The 1996 movie that helped bring Fleetwood Mac back together: “My story”
By the mid-1990s, the soft rock Fleetwood Mac behemoth had burned through enough soap opera drama that few bands could rival.
Turmoil and tension proved to be the essential DNA for their pop explosion. Once the classic line-up was settled from 1975’s eponymous LP, the Fleetwood Mac ensemble managed to wrestle a Billboard behemoth from the following Rumours amid mountainous cocaine abuse, affairs left, right, and centre, and slagging matches in the studio nearly turning to brawls between the warring parties, yielding a global album smash totalling over 30 million certified copies to this day.
Such simmering frissons would power the band across the 1980s, from reports of nearly throttling each other on the ‘Hold Me’ video to their eventual hiatus not long after. Just as Rumours was beginning to feel like ancient history, a revitalised Mac got back together to release the phenomenally successful Tango in the Night, immersing themselves in the era’s glossy synths and thrust back to pop stature.
With the ensuing tour lined up, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham decided to pull out in crunch time, reportedly triggering an altercation between him and singer and former partner Stevie Nicks.
It just wouldn’t be Fleetwood Mac without some trouble. A precarious existence shuffled along once the Shake the Cage Tour wrapped up in 1988, dropping Behind the Mask two years later, minus Buckingham, before Nicks left the band not long after. Other than a brief live reunion as part of President Bill Clinton’s Inaugural Ball – ’Don’t Stop’ had been used as the campaign theme – the Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac looked set to wind down for good.
Until Hollywood came calling. A mammoth hit at the time, if enjoying less endurance in the pop cultural memory today, but the team behind 1996’s disaster movie Twister reached out to Nicks for an original song. “I realised that this really was… MY story,” she reflected on the liner notes to 1998’s Enchanted box set.
“It was about people who had extreme jobs… like chasing tornadoes, or being in a rock band.”
Stevie Nicks
Forever returning to the pain, strife, and occasional thrown projectile amid the Fleetwood Mac beast is certainly causing its own kind of storm. Her old band was virtually over when cutting the demo of ‘Twisted’ in March 1996 – old-timers Mick Fleetwood and John McVie had all but given up on the band they had been soldiering with for 16-odd albums since 1967.
But Fleetwood was helping Buckingham with a solo project in no time; the two then joined Nicks on her ‘Twisted’ sessions with Buckingham in the producer’s chair and Fleetwood, as ever, on drums.
It just so happened that John and Christine McVie had been helping Buckingham out in the studio too. Dipping their toe back in, a quietly corralled Fleetwood Mac played a private party with Steve Winwood filling in for Buckingham, then the Twister soundtrack was dropped, precipitating a full Rumours reunion in 1997. It’s clear Nick held plenty of affection for the piece that reignited Fleetwood Mac for the 1990s in earnest, going back and reimagining the old ‘Twisted’ demo for 2014’s 24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault.
