How one tour fully healed Fleetwood Mac, according to Mick Fleetwood
It was going to take a small army for anyone to bring Fleetwood Mac back together. There are many times when someone says the right dollar amount and has every member on board for at least a few shows, but when one of them ends up getting into a fistfight with another, it isn’t going to be easy for everyone to kiss and make up afterwards. But like all great rock and roll acts that came before them, Mick Fleetwood knew that the one thing that healed all wounds was having the band play together onstage.
After all, any Fleetwood Mac show was about capturing the kind of magic that they had in the studio in one way or another. No one could have possibly made Rumours sound better than it already was, but hearing all of that tension playing out whenever they performed songs like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Go Your Own Way’ was breathtaking to see. Then again, when someone makes their best material based on tension, no one should be surprised when they can’t sustain for very long.
Before the band even split up, Lindsey Buckingham was having problems whenever Stevie Nicks sang one of her tunes. Sure, she was becoming the band’s breakout star, so resentment may have played a little bit of a factor, but that was no reason for the guitarist to go so far as to try to hurt her in the middle of the show. Hell, not even a presidential honour could have brought the band together for very long.
Bill Clinton may have made it all the way to the White House on the strength of ‘Don’t Stop’ as his campaign song, but despite a one-off performance, it wasn’t until The Dance that everyone felt comfortable with each other again. With the gloves finally off, hearing them tear through their greatest hits with a handful of new tracks in the mix was exactly what both the fans and, most importantly, the members themselves needed to hear.
They finally realised that their music was worth more than their resentments, and Mick Fleetwood felt The Dance was what helped fully heal the wounds between everyone, saying, “I think it was the tour for The Dance. It was successful. Lindsey and I had not been on the same page for a long time. But then he asked me to play on the [solo] work that he was doing, and that became part of some of the tracks on the new album. So this grew out of a really long, slow experiment.”
The wounds may have still been there for a while, but Say You Will felt like the perfect return to form that most Mac fans were waiting for. It was heartbreaking not to have Christine McVie on the record after her quiet retirement, but listening to Nicks and Buckingham go back and forth with the rest of the group makes it feel like the perfect marriage between the Rumours lineup, their solo careers, and even a few hints of Buckingham Nicks from the days of old.
But when the band finally decided to call it a day after Christine’s passing, it did suddenly start to feel like the end of an era. It’s one thing knowing that she could still enter the picture whenever she wanted to, but Christine was one of the integral members before the classic lineup was solidified, and it would have been unthinkable for them to get someone else onstage trying to do justice to tunes like ‘Songbird’.
The version of Fleetwood Mac that lit everyone’s world on fire during The Dance may have been electric in their prime, but now it’s better to appreciate the icons who are still left with us. Nicks is still the ever-present ‘Gold Dust Woman’, Buckingham is still a master at guitar, and in John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, one of the longest-lasting rhythm sections in rock and roll never lost an ounce of shine throughout their time together.
