“It really was the beginning of the dream…” says the band’s Stevie Nicks.
The arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and his then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks to Fleetwood Mac in 1974 kicked the band’s commercial fortunes into serious high gear. Although the group was founded in 1967 and had already released nine studio albums, they had never visited the top 20 of the Billboard 200 chart. In contrast, the Mac’s first album with Buckingham and Nicks, the 1975 self-titled set, shot to No. 1 and sold five million in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
But even bigger success was on the horizon with 1977’s blockbuster Rumours, which spent 31 weeks atop the list and has shifted 20 million.
Its second single, the Nicks-penned “Dreams,” became the band’s first (and so far only) No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (on the list dated June 18, 1977) and was their first gold-certified single by the RIAA.
“My small pink 45 gold record of ‘Dreams’ hangs in my ocean apartment [in Santa Monica, Calif.] as we speak,” Nicks recalls to Billboard. “It has hung in every house I have lived in since the day I first received it. When I pass by it, I reach out and touch it. It really was the beginning of the dream …”
“Dreams” is one of 25 entries on the Hot 100 for the band, who also visited the top 10 eight other times with such hits as “Little Lies” and “Don’t Stop.”
The dreamy Rumours-era lineup of the band (Buckingham, Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie and John McVie) released three more top 10 studio albums before fracturing in 1987 after the departure of Buckingham. The quintet reconvened in 1997 for that year’s No. 1 live album The Dance and once more in 2014 for the On With the Show world tour. That trek continues through Europe, Australia and New Zealand this year. A new studio album is also in the works – and would be the first from the Mac’s fab five since 1987’s Tango in the Night.
Keith Caulfield / Billboard / Thursday, June 18, 2015
