On This Day in Music History: Stevie Nicks Wrote Fleetwood Mac's Only No. 1 Hit in 10 Minutes
In early 1976, Fleetwood Mac was falling apart at the seams ... and somehow making the best album of their lives.
The band retreated to the Record Plant in Sausalito, California to record what would become Rumours, a nine-month process conducted entirely amid personal catastrophe. Drummer Mick Fleetwood had just discovered his wife was having an affair with his best friend. Bassist John McVie and keyboardist Christine McVie were divorcing after eight years of marriage, barely speaking to each other outside of musical matters. And guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were ending their own eight-year relationship, and then showing up every day to sing into the same microphone.
Stevie Nicks Wrote 'Dreams' in Ten Minutes
On one of those days, Nicks wasn't needed in the main studio. Rather than sit in the middle of the tension, she slipped down the hallway to an unused studio that was built for funk legend Sly Stone — a black-and-red room with a sunken pit, a piano, and a big black velvet bed draped in Victorian curtains. She brought her Fender Rhodes piano, sat down, and started to play.
Ten minutes later, she had written "Dreams."
@_sunsetvinyl How ‘Dreams’ Almost Broke up Fleetwood Mac. #dreams #fleetwoodmac
♬ Dreams (2004 Remaster) - Fleetwood Mac
The song was a gentle, elliptical response to Buckingham's more aggressive "Go Your Own Way," which served as his furious kiss-off to their relationship. Where Buckingham was confrontational, Nicks was measured. "Players only love you when they're playing," she wrote, two feet from the man she was writing about. Christine McVie, hearing the rough version on the piano, called it "just three chords and one note in the left hand" and described it as "boring." She changed her mind once Buckingham arranged it, fashioning three distinct sections from identical chords and creating the impression of a continuous thread running through the whole thing.
"Dreams" was released as the second single from Rumours 49 years ago, on March 24, 1977. That June, it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 — Fleetwood Mac's only chart-topper in the United States. Rumours itself went on to sell over 40 million copies worldwide and win the Grammy award for Album of the Year.