Talking to BBC Radio 2 in 1998, Nicks recognised the cathartic benefits of the band’s dynamic at the time of writing the song: “Maybe we would have killed each other if we hadn’t have been able to write those songs, you know… if we hadn’t have been able to put that energy into the music and rise above it that way, then maybe we would have just gone totally freaked out on each other!” The recording: “She did a guide vocal, and that was the keeper” He’s looking at it from a very unpleasant, angry way, and I’m saying, in my more airy-fairy way, we’re gonna be all right. “I’m, like, ‘When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know,’ and he’s, like, ‘Packing up, shacking up’s all you want to do.’ Both songs kind of mean the same thing – it’s really about our breakup. “Go Your Own Way and Dreams are, like, counter songs to each other,” Nicks reflected. As Nicks explained to The New Yorker in 2017, the songs took very different approaches to the subject: It’s little wonder that Nicks felt so inspired – Dreams was a response to one of Lindsey Buckingham’s new songs, Go Your Own Way, his own angry response to the couple’s breakup. The lyrics: “I’m saying we’re gonna be all right. I found a drum pattern, switched my little cassette player on and wrote Dreams in about ten minutes.” I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me. “It was a black-and-red room, with a sunken pit in the middle where there was a piano, and a big black-velvet bed with Victorian drapes. “One day when I wasn’t required in the main studio, I took a Fender Rhodes piano and went into another studio that was said to belong to Sly of Sly And The Family Stone,” Nicks told Blender magazine in 2005. On one such occasion, her boredom was Fleetwood Mac’s gain, as the singer took herself away from the action. I’m talking about cocaine in such quantities that, at one point, I thought I was really going insane.” The writing: “I sat down with my keyboard and wrote it in about ten minutes”ĭespite the hedonism, the band’s quest for sonic perfection meant that the Rumours sessions dragged on, reportedly costing the group over a million dollars and resulting in long stretches where Nicks – less interested in the technicalities of recording – found herself at a loss. We went four or five weeks without sleep, doing a lot of drugs.

Mick Fleetwood later described the mayhem in a 1997 interview with Q magazine: “It was the craziest period of our lives.

It quickly became apparent that these would be no usual recording sessions, an air of no-holds-barred debauchery taking over as the band attempted to deal with their respective frustrations and heartbreaks. And Nicks and Buckingham’s tempestuous relationship had also fallen apart.ĭespite the inter-band tensions, sessions for Rumours began in February 1976 at The Record Plant, a lavish studio located in Sausalito, near San Francisco, that had recently been used by Sly And Family Stone, Stevie Wonder and Grateful Dead. Drummer Mick Fleetwood was going through a divorce of his own. The success of Fleetwood Mac’s self-titled 1975 album – the first of the group’s records to feature Buckingham and Nicks – had led to a packed touring schedule, the strain of which resulted in the collapse of keyboardist/vocalist Christine McVie and bassist John McVie’s marriage. The subject matter was typical of Rumours, the 1977 album Dreams appeared on, which was made at a time when the band’s personal relationships were in a state of turmoil. The backstory: “What was going on between us was sad” Listen to the best of Fleetwood Mac here. And yet, according to its author, it took just ten minutes to write, pouring from Nicks as she took time out from the studio to reflect on the deterioration of her relationship with bandmate Lindsey Buckingham.

Dreams is one of Fleetwood Mac’s best-loved songs, a Stevie Nicks classic that became the group’s only US No.1 hit and continues to win hearts today.

Dreams fleetwood mac