There are plenty of wild Fleetwood Mac stories, but none of them top the tales that swirled around the recording of the 1977 juggernaut Rumours. Some of that resulted from the lineup that created the album; the band had been around for a decade by the time Rumours was released, but new members had been brought into the fold just a few years earlier. The addition of volatile couple Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham in 1975 brought Fleetwood Mac incredible success but almost tore the band apart.
Nicks and Buckingham, along with on-the-outs spouses Christine and John McVie and soon-to-be-divorced Mick Fleetwood, put together one of the best-selling albums in music history by making Rumours. The title proved apt, too, considering all the whispers of scandal involving the musicians. Even today, the songs on the record read like a diary of Fleetwood Mac behind-the-scenes drama. In the end, the band had a Grammy-winning album on their hands, complete with a harmonious undertone of adultery, divorce, in-fighting, and so, so many drugs. Continue reading from Ranker
Such high emotions would ultimately result in hit songs with brutally honest lyrics, a confessional recorded on vinyl laying out the group’s innermost thoughts and feelings. “Go Your Own Way” was Buckingham’s strident response to the disintegration of his relationship with Nicks. “Don’t Stop” was Christine's ode to looking ahead in life, while “You Make Loving Fun” was a celebration of her new-found romance away from ex-husband John. “The Chain” was the group’s joint anthem regarding betrayal.
“Everybody was pretty weirded out,” Christine said of the time. “Somehow Mick was there, the figurehead: ‘We must carry on … let’s be mature about this, sort it out.’ Somehow we waded through it.”
Immediately following the album’s 1977 release, a candid Nicks told Rolling Stone she didn’t “care that everybody knows me and Chris and John and Lindsey all broke up. Because we did. So that’s a fact.” Nicks added that the majority of songs she wrote for the album “are definitely about people in the band …. Chris’ relationships, John’s relationship, Mick’s relationship, Lindsey’s and mine. They’re all there and very honest and people will know exactly what I am talking about … people will really enjoy listening to what happened since the last album.”
As emotions fueled the creative output for the album, alcohol, pot and cocaine helped fuel the group’s physical need to stay focused, work long hours and navigate the increasingly tumultuous landscape. “You felt so bad about what was happening that you did a line to cheer yourself up,” Nicks told MOJO in 2012. Continue reading from Biography
