0. THE FOOL
Stevie wrote:
Time cast a spell on you
But you won't forget me
Well, I know I could have loved you
But you would not let me
Fleetwood Mac, a broken band, reunited to record their album and MTV special, The Dance, in California one night in 1997. “Silver Springs,” a song written by Stevie Nicks for Rumours and excluded from the album by Mick Fleetwood, was on the setlist.
The looks exchanged by Buckingham and Nicks throughout the show – and the particularly raw moment between them during the climax of “Silver Springs” – did not come about until the two nights of taping in Burbank.
This was by design. Nicks has admitted that the fiery take on the song that appears in The Dance was “for posterity,” as she told RS at the time. “I wanted people to stand back and really watch and understand what [the relationship with Lindsey] was,” she later told Arizona Republic.
“‘Silver Springs’ always ends up in that place for me because she’s always very committed to what those words are about, and I remember what they were about then,” Buckingham told Rolling Stone in 1997. “Now it’s all irony, you know, but there is no way you can’t get drawn into the end of that song.”
“When we’re [onstage] there singing songs to each other, we probably say more to each other than we ever would in real life,” Nicks added. (Brittany Spanos for Rolling Stone)
Almost exactly three years ago, I was watching the video over and over, clicking back into the playback line’s past to make them do it again and again, when I realized what my book was going to be. I had been trying to force it into neat boxes for five years.
I’ll follow you down until the sound
Of my voice will haunt you
(Give me just a chance)
You'll never get away from the sound
Of the woman that loved you
Was I just a fool?
I couldn’t make a person love me back and I couldn’t stop loving him and suddenly, I saw that I had another option: to follow him to the end of a narrative I made myself.
This video gave me more permission than any craft book ever had. I was going to write a book about a breakup I had no good reason to mourn, a man I was told I should move on from. She turned toward him.