FEATURE:
Now There You Go Again…
IN THIS PHOTO: Fleewtood Mac’s Stevie Nicks on board a press boat in the Rotterdam Harbor in April 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Schultz
Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams at Forty-Five: The Iconic and Timeless Popularity of a Masterpiece
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EVEN though I recently…
IN THIS PHOTO: Fleetwood Mac (John McVie, Christine McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham) in 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Hutson/Getty
wrote about Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours turning forty-five, I wanted to supplement and accompany it with a feature about, in my view, its greatest song. Released as a single on 24th March, 1977, I will mark the forty-fifth anniversary of a song that is timeless and hugely iconic. A dreamy and beautiful song from Stevie Nicks, I am amazed by Dreams. Given the fact there was turmoil in the group, and she and Lindsey Buckingham were going through a painful break-up, it is brilliant that such a beautiful moment came from it! Buckingham took the lead when it came to a lot of the decisions around the recording and propduction of Rumours. I think that he would have had very little time for collaborating with Nicks and entertaining songs from her. Dreams is only one of several brilliant tracks she wrote (another album highlight, Gold Dust Woman, is hers). Following the album opener, Second Hand News, we get this wonderful song from Nicks. The fact that songs from Buckingham and Nicks open the album shows that, in some respects, there was a connection between them. It is the perfect opening couple of tracks. I love Dreams more than any other song on Rumours. The timeless cut is so adored decades after its release. It gained new attention in late-2020 because of a viral TikTok video created by Nathan Apodaca. Dreams was ranked number nine on Rolling Stone's 2021 list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
I want to bring in a couple of interesting articles that tell the story of Dreams, and why it has such a famed and beloved legacy. Rhino wrote about Dreams for a feature on 24th March, 2021:
“It's the Fleetwood Mac meme that perfectly encapsulates the vast dichotomy between what it took to create the band's Rumours album, and the effect all of that internal turmoil has had on its listeners for years: A woman is blissfully listening to music on headphones, completely unaware of the massive brawl that's erupted behind her.
The drama that was tearing Fleetwood Mac apart served as fuel for one of the greatest and best-selling rock albums of all time. Among the five members, there was a pair of couples: singer Stevie Nicks and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, and keyboardist Christine McVie and bassist John McVie. Both were going through brutal separations during the making of Rumours. As if that wasn't enough, drummer Mick Fleetwood--whose own marriage was falling apart--would make things even more volatile by having an affair with Nicks in the middle of the chaos.
Those personal power struggles spilled over into the recording process. It didn't help that the band was obsessed with consuming hard drugs at a record pace: "It was the craziest period of our lives," Mick Fleetwood admitted to Q in 1997. "We went four or five weeks without sleep, doing a lot of drugs. I'm talking about cocaine in such quantities that, at one point, I thought I was really going insane."
For Stevie Nicks, the chaos would drive her to find peace elsewhere in the Record Plant recording studio: "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 in 2005. "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."
Alone in Sly Stone's old space, Nicks went to work: "I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me," she recalled. "I found a drum pattern, switched my little cassette player on and wrote 'Dreams' in about 10 minutes. Right away I liked the fact that I was doing something with a dance beat because that made it a little unusual for me."
Nicks knew she had something special, so she presented the demo to the rest of the band. Christine McVie, for one, was not impressed: "It was just three chords and one note in the left hand I thought 'This is really boring.'"
Even though Nicks and Buckingham were in the middle of their bitter breakup, the artist in him had no choice but to agree that the song was good.
"It was a rough take, just me singing solo and playing piano," Nicks said of the moment. "Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it and then looked up at me and smiled."
For Nicks, it was a bittersweet validation" "I wrote 'Dreams,' and because I'm the chiffony chick who believes in fairies and angels, and Lindsey is a hardcore guy, it comes out differently," she wrote in the liner notes to the Rumours reissue in 2013. "Lindsey is saying go ahead and date other men and go live your crappy life, and [I'm] singing about the rain washing you clean. We were coming at it from opposite angles, but we were really saying the same exact thing."
Rumours came out in early February 1977. "Dreams" was released as the second single from the album on March 24, 1977. It took a quick trip up the charts, peaking at #1 for the week of June 18, 1977. It held the top spot for just a single week, replaced by Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give it Up (Pt. 1)" on the following chart. "Dreams" still stands as Fleetwood Mac's sole US #1 on the Hot 100.
"What was going on between us was sad," Nicks sighed to the Daily Mail in 2009. "We were couples who couldn't make it through. But, as musicians, we still respected each other -- and we got some brilliant songs out of it”.
Because of platforms like TikTok and the endless popularity of Rumours, Dreams will always be played and reach new people. I think, more than any other song on Rumours, it has this different life and significance of its own. One of Stevie Nicks’ most moving and beautiful songs, I hope that it gets a lot new love on its forty-fifth anniversary. This Wikipedia article discusses the legacy of the incomparable Dreams:
“In the United States, "Dreams" reached the number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on 18 June 1977, and held it for one week. On the Adult Contemporary chart, "Dreams" was Fleetwood Mac's highest-charting single during the 1970s where it reached number 11. In the UK Singles Chart, "Dreams" went to number 24, staying in the top 40 for eight weeks.
Since its initial release, "Dreams" has re-entered the charts on various occasions. It picked up two additional weeks on the UK charts in 2011 following the airing of the Glee Rumours episode. In 2018, "Dreams" returned to the Billboard Hot Rock Songs chart at number 14, re-popularized by a viral tweet. The song also returned to the New Zealand charts for one week in 2019 at number 40. The song then re-entered the New Zealand charts on 5 October 2020 at number 28, and has since spent 71 consecutive weeks in the top 40, whilst also reaching a new peak of 3 consecutive weeks at number 6. The same year, it also entered the Irish charts for the first time”.
A happy anniversary to one of the most enduring and greatest songs ever. During the strain and struggle of recording Rumours, something truly astonishing was created by Stevie Nicks. A number one track in the U.S., Dreams boasts one of the best performances from Fleetwood Mac on Rumours. Gaining new life and relevance forty-five years after its release, the staggering Dreams will ensure and move people…
FOR ever more.