Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac formed in London in July 1967, when guitarist Peter Green left John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and put together a new blues-rock band, naming it after two of his future bandmates, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie, even before McVie had formally agreed to join^[1]. The band's earliest incarnation was a straightforward British blues outfit, a far cry from the sound that would later make it famous.

The lineup that became internationally famous did not take shape until the mid-1970s. Keyboardist and singer Christine McVie (formerly Christine Perfect) had joined in 1970, and in late 1974 the band recruited the California duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who brought a more polished, radio-friendly songwriting sensibility. The self-titled 1975 album built around this new five-person lineup was a commercial breakthrough, setting up the band for its biggest success, and its most public personal unraveling, on the follow-up.

That follow-up, Rumours (1977), was recorded in 1976 while two couples within the band were falling apart at once: Christine and John McVie were divorcing after eight years of marriage, and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were ending their relationship while still required to write, record, and sing together every day^[2]. Nicks wrote “Silver Springs” directly about that breakup during these sessions, though it was ultimately left off the album for pacing reasons and relegated to a B-side^[2].

Buckingham left the band in 1987, and tension over that same song flared up again a few years later: when Nicks wanted to include it on her 1991 solo compilation Timespace, Mick Fleetwood refused so he could save it for a future Fleetwood Mac box set, a conflict that contributed to Nicks leaving the band for several years^[2].

The classic lineup reconciled in 1997 for The Dance, a live reunion special filmed in a single night at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank. It became the band's first number-one album since 1982 and sold more than six million copies worldwide^[3]. Its emotional high point was a live rendition of “Silver Springs” in which Nicks sang directly to Buckingham decades after their breakup, a performance so charged that Buckingham later admitted it was impossible not to be pulled into its ending^[4], and one that earned the song its only Grammy nomination^[5].