The story behind Fleetwood Mac’s stunning 1997 Silver Springs performance

Footage of the 1997 Fleetwood Mac reunion concert The Dance is doing the rounds on social media as fans immerse themselves in the fictional band drama as it unfolds on Amazon Prime Videos Daisy Jones and the Six.

The new series, starring Sam Claflin and Riley Keough, has received mixed reviews from critics due to the quality of the original songs and the overly slick look of the show and its characters.

It is based on the novel of the same name by American author Taylor Jenkins Reid, who said she was partially inspired to write the book after watching performances of Fleetwood Mac on television.

The cast have also spoken out about watching clips of the band themselves, with Claflin citing one moment in particular as a big influence.

The performance in question took place at the Fleetwood Mac reunion concert at Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California in May 1997 and featured the band playing “Silver Springs,” the B-side of theirs rumours Single “Go Your Own Way”.

Stevie Nicks wrote Silver Springs about the end of her romantic relationship with bandmate Lindsey Buckingham. She originally intended it to appear on rumours but the track was removed by Mick Fleetwood in favor of their other song “I Don’t Want to Know”.

Nicks said she was devastated by the decision, telling the BBC in 1991: “I started screaming bloody murder and probably said every horrible mean thing you could say to another human being and went back to the studio completely freaked out . I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to sing ‘I Don’t Want to Know’. I’m one-fifth of this band.”

“And they said. “Well, if you don’t like it, you can either (a) take a hike, or (b) better go out and sing ‘I Don’t Want to Know,’ or you’ve only got two songs on the record.” And so I basically walked out with a gun to my head and sang “I Don’t Want to Know”. And they put ‘Silver Springs’ on the back of ‘Go Your Own Way.’

in a (n MTV Interview in the year of the reunion, she explained that she wanted the song to let Buckingham know: “I’m so mad at you. You’re going to hear me on the radio for the rest of your life, and it’s going to annoy you. I hope it bothers you.”

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“I wrote Silver Springs, uh, about Lindsey. And we were somewhere in Maryland, driving under a freeway sign that said Silver Spring, Maryland,” she recalled Classic Albums one year later. “And I loved the name… Silver Springs sounded like a pretty fabulous place to me. And uh, ‘You could be my silver feathers…’ that’s just a whole symbolic thing of what you could have been to me.”

She later revealed that the visible emotions and tensions in the performance only occurred that evening and were not present during rehearsals.

“Rehearsals in six weeks, es [performing ‘Silver Springs’ for the MTV special] it’s never been like this…” she said Republic of Arizona. “It wasn’t until Friday night that we let it go into something deeper. When we went on Friday I knew if it was the last thing we ever did we would put it out. I wanted people to step back and really watch and understand what [the relationship with Lindsey] was.”

In conversation with the Miami Herald That same year, she also explained that performing the song live was a kind of closure for her and Buckingham: “Well, since that performance, I’ve had to sing ‘Silver Springs’ to him almost every day, so Lindsey and I have got to do and say things that we wouldn’t tell each other in real life.

“It’s like salvation,” she explained. “Even now we don’t talk much, so when these songs come up and are directly related to our relationship, it’s very therapeutic to process those things. That way we get a closure.”

The performance of “Silver Springs” was a very special moment, she said MTVbecause it was “kicked”. rumours 20 years ago.

“I was really devastated … because I loved the song and it was one of the rumours songs,” she said. “So I never thought ‘Silver Springs’ would ever be performed on stage, ever heard of again, and my beautiful song just disappeared. So it was really special for me to have it come back like this.”

Jenkins Reid tells The guard in 2019 that the performance of “Silver Springs” was a major inspiration for the book and inspired one of the original songs, “Regret Me.”

“This concept of a woman’s right to be angry is absolutely based on Stevie Nicks singing ‘Silver Springs’ in Lindsey Buckingham during their reunion [album and] show, the dance [in 1997],” She said.

“I was always very moved when Stevie Nicks sang this song the way she did back then.”

Claflin, who plays band frontman Billy Dunne on the series, narrated ell Magazine that a friend also sent him the performance before he auditioned for the role: “He said, ‘Just channel this dude.'”

After being cast successfully, Claflin then sent the clip to his co-star Keough, who plays Daisy Jones.

“She’s like, ‘Whoa, this is Billy and Daisy,'” he says. “So I think we wanted to channel that through the process in a way.”

“It’s so electrifying, knowing the chemistry between Lindsey Buckinham and Stevie Nicks, knowing what Fleetwood Mac was going through in that moment and knowing the story behind it and the story behind them as a couple, their relationship, there’s just so much more to it Weight. ‘ he said in a separate interview with MTV.

The duo attempted to challenge the palpable chemistry between Nicks and Buckinham throughout the show when their characters performed “Regret Me.”

“They’re on stage and she just turns away from the audience and just stares at them and just sings. And he says, ‘Oh God.’ And he’s staring at her reluctantly,” Claflin said.

“And I think that was the energy that we basically wanted to put into this song every time they perform it. I think there’s a reluctance to that [Billy’s] have to sing.”