A B-side is a peculiar place for a song to spend its early life. Technically available, certainly. Just turn the record over. An entire filing system based on which way up you leave things.
“Silver Springs”, written by Stevie Nicks during the Rumours period, missed the original album and appeared as a B-side. Twenty years after Rumours, it was on Fleetwood Mac’s 1997 live album The Dance, in the company of the songs that had made it onto the record.
That detail gives the reunion an extra interest. It could have been a comfortable return to familiar material. Instead, here was a song whose place in the catalogue still needed reconsidering. A live album can quietly edit the story told by the studio albums: this belongs here too.
The Dance was recorded with the reunited five-piece lineup in May 1997 and released that August. So this wasn’t an old recording being dusted off for a bonus disc. The band had to play the song again, together, in the present tense.
There’s something satisfying about that distinction. The first track list still exists. Nobody has gone back and corrected the original sleeve. There is simply another record beside it, making a persuasive addition.
Fleetwood Mac, The Dance (1997). Album cover sourced from Rhino. The Dance cover image, Reprise Records. Source: Rhino. Source
