The Story Behind Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours Tour: “We All Went Beserk”

Rumours Live proves that Nicks gave back as good as she got, as demonstrated by her performance of Dreams – the song she wrote after hearing Go Your Own Way. Nicks would later tell Mojo, “Dreams and Go Your Own Way are what I call the ‘twin songs’. They’re the same song written by two people about the same relationship.” While Buckingham’s anger feels palpable on his song, on the Rumours Live version of Dreams, Nicks’ vocals are relatively measured and cool, so when she spits out such pointed lyrics as “Women they will come and they will go”, it feels especially damning. The tension is heightened by Buckingham’s sizzling guitar playing – his way of responding to Nicks’ words.

The audiences: “They want the comfort of songs that feel like old friends”

The audience reaction is palpably ecstatic on Rumours Live – much as you’d expect from fans desperate to witness the hottest show in town. But when the Rumours Tour began it was a different story, as Nicks told Billboard in 2001: “I learned an important lesson back during the first Rumours tour with Fleetwood Mac. You can’t shove new songs down your audience’s throat. You can do three or four at the most… They want familiarity. They want the comfort of songs that feel like old friends.”

By the time the second leg of the tour started, however, fans knew the Rumours material inside out – though the group cannily included a nod to their past. A gritty version of their 1969 single Oh Well (Pt.1), written by original guitarist and founding member of the band, Peter Green, became a highlight of the set, giving Buckingham a chance to unleash some quicksilver blues licks while the original rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie laid down a suitably heavy backing.

In stark comparison to the rollicking blues of Oh Well was the song that became the Rumours Tour set closer – Christine McVie’s Songbird. The performance captured on Rumours Live is a thing of bittersweet beauty, McVie’s masterful vocals and piano complemented by Buckingham’s subtle acoustic guitar, just as on the Rumours studio version. The crowd’s adoring reaction underlines how far the band had come since the tour started, and just how much power the best Fleetwood Mac songs had come to assume on stage.

The legacy: “We didn’t have any idea what was going to happen”

For Fleetwood Mac, more madness was around the corner, as McVie told The Independent in 2017: “You don’t see any money for a year after the album’s released, so when the first cheques started coming in, we all went berserk and went out and bought Porsches and Rolls-Royces.” This most famous of Fleetwood Mac’s line-ups would remain together for another decade, through the Tusk, Mirage and Tango In The Night albums, but, after the Rumours Tour wrapped, things would never be the same for the band again.

“There’s a picture of the five of us back in the day taken by [rock photographer] Neil Preston, and I always look at it and we’re laughing away, and we didn’t have any idea what was going to happen,” Mick Fleetwood reflected. “No one could have imagined the success and the hardship and the torment.”

Buy Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours Live’ on vinyl.