(Source: Far Out / YouTube still image)
As the title suggests, Fleetwood Mac’s groundbreaking album Rumors is full of mistrust, suspicion and heartache. Nowhere more so than in the second song on the tracklist, “Dreams”. The song, written by Stevie Nicks, is a stab in the wedge that has opened up between two band members.
The devastating line, “Players only love you when they’re playing,” shows that Nicks didn’t mince her words. She was in a hopeless situation with her relationship, hurt and ready to strike back. She paints a bad picture of the man she’s singing to as she mimics him and says, “Women come and go.” If he’s making her suffer like that, the least she can do is expose him. And she does so with one of the album’s highlights, a beautiful mid-tempo ballad that’s as moving as it is rebuking.
During the recording of RumorsNick’s tumultuous relationship with Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham came to an end. The man she had been with since her teenage years became someone she could no longer stand to be around. And he no longer wanted to be with her.
Amid the turmoil of this break-up, Nicks also began a brief affair with the band’s founding drummer and namesake, Mick Fleetwood. In fact, it is Fleetwood and Nicks who are pictured together, hand in hand, with their legs suggestively crossed, on the cover photo of Rumors.
So which one is the theme of the song?
Fleetwood may have been a romantic consolation for Nicks, but she immediately regretted what they had done, especially to Fleetwood’s wife and children. She later told Uncut that she was “horrified” by what had happened and ended the affair almost immediately after it began.
The relationship with Buckingham was not so easy to end. It led to mutual bitterness and resentment that still simmers to this day. As recently as 2017, Buckingham claimed that Nicks had him fired from the band shortly after their recent reunion tour because she believed he had undermined her during an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony. And back then, in 1977, feelings were extremely turbulent.
Not least after Nicks heard Buckingham’s song about their breakup, the iconic “Go Your Own Way.” “Dreams” was her response to that song, aimed directly at her partner of ten years on and off the music scene.
It’s unfortunate how the relationship between the singers from Fleetwood Mac’s heyday ended, especially given the formative roles Buckingham and Nicks played in each other’s early years and budding music careers. But at the same time, it’s undeniable that they produced songs we can’t live without.
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