truly never will be anything like it.
Fleetwood Mac was formed in 1967 in London, England, by drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, and vocalists and guitarists Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green. It started as a British blues band, but soon, the original lineup began to fall apart. After Green quit the band in 1970, John McVie’s wife, keyboardist and vocalist Christine McVie joined.
By 1974, the band managed to wrangle ownership of their name from their former manager, Clifford Davis. They then became the only band of the time to manage themselves. That same year, the members of Fleetwood Mac traveled to Los Angeles and stumbled on a song that would change the course of the band forever: ‘Frozen Love’ by the duo called Buckingham Nicks. Davis met guitarist and singer Lindsay Buckingham at the same studio and asked if he wanted to join their band. Buckingham agreed, but had just one condition – that his girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, come with him.
So 1975 began, and with it, one of the biggest bands in history.
On July 11th, 1975, the band released their self-titled debut album. If one listens to it, they will hear rolling guitars and pounding drums–the beginning of the greats, in every way they could be. The album sports one of Fleetwood Mac’s magnum opuses–’Rihannon,’ a song that makes one want to raise their hands above their head and sway to the beat of Nicks’ raspy vocals. It seems as magical as the subject herself, and though the album didn’t immediately launch Fleetwood Mac into success, it served as a quick glimpse into their genius. Yet while the music thrived, the band was crumbling behind the scenes.
Substance abuse ran rampant throughout the band’s tenure, only exacerbating the tensions that had begun to form. The McVies’ marriage was dissolving, and they only really interacted with one another while working on songs. “I dare say, if I hadn’t joined Fleetwood Mac,” Christina McVie later said, “we might still be together. I just think it’s impossible to work in the band with your spouse. Imagine the tension of living with someone 24 hours a day, on the road, in an already stressful situation, with the added negativity of too much alcohol. It just blew apart.”
Meanwhile, Nicks and Buckingham’s were consistently in a volatile on-and-off relationship that sparked songs scribbled in notebooks and on scraps of paper, beginning to ignite a bomb that would only reveal its full force when it finally exploded.
The name of this explosion? Rumours.
Rumours, their album released in the beginning of 1977, was the band’s sophomore album and the tour-de-force that resulted in their legendary status. It was another magnum opus of wailing guitars and pleading vocals, borne of the tension of heartache from Fleetwood’s divorce, Nicks and Buckingham’s split, and the McVies’ final separation. The tension, aided by the rampant substance abuse, was so notoriously high that many band members separately recorded each part for the songs. And for better or worse, Rumours proved an age-old adage: tension is the breeding ground for a masterpiece. It is a collection of back-and-forths, recorded by the very people it condemns–a portrait of the relatable, cataclysmic nature of heartbreak.
Each song had its own story to tell as well–a fact that quickly revealed itself to the public and made them increasingly popular. ‘Dreams’ and ‘Silver Springs,’ penned by Stevie Nicks, are the response to Lindsey Buckingham’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘Second Hand News,’ all inspired by the end of their tumultuous relationship. ‘You Make Loving Fun,’ a song written about a fling Christina McVie had (though she concealed it from her ex-husband by saying that it was about her dog), stands firmly on the tracklist too. ‘The Chain’ is the only song written by every one of the members, a haphazard collage of scrapped drafts everyone had penned themselves set to John McVie’s scathing bass, painting the best picture of the band, hanging by a fraying thread.
It was no wonder it did so well. Rumours became a defining album of the 1970s, and renewed interest towards the band. Even over 50 years later, it remains accredited as one of the best albums of all time, landing into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2003.
“Rumours remains so powerful because it’s so ruthlessly clear-eyed about the crisis, instead of smoothing it over,” Christine McVie later said. “After all the tantrums and breakdowns and crying fits, the album ends with Stevie Nicks asking you point blank: ‘Is it over now? Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?’ If the answers are ‘no’ and ‘no,’ you flip the record and play it again.”
Despite the album’s release and perceived catharsis for the chaos, the feelings that pushed it into existence were far from resolved. The Rumours tour began and only stirred the destruction the album had left in its wake once more. The band’s drug abuse reached an all-time high on the tour, and Nicks damaged her voice and discovered a coin-sized hole in her nose. Nicks and Buckingham were still at each other’s throats, Christina McVie began a relationship with the sound director of the band, hiding it from John McVie, and Nicks and Fleetwood began a brief affair while he was still married. “Mick and I,” Nicks noted in a Rolling Stone interview, “were absolutely horrified that this happened. We didn’t tell anybody until the very end, and then it blew up and was over. And, you know, Lindsey and I have never, never talked about Mick. Ever.”
After Rumours, the band took a risk with Tusk in 1979, a sprawling, experimental double album, funded by Rumors’ success. While it was not as commercially successful as its predecessor, it has since been recognized as an artistic triumph. Meanwhile, Nicks launched her solo career. This was Fleetwood Mac in freefall, and all it took was one more tour for the cracks to become visible.
The tension between Buckingham and Nicks was boiling over. During a 1982 performance of The Chain, they scream the lyrics into the microphone while glaring daggers at each other. On the same tour, Buckingham tried to trip Nicks and even threw his guitar at her. They had to stop the show, and the band “ran breakneck speed back to the dressing room to see who could kill him first.” Christine McVie later said, “I think he’s the only person I ever, ever slapped. I actually might have chucked a glass of wine, too.”
But just as the emotional damage caught up to its crux, it was only a matter of time before the economic damage did too. In 1984, Mick Fleetwood filed for personal bankruptcy.
It is often calm after, or before, a storm. This phrase has applied to everything from weather patterns to relationships, and Fleetwood Mac was no exception. Despite the calamitous explosion that Rumors and Tusk wrought, 1985 passed with little to no incident. As the band’s 10-year-anniversary rolled by, four members of the group (Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Christina McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham) each focused on releasing their own solo projects next to their work in the band.
As the days rolled by, a new album began to take shape – Tango in the Night. And though none of them knew it at the time, this would be the project of their undoing.
Buckingham threw himself into creating Tango. He either co-wrote or wrote seven of the 12 songs on the album, and co-produced it. “I had the idea,” Buckingham later reflected, “that that was going to be the last work with the group.” Being in the band felt suffocating, and recording the experimental Tusk helped him realize that he wanted the artistic freedom of a solo career. So, he reasoned, he would give the album his all.
Meanwhile, Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks’ struggle with substances only grew worse as they recorded, to the point that they seriously considered thanking their dealer in the credits. When Fleetwood reflected on the time spent recording, he remembered Nicks’ drifting absence. “She was not hugely present,” noted Fleetwood. “I don’t remember why. And I don’t think we would remember – Stevie and me were nuts!”
Nicks ended up spending 30 days in rehab to overcome her addiction to cocaine under the pseudonym Sara Anderson. This time in rehab served as the inspiration for one of the songs on the album: ‘Welcome to the Room… Sara.’
18 months later, Tango in the Night was released on April 13, 1987. But as the band began thinking of the tour, Buckingham broke the news that he was quitting.
None of the members took the news well. Stevie Nicks later remembered that she, “flew off of the couch and across the room to seriously attack him. And I did.” Nicks ran out of the room with Buckingham behind her. “He ended up chasing me all the way out of Christine’s maze-like house,” she said. “Then down the street and back up the street. And then he threw me against a car and I screamed horrible obscenities at him. I thought he was going to kill me, and I think he thought he was probably going to kill me too. And I said: ‘If the rest of the people in the band don’t get you, my family will–my dad and my brother will kill you.’” So Buckingham left.
It would have been easy for the band to fully break apart. But they had endured this a full decade before, back when Peter Green quit the fledgling group. So, Fleetwood Mac reasoned, they could do it again.
They did. The tour still ran with two new guitarists to replace Buckingham – Billy Burnette and Rick Vito – and was a resounding success, with multiple sold-out shows. Tango is still Fleetwood Mac’s second-most successful record after Rumours.
As the new decade dawned, Stevie Nicks and Christina McVie announced their decision to leave Fleetwood Mac to take a break from the tension. The emotional weight had finally broken the original lineup.
In 1997, ten years after Tango and Buckingham’s resignation, the original lineup reunited to release The Dance. It was on the tour that the now-infamous performance of Silver Springs was taped. Even under the clammy stage lights, with the weight of two decades pressing down on them, Fleetwood’s Mac’s magic was undeniable.
Christina McVie ended up quitting just a year later on account of burnout, though she later regretted it. Time passed by, just as it always did, but the arguments still stuck. In 2018, Buckingham was fired from Fleetwood Mac after a disagreement where Nicks gave the band an ultimatum–either she left, or he did. Buckingham quickly sued the band, though the case was settled out-of-court two months later. Nicks would later say that it was around this time that the band broke up for good.
In November 2022, Christina McVie passed away at 79 years old. Fleetwood said that a reunion without her would be “unthinkable.”
And so Fleetwood Mac ended for good. It is still hailed as one of the most formative bands of all time, with two Grammy awards, a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star, a Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, and a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band’s story has inspired countless forms of media, including the bestselling book and Prime Video series Daisy Jones & The Six. There are countless interpretations to make, countless sides to take, and countless stories to tell, all of which keep branching and growing over the band’s indomitable legacy, years after it disbanded.
In ‘Silver Springs,’ Stevie Nicks sings, “Time cast its spell on you, but you won’t forget me.” And we haven’t. Even now, there are still endless articles telling a new side of the story and providing more insight into the masterpieces they produced. It’s easy to see why we keep coming back.
There is magic in Fleetwood Mac, magic in the way they don’t shy from the storm of heartbreak and instead take our hand to drag us into the typhoon with them. Everyone can, and will, speak of them for decades into the future because one thing is certain: at the end of the day, Fleetwood Mac loved music through it all, enough so that they became immortal through it, and that love will forever bring us back.
There is magic in Fleetwood Mac, magic in the way they don’t shy from the storm of heartbreak and instead take our hand to drag us into the typhoon with them.