When “Running Up That Hill” went top five in America two summers ago my niece was one of the contributors to its newfound success. In a Spotify playlist I found “Dreams.” She knew Fleetwood Mac? “Of course, tio,” she said wearily. Sam Adams recounts a similar experience in an affectionate recent tribute to Stevie Nicks and her fractious band. Since 1997’s coyly titled reunion mementoThe Dance these people haven’t disappeared. They may not have been cool in the way Sam describes them, but they were present in ways that they weren’t between 1989 and 1996. The simple answer: the internet, where cultdom is a refuge and ecosystem. Also: Fleetwood Mac’s songs endure, particularly Nicks’.
Serious, silly, a mix of the recognizable Rock Chick and a sexually fluid type we’d see a few years later, Stevie Nicks is an essential figure. Her fusion of past and future — of Janis Joplin and Kate Bush — remains sui generis. A tough broad with a weakness for rote macho types like, ye gods, Don Henley and Jimmy Iovine, she also made room in her generous songs, tough and aqueous often on the same album, for women. On “Sara,” her greatest composition and performance, subject and object fuse in the fog of the band’s arrangement. Marcello Carlin: “a profound yet seemingly minimalist rhythm track (even on stately 4/4, Fleetwood and Mac know intuitively how and where to swing), over which are laid endless guitars, kissing each other’s lights like pregnant Catherine wheels (with heartbreaking arcs of sevenths), and harmonies plentiful and indistinct enough to power the listener to Venus.” A similar warmth emanates from “Gypsy,” second only to “Dreams” in its cultural presence. Over Lindsey Buckingham’s arpeggios and the flickering empathy from his and Christine McVie’s harmonies Nicks pulls close a woman who faces freedom with a little fear. As her 1979 demo demonstrates, she had most of it worked out.
From the start, despite her genuine star power, Nicks’ onstage twirls, substance abuse, and press persona reduced her to Fleetwood Mac’s court fool. Robert Christgau called her a mooncalf. As late as 2002 her ex-lover Buckingham was correcting, with a pedant’s glee, her verb tense and pronoun choices (Nicks’ correct response: “I don’t think you can say that to Bob Dylan”). It’s true that she has moments (“Illume,” “Straight Back,” “Fireflies) when her voice stumbles on a melody like a shovel does a treasure chest. But consider: if listeners are tempted to give Buckingham and the band credit for fleshing out her songs, well, so did Dylan, John Prine, and Richard Thompson’s bands. She was writing good songs her fourth decade in the purgatorial Mac. Compensating for the departure of the essential partner Christine McVie, Nicks and Buckingham filled 2003’s Say You Will to surfeit. “Thrown Down,” as sharp about romantic folly as “Silver Springs”; “Goodbye Baby” sees the path out with the same clarity as Isabel Archer at the end of Henry James’ novel The Portrait of a Lady or Joni Mitchell’s “Refuge of the Road.” The only deplorable song she contributed to Fleetwood Mac, “Affairs of the Heart,” is marooned on Behind the Mask, the band’s attempt to duplicate a Lindsey Buckingham experience with two boring guitarists and their “songs” and outside help; but even during this ignoble era the tough-minded “No Questions Asked” was her best song since “Gypsy.”
So happy birthday to Stevie Nicks, who embodies the eternal verities of ambition, the flaunting of excess, the desire for intimacy, and the appeal of legends.
The Hague
Affairs of the Heart (Behind the Mask)
Meh
Welcome to the Room, Sara (Tango in the Night)
Straight Back (Mirage)
Angel (Tusk)
Illume (9–11) [Say You Will]
Love is Dangerous (Behind the Mask)
Freedom (Behind the Mask)
Smile At You (Say You Will)
Without You (EP)
Sound, Solid
That’s Allright (Mirage)
Running Through the Garden (Say You Will)
Crystal (Fleetwood Mac)
Sweet Girl (The Dance)
Everybody Finds Out (Say You Will)
Sisters of the Moon (Tusk)
When I See You Again (Tango in the Night)
Silver Girl (Say You Will)
Fireflies (Live)
Destiny Rules (Say You Will)
Good to Great
Sara (Tusk)
Gold Dust Woman (Rumours)
Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac)
Silver Springs (Rumours)
Dreams (Rumours)
Landslide (Fleetwood Mac)
Gypsy (Mirage)
Storms (Tusk)
I Don’t Want to Know (Rumours)
Thrown Down (Say You Will)
Beautiful Child (Tusk)
Say You Will (Say You Will)
Seven Wonders (Tango in the Night)
Goodbye Baby (Say You Will)
Humanizing The Vacuum 
I hated “Dreams” when it was out & I still don’t like it very much. Now I understand the line “thunder only happens when it’s raining” ~ that’s how it works on the west coast ~ they don’t get thunder & lightning & no rain like we do on the east coast ~ I remember thinking, what a stupid fucking line! (I was 16 when the song came out).
I always thought she was overrated. Some of her songs I like but basically I always thought that she was a better performer than she was a singer or a songwriter. Which is OK, she’s a brilliant performer.
As a dancer, I found her songs always WORKED. Even the ones I didn’t particularly like LOL
I think the followup line “players only love you when they’re playing” explains the point of the thunder/rain line. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a reference to west coast weather.
“Thunder always happens when it’s rainin” it’s not meant to please the accuracy of weather channel forecasters. To me, it reads like “Passion only happens when it’s soaking wet” If that makes for a sexual allegory, so be it. In the rest of the song, Nicks proceeds to downplay (and even lament) that ocurrence. It happened that her lover was too dry for her.
I hear what you two (Aaron and Jukebox) are saying about the line not really referring to weather, but for a metaphor to work, it still has to make sense.