Friday, February 4, 1977

Fleetwood Mac released Rumours

Rumours

Fleetwood Mac

Released: February 4, 1977

Peak: 131 US, 11 UK, 121 CN, 18 AU, 110 DF

Sales (in millions): 20.0 US, 3.3 UK, 45.0 world (includes US and UK)

Genre: classic California rock

Tracks:

(Click for codes to charts.)
  1. Second Hand News ( Buckingham) [2:56] (11 CL, 18 DF)
  2. Dreams (Nicks) [4:14] (3/24/77, 1 BB, 1 CB, 1 GR, 1 HR, 1 RR, 11 AC, 24 UK, 1 CN, 4 AU, 3 DF, sales: ½ million, airplay: 5 million)
  3. Never Going Back Again (Buckingham) [2:14] (10 CL, 22 DF)
  4. Don’t Stop (C. McVie) [3:13] (4/30/77, 3 BB, 1 CB, 1 GR, 3 HR, 1 RR, 22 AC, 1 CL, 32 UK, 1 CN, 30 AU, 4 DF, airplay: 3.0 m)
  5. Go Your Own Way (Buckingham) [3:43] (1/1/1977, 10 BB, 10 CB, 6 GR, 10 HR, 8 RR, 45 AC, 1 cl, 38 UK, 11 CN, 20 AU, 1 DF, airplay: 1 million)
  6. Songbird (C. McVie) [3:20] (18 CL, 6 DF)
  7. The Chain (Buckingham/Fleetwood/C. McVie/J. McVie/Nicks) [4:30] (10/25/97, 1 CL, 30 AR, 51 CN, 4 DF)
  8. You Make Loving Fun (C. McVie) [3:31] (9/77, 9 BB, 7 CB, 3 GR, 8 HR, 4 RR, 28 AC, 3 CL, 45 UK, 7 CN, 65 AU, 15 DF, airplay: 2 million))
  9. I Don’t Want to Know (Nicks) [3:15] (11 CL, 25 DF)
  10. Oh Daddy (C. McVie) [3:56] (33 DF)
  11. Gold Dust Woman (Nicks) [4:56] (3 CL, 10 DF)

Total Running Time: 39:43

The Players:

  • Lindsey Buckingham (vocals, guitar, et al)
  • Stevie Nicks (vocals, tambourine)
  • Christine McVie (vocals, keyboards)
  • John McVie (bass)
  • Mick Fleetwood (drums, percussion)

Rating:

4.700 out of 5.00 (average of 32 ratings)

Awards:

(Click on award to learn more).

About the Album:

Fleetwood Mac started out as a British blues outfit in the late ‘60s created by drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie. Over the years, players came and went until Californians Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks came on board and transformed the band’s sound into “crisp, professional soft-rock.” DW 1975’s self-titled album lifted the band to its greatest commercial heights, reaching #1 and achieving multi-platinum status.

The follow-up, 1977’s Rumours, would be even more successful. It became “one of the best pop records of the ‘70s” VB and one of the best-selling albums of all time. “Its blending of folk, pop, blues, and rock genres led to a timeless quality that has proven revolutionary as the decades have passed. Every single track has worn a groove in our brains and made countless impacts on pop culture…These 11 perfect songs came during an era when the dream of the 1960s was haunted by the blunt realities of the 1970s, creating a moment where honest emotional truths were exactly what people were hoping to hear in music.” CQ

Romantic Turmoil:

The making of the album was frought with difficulty. The newfound fame would be a lot to adjust to under even the best of circumstances. However, during the recording sessions for Rumours, “keyboardist Christine McVie sparred with husband/bassist John, and singer Stevie Nicks scrapped with boyfriend/guitarist Lindsay Buckingham.” CDU “And nearly everybody was on loads of cocaine.” VB

Christine said, “We had two alternatives – go our own ways and see the band collapse, or grit our teeth and carry on playing with each other.” CM The resulting album “captures wounds that hadn’t yet scabbed over, as bloody and raw as a heartbeat.” PM “The two couples confess, blame, sigh and ride a deep, chugging groove” RS which made Rumours “the ultimate hangover album for the lovestruck.” DV “It’s a miracle that this album exists at all.” CQ

However, “Rumours is proof that harmony can be born in chaos.” CQ Fleetwood Mac’s “angst gave us an album that defined a decade” DV with its “confessional pop-rock gems.” UT “The emotionally stormy, immaculately produced Rumours remains the near-perfect apex of dissolute 1970s Jacuzzi rock.” EW’12

Mick Fleetwood said, It would “take us almost a year, during which we spoke to each other in clipped, civil tones while sitting in small, airless studios listening to each other’s songs about our own shattered relationships.’” CRS

In the Studio:

The sessions for Rumours “were notorious not only for the emotional dilemmas but also for the amount of studio time the project ate up. The band spent two months in San Francisco before moving to Miami and then Los Angeles for several more months. At one point there had been so much overdubbing that the magnetic tape actually wore out.” CM

Mick Fleetwood said, “We went four or five weeks without sleep, doing a lot of drugs…Eventually the amount of cocaine began to do damage. You’d do what you thought was your best work and then come back next day and it would sound terrible, so you’d rip it all apart and start again.” CM

Masterful Musicians:

The soap opera surrounding Rumours made for interesting stories, but don’t explain why it became “such a wildly successful album. It’s the unique chemistry in Fleetwood Mac and the craftmanship in songwriting and production that make Rumours the most perfect pop album of all time.” CM “Though they wanted to kill each other, they still wanted to sound damn good while they were doing it.” DV

“Every song is catchy and clever.” DW It doesn’t hurt that “they’ve got three melodist-vocalists on the job” RC and that “each songwriter makes his or her presence known.” AZ “The cute-voiced woman writes and sings the tough lyrics and the husky-voiced woman the vulnerable ones.” RC They “were both at the height of their powers.” CM

In addition, “Buckingham pushed the production into a magnificent combination of intricate and spare.” RS There’s also his “precise guitar, and the taut blues rhythms of John McVie and Fleetwood.” TL “The ensemble playing, the elastic rhythms, and lush harmonies…transform the material into classic FM fare” AZ and make the album “consistently memorable” AM – “a milestone in classic rock.” GS

The Songs:

Here’s thoughts about the individual songs on the album.

“Go Your Own Way”
Buckingham contributes “harder-driving” DV and “deceptively simple pop songs” AZ with “self-depreciating lyrics” DV that “reveal a complex account of their despair.” DV Go Your Own Way, is “arguably Buckingham’s greatest track.” BN It is “a drum-driven cry at the death of love” BN featuring “fiery vocals” CDU and “one of his finest guitar solos.” RV The song was inspired by the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man.” CM

“Go Your Own Way” was the first of four singles from the album – all reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, a feat never before accomplished.

“Second Hand News”
Buckingham would have the sole songwriting credit on “Go Your Own Way” and two more cuts on the album. Second Hand News was inspired by the Bee Gees’ “Jive Talkin.’” CM With its “great, galloping guitar sound” DV it “sounds very close to [the previous album’s] ‘Monday Morning’ but…is actually better because it has some tremendous acoustic playing and a lot of silly happy noises.” GS Christine McVie’s talent on the keys offer “a cool, dark weight to Buckingham’s layers of guitars and vocal harmonies.” CM

“Never Going Back Again”
Both it and Never Going Back Again “go from anger to humor to insecureness.” DV The latter “is effectively a solo piece by Buckingham.” CM Engineer Chris Morris said, It “took forever…It was Lindsey’s pet project, just two guitar tracks but he did it over and over again.” CM

“Dreams”
Stevie Nicks offered up what has become Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hit – its only #1 song. “The melancholy hit Dreams made it quite clear just how much depth and substance [she] was capable of.” AM “Her slightly hoarse, ‘magic’ voice [does] wonders to the song.” GS “‘Here you go again,’ breathed Stevie Nicks…‘you say you want your freedom.’ The emotional weariness captured in that line suffuses the album, notwithstanding the upbeat melodies and pristine, daring production.” BN

“Gold Dust Woman”
Stevie Nicks also contributed the “folkish Gold Dust Woman.” AM It “casts a great spell” DV and gives the album its “most chilling” DV moment.

“Don’t Stop”
Christine McVie “was always the shyest member of the group and her self-confidence, never strong, was at its weakest as the recording began.” CM She said, “I was practically panicking because every time I sat down at a piano, nothing came out. Then, one day in Sausaliot, I just satddown and wrote in the studio, and the four-and-a-half songs of mine on the album are a result of that.” CM

She turns in “fast, joyful, optimistic pop” GS and “ultra-catchy slogans” AZ on tunes such as “Don’t Stop, which President Bill Clinton used as his campaign theme song in 1992.” AM The band even reunited to play the song at Clinton’s 1993 inaugural ball. The song was the album’s third top-ten hit.

“You Make Loving Fun”
The “beautifully understated…You Make Loving Fun,” CDU which “has a steady, disco-ish beat (a very rare thing for Christine)” GS and “optimistic tones…[which] perfectly show a renewed sense of love. It’s one of Christine McVie’s shining moments in the band.” DV The song was the fourth and final single from the album.

“Songbird” and “Oh Daddy”
McVie also turns in “smiley-face ballads Songbird and Oh Daddy.” RS They “sound nothing like the boggy, all-too-identic kind of sentimental slush that marred so many of her earlier compositions.” GS “Songbird” is McVie’s “tribute to the Fleetwood Mac situation its lyric about the redemptive qualities of song and the resilience of real love was an important centring for the band. She performs it almost entirely alone on the piano. The tune harks back to the lilting melodies of classic British pop and folk music.” CM

“The Chain”
“The Chain, written collectively, is the Mac at their most dramatic.” AZ It is “the full-band invocation of coming darkness and cramped emotional interdependence.” RS “Has there ever been a guitar intro as seductive as the one with which ‘The Chain’ begins? Especially when you know that incredible, explosive bridge is coming?” CQ It “begins as a slow dirge simply damning the lies of another, before surging into the angst-filled refrain, ‘Chains keep us together.’” RV It is “angry and menancing [and] beautifully constructed.” GS “It all works perfectly…a sort of tennis match between lovers.” DV

Notes:

A 2004 remaster added B-side “Silver Springs” to the original track listing and a second disc of outtakes and demos. A 35th anniversary edition once again added “Silver Springs” to the original album, a second live disc recorded during the Rumours tour, two discs of outtakes, and a DVD of The Rosebud Film.

Review Sources:

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First posted 3/15/2008; last updated 7/11/2024.

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