A bedroom classic: The Fleetwood Mac number one Stevie Nicks wrote “in 10 minutes”
Some songs can take years to perfect, whereas others flow out in a stream of consciousness not dissimilar to creative vomit. Bubbling in their soul for some time, the tracks can reside in the pit of their stomach until finding their way out and into the world. Famous examples of the latter include REM penning ‘Losing My Religion’ in a matter of minutes, The White Stripes creating ‘Seven Nation Army’ during soundcheck, and, likewise, Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks only needed ten minutes to write ‘Dreams’.
The Rumours track was written during a time when Fleetwood Mac couldn’t be further apart in their personal lives. Nicks’ relationship with Lindsay Buckingham was falling apart before her very eyes. Meanwhile, John and Christine McVie were also on the rocks. Mick Fleetwood also went through divorce procedures during this juncture to complete the chain of heartbreak. The band was falling apart, and the pillars of the group no longer seemed to be able to support one another.
It was a time in Fleetwood Mac’s history that would come as a doubled-edged sword. This period was a devastating time for everybody in the band, which was worsened by their penchant for cocaine, but it gave the world a seminal album. Nicks and Buckingham took turns to address the break-up from their perspective, with her writing the spite-filled ‘Dreams’ while he took aim at Nicks with ‘Go Your Own Way’.
The group had a day off from the studio when Nicks wrote the song, and it likely helped her creative process that she wasn’t in the company of Buckingham. In the comfort of her bed, surrounded by nobody, letting her mind wander and her pen roll across the page, Nicks wrote a classic, and it only took her ten minutes to do so.
“I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me, found a drum pattern, switched my little cassette player on, and wrote ‘Dreams’ in about ten minutes,” Nicks once told Rolling Stone. “Right away I liked the fact that I was doing something with a dance beat, because that made it a little unusual for me.”
Delving into more detail about the day she wrote the song, Nicks talked to the Daily Mail about the nerve-wracking moment she first brought ‘Dreams’ to Lindsay Buckingham. She recalled: “I remember the night I wrote ‘Dreams.’ I walked in and handed a cassette of the song to Lindsey. It was a rough take, just me singing solo and playing piano,” she explained.
She continued: ”Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it and then looked up at me and smiled.” It showed the group’s professionalism: ”What was going on between us was sad. 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.”
Buckingham later discussed that at the same time, and although the song was about him, he needed to put his professional head on to improve ‘Dreams’. In a conversation with Nile Rodgers, he said: “It comes at a price sometimes, you know? It comes at the price of having your defences come up, and sometimes over a period of time, it’s hard to get those down.” The true capabilities of an artist are only really known when given ample space and time to create their music. For Stevie Nicks, a bit of breathing room and a few minutes in her own bed gave her enough space to make a masterpiece.
Although the song was born out of Nicks’ heartbreak, something good did come out of the instance, and ‘Dreams’ remains Fleetwood Mac’s only number one single in the United States.
