Quote:
Originally posted by The Tower
Who knows what other material Stevie offered during those sessions, and why it wasn't selected? "Smile at You", "The Dealer", "If You Were My Love" are all great demos that have been offered numerous times to FM over the years and been rejected for one reason or another.
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Christine once said (I think in the "Tango in the Night" listening party on a Florida radio station) that the band rejected relatively few of her songs over the years, whereas Stevie's songs have been rejected in much higher numbers. It might be that way because Christine tended to write only the number of songs needed for an album, but Stevie always brought in many more songs than were needed. In other words, it could have been just a numbers game.
I believe some personal acrimony was responsible for some of the rejected Stevie Nicks songs over the years, but probably not to the degree others think it was. I think that, in general, if the band thought the song would make a good track, & if Stevie was available to put a good vocal on it, the song would have been given a chance. Common sense makes me think that the rejection of a song for personal reasons would have to occur before the band recorded it, not after, which is why I never believed that "Silver Springs" was dumped for personal reasons. That song was completed & was ready to go, & was only dumped after it was ready to go. If a certain member of the band was pissy about "Silver Springs," he wouldn't have put all that work (his & the engineers' & the band members') into it just to dump it afterward. He'd have vetoed the idea to record it in the beginning. But the fact is that he (& all the others) created a beautiful track out of it; there's a lot of love on that track, from everyone. Lindsey says on the Rumours DVD that some of his most beautiful guitar work ever is on that track, so of course he'd have wanted that song released -- & it was released ... but the only room for it was the flip side of the 45 at the time.
In the same context, I have a hunch that some of Stevie's Fleetwood Mac rejects, like "Juliet" or "What Has Rock & Roll Ever Done For You" or "If You Were My Love," might have been rejected for technical rather than personal reasons. Sometimes the musicians work on something for days or weeks & it just doesn't come together: the ideas aren't flowing, the keyboardist is stuck for an appropriate arrangement, the guitarist doesn't have a good grasp on what sort of mood he's going for, the drummer can't get the cymbal sound he wants. It's just not working musically, & nobody's terrifically happy with the rough tracks -- maybe they're boring or they don't go anywhere or they just sound dumb. For studio moles like Fleetwood Mac, I'm sure that probably happened a lot.