Fleetwood Mac Stories You Need to Know, in Honor of 'Dreams' Re-Entering the Hot 100

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Over four decades ago, Fleetwood Mac dropped their Rumours album, and their song "Dreams" hit no. 1 on the Billboard charts. Now, thanks to a man named Nathan Apodaca, his skateboard, some cranberry juice and TikTok, the band's song is charting once again.

According to Billboard, "Dreams" experienced a spike in sales and streams in the days following the posting of Apodaca's viral clip, wherein he rides his skateboard as the song plays in the background while drinking cranberry juice from the bottle.

For the three-day period of Sept. 25 to Sept. 27, the track gained 2.9 million on-demand U.S. streams and 3,000 digital download sales, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data, the outlet reported.

In honor of the song's surprise second wind, we've compiled a list of fun facts and stories about the band — and yes, all of that Rumours drama.

The band has had many, many different members.

Courtesy of Sony Music Archives

The British blues band was formed in 1967, with John McVie joining soon after. Christine McVie (then Christine Perfect) wouldn't join until 1970 and Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham didn't join until 1975. Before Buckingham joined, there had been five guitarists before him. In 1971, the band's first guitarist, Jeremy Spencer, literally disappeared right before a gig; he had left to join a Children of God cult.

When Mick Fleetwood asked Buckingham to join, the guitarist insisted that Nicks be added, too — they were a package deal, both professionally and romantically.

Technically, Mick Fleetwood is the only original member left in the band.

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Bonus fun fact: Fleetwood has a restaurant-bar in Maui, Hawaii called Fleetwood's on Front St.

Every time Lindsey Buckingham has left the band, they've replaced him with two guitarists.

Within the lineup's multiple changes, Buckingham has left more than once. In 1987, he was replaced with Billy Burnette and Rick Vito. Most recently, Buckingham was fired in 2018, and he was replaced by Mike Campbell and Neil Finn.

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Plenty of illegal substances went into the making of Rumours.

"You felt so bad about what was happening that you did a line to cheer yourself up,” Nicks told MOJO of the band's well-known cocaine habit. And this one isn't a rumor: The band considered thanking their drug dealer in the album's credits.

As they worked to keep a professional relationship as a band, their personal ones were failing.

Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham ended their longtime romance.

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Two months into recording Rumours, the on-again/off-again couple — who met as teenagers in high school — broke up. Nicks told Rolling Stone in 1997, "I don’t even remember what the issues were; I just know that it got to the point where I wanted to be by myself. It just wasn’t good anymore, wasn’t fun anymore, wasn’t good for either of us anymore. I’m just the one who stopped it.”

Nicks has said that if they hadn't joined the band, things may have been different.

Nicks said on Oprah's Master Class, "Lindsey always blamed Fleetwood Mac for the loss of me ... We probably would've gotten married and we probably would've had a child and it would've been a different life." She added, "You know, we were still young enough then that destiny could've taken us another way, but destiny didn't take us that way. Destiny took us straight to Fleetwood Mac."

Christine McVie was divorcing her husband, the band's bassist John McVie.

The couple had been married for nearly eight years before deciding to divorce. As they continued to work together, Christine simultaneously started seeing the band's lighting director, Curry Grant.

"We literally didn't speak, other than to say 'What key is this song in?' We were cold as ice to each other because John found it easier that way," Christine said, according to Fleetwood Mac on Fleetwood Mac: Interviews & Encounters.

Mick Fleetwood's marriage was also deteriorating.

Fleetwood, who shared two children with his wife Jenny, was going through his own marriage drama. His wife had cheated on him with Bob Weston, the band's then-guitarist, in 1973 and the pair would divorce and then remarry before finally calling it quits for good in 1978.

Their final split was partly because Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood had an affair.

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"We had a very bright moment. It wasn't an on-again-off-again relationship," Fleetwood told Fox News of the affair in 2014, adding, "We were great friends before and we are great friends after and for that we are lucky and grateful that it is the case."

He continued, "But it was very real and it is quietly thought provoking, but that's one of those things. Once in a while, especially when someone asks you about it, you go, 'Wow, another place and not such a crazy world around, maybe those two souls may have been positioned to have a longer moment together or a very long period of being together.' We celebrate that we are still great friends and we know what happened and it was very bright and crazy and we have those memories."

For her part, Nicks said on Oprah's Master Class in 2013 that the affair could be attributed to her alcohol and drug use at the time. "Mick and I never would have had an affair had we not had a party and all been completely drunk, messed up and coked out. [We] ended up being the last two people at the party. So guess what? It’s not hard to figure out what happened — and what happened wasn’t a good thing. It was doomed. It was a doomed thing. Caused a lot of pain for everybody. Led to nothing. I’m like, ‘Gee, could you have just laid off the brandy and the coke and the pot for two days?’”

Clearly it's not much of a problem for the pair now, as they still perform together.

Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks stuck together.

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The women and men lived separately, with Christine telling Rolling Stone of her friendship with Nicks, “All we had was each other, really. We certainly weren’t getting on with our respective husbands or boyfriends.”

While on tour for Rumours, Nicks and Buckingham's relationship was getting more and more tumultuous, culminating in a fight between the two on stage, which the band recounted to Rolling Stone, 20 years later. McVie told the publication, “I think [Buckingham]’s the only person I ever, ever slapped. I actually might have chucked a glass of wine, too. I just didn’t think it was the way to treat a paying audience. I mean, aside from making a mockery of Stevie like that. Really unprofessional, over the top. Yes, [Nicks] cried. She cried a lot.”

Although we don't condone slapping your friend's ex, it's clear McVie is a ride-or-die pal.

"Go Your Own Way" is Buckingham's breakup song for Nicks.

Because of all of the drama, each song on Rumours tells a sort of chapter to the story — and this one holds a lot of meaning. Imagine having to add back-up vocals for a song about you that includes the line "packing up, shacking up's all you wanna do." Nicks told Rolling Stone of the not-so-subtle breakup song, “I very, very much resented him telling the world that 'packing up, shacking up' with different men was all I wanted to do. He knew it wasn’t true. It was just an angry thing that he said. Every time those words would come out onstage, I wanted to go over and kill him. He knew it, so he really pushed my buttons through that. It was like, ‘I’ll make you suffer for leaving me.’ And I did. For years. Lindsey immediately got girlfriends. I never brought men around, because I wasn’t going to tick him off any more than I had already."

"Dreams" was Nicks' ode to Buckingham.

And she got the last laugh with this one. Not only is it charting in 2020, it's the band's only number-one hit.

Christine McVie and Buckingham wrote "Don't Stop" as an optimistic anthem towards future happiness.

McVie also wrote "You Make Loving Fun" about a new relationship.

And her ex-husband had to play bass for it! Cruel or power move?

"The Chain" was the only song on the album that the group wrote together.

John McVie came up with the album's iconic name.

The bassist may not have gotten his frustrations out in songs like his bandmates, but he did come up with the very appropriate title for the album, all things considered.

Nicks's big breakup anthem, "Silver Springs" was left off of Rumours. 

She wrote the song about Lindsey Buckingham, of course, but it was cut for time because the band was worried the album would be too slow with another ballad.

In 1997, the song got a second life when it was included on their album The Dance, and even won the group a Grammy. There's also this iconic clip of Nicks singing the song to Buckingham that simply must be seen (above). Though the two have visible tension, Nicks insisted at the time: “Over my dead body. See, 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. If you offered me a passionate love affair and you offered me a high-priestess role in a fabulous castle above a cliff where I can just, like, live a very spiritual kind of religious-library-communing-with-the-stars, learning kind of existence, I’m going to go for the high priestess.”

Michael Putland/Getty

The band's drama hasn't gone away.

After about a decade apart, Buckingham rejoined Fleetwood Mac in 1997 to record The Dance, and it looked like the group would go the distance. But in 2018, the lead guitarist was ousted from the band, claiming that Nicks gave the members an ultimatum: It was her or him. Buckingham sued the group for breach of contract and it was settled out of court.