B-Sides the Point

What a band or artist leaves off an album is often as telling as what's on it. In some cases, Bob Dylan being the most obvious example, the exclusion of  songs shows them to be a questionable judge of their own material. In others, it's a window into what was going on with them behind the scenes. It's in this area that Fleetwood Mac and the song Silver Springs comes to mind.

Originally recorded for the album Rumours, Silver Springs was relegated to the B-side of the single Go Your Own Way. As such it got some airplay but didn't really enter public consciousness until it was included on the groups 1997 reunion album The Dance. By that time, though, the song had been rehabilitated which is to say it had lost its edge, referred to simply as a great old song. It is a great old song, but what makes it such a great song is somewhat lacking in the more recent recording.

Music writer Greil Marcus once described Fleetwood Mac as "Fleetwood Mac is subverting the music from the inside out, very much like one of John le Carre's moles - who, planted in the heart of the establishment, does not begin his secret campaign of sabotage and betrayal until everyone has gotten used to him and takes him for granted." To some extent, the decision to leave Silver Springs off of Rumours feels like a part of that campaign, even if some sources say it was driven by time limits on vinyl LPs, because the song seemed to cut a little too close. Like much of what actually made it on Rumours, Silver Springs is yet another portrayal of the soap opera that was the band's collective personal life but, even more so than Go Your Own Way or Secondhand News, it radiates hurt.
Nowhere is this more apparent than when the song should be winding down. About 45 seconds from the end, Stevie Nicks' voice starts ramping up, egged on by Buckingham's guitar. Then, about 30 seconds from the end, she lets loose. "I'll follow you down to the sound of my voice that haunts you." it's not so much the words, which are borderline nonsense like many of her lyrics, it's all in the delivery. It's one of those cases where, if you can't tell how much she's hurting, you're just not listening.

The more recent live recording just doesn't have the same intensity, but that was probably inevitable. It's unlikely the band could have continued without them being able to put past resentment behind them, something demonstrated by the long periods where Buckingham and Nicks were both absent. In a sense it's nice that this group of talented people could do that. At the same time, there is a feeling of something lost. Rather than a mole hidden in plain sight out of John le Carre, the current incarnation of Fleetwood Mac is more like the Soviet agents in the BBC miniseries Sleepers who've lived in England so long that they no longer have any desire to fulfill their original mission.

Then again, maybe Marcus had it all wrong and all the group wanted to do was make some quality pop music. As long as we still have the old recordings, we can construct any idea of them that we want.