‘The Dance’: Behind Fleetwood Mac’s Emotional 90s Reunion

“I’d done some healing and some refocusing”

Speaking to Mojo in 1997, Buckingham explained how the reunion happened. “When I left in ’87, it really was a survival move. Emotionally and physically. The atmosphere was not very conducive to being creative… So cut to nine years later – last year – and I run into Mick and we go out and have breakfast… and I realise that we have an awful lot to talk about. And the chemistry was just very present – as it had always been, but without the baggage. I’d done some healing and some refocusing and hopefully some growing, and so had he.”

Following Buckingham’s departure, Mick Fleetwood did what he’d done ever since Fleetwood Mac’s debut live performance, and kept the group together by changing line-ups. However, after the release of 1995’s Time, he called time on the band. Meanwhile, Buckingham and Nicks had both been focusing on solo careers, and had perhaps been wondering what it would be like to be in a group again.

While Buckingham was recording a planned follow-up to his well-received 1992 album, Out Of The Cradle, he and Mick Fleetwood had that fateful breakfast and began working together. Before long, both John and Christine McVie came on board for some sessions. Next, the Buckingham/Nicks team reunited for Twisted, a song for the soundtrack of the 1996 disaster film Twister which also featured Mick Fleetwood. “Basically, the whole band had made music during the course of that year,” the drummer told Mojo in 1997. “And at that point, there was no mention from within the ranks that it was all leading to something.”

“When we’re singing songs to each other, we’re saying more then we would in real life”

Fast-forward to May 1997 and the five-piece were on stage together for the first time since the split, with no sign that their chemistry had weakened. The first Burbank show wasn’t to the band’s liking, and the performance released on The Dance is from the 23 May show, the second of their two nights at Warner Brothers Studios.

The Chain makes for a dramatic opening: stripped-back and slowed down at the start, with Buckingham’s guitar sounding bluesier than on the song’s original release, as if the intervening years have taken their toll. When the chorus kicks in, the drama unfolds, with ex-lovers Buckingham and Nicks singing, “And if, you don’t love me now/You will never love me again,” at each other for a moment of real poignancy. All these years later, the intrigue and inter-band dynamics that had fuelled the band’s success from Rumours on were still present.

A charged set followed. Nicks took centre stage for powerful renditions of Dreams and Rhiannon that emphasised her magnetism as one of the best frontwomen in rock, and she brought the house down with a tender Landslide, accompanied solely by Buckingham on acoustic guitar, as if it were 1975 all over again.

A particular highlight of the night is the Nicks-penned Silver Springs, a song that didn’t make the cut for Rumours but was issued a B-side to Go Your Own Way. Originally written as a kiss-off to Buckingham, on The Dance it marks the point where tensions between the pair threatened to overspill, with emotionally draining results. The concert film captures the moment when the pair begin to exchange knowing looks; before long, Nicks is singing directly to Buckingham, seemingly furious. The intensity of the performance led gossip columnists to speculate that they were romantically involved again – something Nicks was keen to dispel in a Rolling Stone interview: “I don’t want to be part of that darkness. He knows that. When we’re up there singing songs to each other, we probably say more to each other than we ever would in real life.”

The spark remained

While Silver Springs may have brought the emotional fireworks, Buckingham’s impassioned leads on Go Your Own Way and Big Love showed how much his material had contributed to the group’s legacy. Meanwhile, the title track from the Tusk album provided another standout moment when the University Of Southern California Marching Band (who had played on the original studio recording) came on stage to propel the song to giddy heights.

The marching band stuck around for the last song of the evening, Christine McVie’s Don’t Stop, making for a triumphant ending. McVie had also contributed an effervescent Everywhere, a rootsy take on Say You Love Me, and a smouldering You Make Loving Fun to the evening, all underlining the importance of the pop-rock sensibility she had brought to Fleetwood Mac’s ongoing success.

Along with the hits, The Dance added new songs to the band’s repertoire: Nicks’ Sweet Girl, Christine McVie’s Temporary One and Buckingham’s My Little Demon and Bleed To Love Her. Introducing new material might have suggested that Fleetwood Mac were properly back, and The Dance certainly makes it clear that the spark remained, but it would prove the last time that the five-piece who made Rumours recorded a full album together. (It’s notable among Fleetwood Mac facts that The Dance is the only album on which the entire group appeared together on the cover.) But, as ever with Fleetwood Mac, never say never.

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