The Dance is a live album by the British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 19 August 1997. It hailed the return of the band's most successful lineup of Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie, and Stevie Nicks, who had not released an album together since 1987's Tango in the Night, a decade earlier. It was the first Fleetwood Mac release to top the U.S. album charts since 1982's Mirage.
History
Recorded during a concert on 23 May 1997, The Dance was the last Fleetwood Mac album to feature Christine McVie as a full-time member before she left a year after the album's release although she returned to the band in 2014 to tour. Debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 199,000, The Dance became the fifth best-selling live album of all time in the United States, selling a million copies within eight weeks, spending more than seven months within the top 40, and eventually selling over 6,000,000 copies worldwide. The DVD version has been certified 9× platinum in Australia for selling 135,000 copies. The 44 date tour grossed $36 million.
Unlike 1980's Live, which was a collection of live recordings over a series of 60 shows, The Dance was recorded in one night, albeit with good isolation to allow for overdubs.[1] The concert was recorded for Fleetwood Mac's MTV The Dance special at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California, and features the University of Southern California Marching Band who perform on the tracks "Tusk" (having played on the original studio recording) and "Don't Stop".
Although the album is predominantly a live greatest hits package, The Dance also features new material written by each of the primary songwriting members of the band (with two from Buckingham) as well as popular album tracks. "Bleed to Love Her" was a previously unreleased track when The Dance was released, although a studio recording of the song was later included on the Say You Will (2003) album. No tracks from the Mirage album were included on the CD, although "Gypsy" was included in the video and DVD versions.
The album was titled for Henri Matisse's painting, Dance, which was at one point intended to be used as the album cover but couldn't be licensed.[4] The album cover photo, taken by David LaChapelle, has Mick Fleetwood recreating his pose from the cover of Rumours, the band's most successful album, and Lindsey Buckingham holding the cane used on the cover of the Fleetwood Mac album, Rumours' predecessor.
Buckingham originally wanted less overlap in the track listing between The Dance and their 1981 live album. "At first I thought this should be a more eclectic collection, with different songs that were a little more surprising. But Warner was very upset about that. They wanted more hits. They felt a live album from 1981 was irrelevant, and I guess they were right."[2]
