Album of the Day — September 21
Fleetwood Mac — Rumours
Fleetwood Mac — Rumours
21.September.2020
Fleetwood Mac
Rumours
1977
If you’re over a certain age or have ever been to a dentist, you have heard at least one of the songs from this album.
The album was released in 1977 under the pressures of every member of the band’s personal and romantic relationships imploding.
Unfortunately, personal relationships were within the band.
Fortunately, it created some of the rawest, most emotional music of any generation.
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is legendary for all the right reasons …and many of the wrong too.
The songs are certainly memorable, and there is a reason why the album has sold some 45 million copies worldwide to date. While the songs stand on their own, the album itself is an oracle for dysfunction and the brokenhearted.
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were breaking up. Buckingham started dating a woman who worked at the recording studio, and Nicks hooked up with drummer Mick Fleetwood — who was estranged from his wife.
John and Christine McVie were getting divorced. Christine McVie started an affair with the band’s lighting director (and the inspiration of “You Make Lovin’ Fun”).
And John McVie was the bass player. ;)
Examining the songwriter of each song, you can see who was aiming the gun at whom.
“Second Hand News” — Lindsey Buckingham (sung to Nicks)
“I know there’s nothing to say
Someone has taken my place”
“Dreams” — Stevie Nicks (sung to Buckingham)
“Now here you go again
You say you want your freedom”
“Never Going Back Again” — Lindsey Buckingham (sung to Nicks)
“Been down one time
Been down two times
I’m never going back again”
“Don’t Stop” — Christine McVie (a rare song of optimism)
“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be, better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone”
“Go Your Own Way” — Lindsey Buckingham (sung to Nicks)
“Tell me why
Everything turned around
Packing up
Shacking up is all you want to do”
* — Stevie Nicks allegedly begged Buckingham to replace these lyrics.
“Songbird” — Christine McVie (a little more optimism)
“For you, there’ll be no more crying
For you, the sun will be shining
And I feel that when I’m with you
It’s alright, I know it’s right”
“The Chain” — the only song attributed to the whole band
“And if, you don’t love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain (Never break the chain)”
“You Make Lovin’ Fun” — Christine McVie (about her affair with the band’s lighting director … but she told her husband it was about her dog)
“Sweet wonderful you
You make me happy with the things you do
Oh, can it be so
This feeling follows me wherever I go”
“I Don’t Want To Know” — Stevie Nicks (an older song that replaced “Silver Springs”… more on that below)
“I don’t want to know the reasons why
Love keeps right on walking on down the line
I don’t want to stand between you and love
Honey, I just want you to feel fine”
“Oh Daddy” — Christine McVie (about Mick Fleetwood’s failing marriage)
“Why are you right when I’m so wrong
I’m so weak but you’re so strong
Everything you do is just alright
And I can’t walk away from you
Baby, if I tried”
“Gold Dust Woman” — Stevie Nicks (according to Nicks: “a symbolic look at somebody going through a bad relationship, doing a lot of drugs, and trying to make it.”)
“Did she make you cry
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of love
And is it over now do you know how
Pick up the pieces and go home.”
And let’s not forget the cocaine. Lots and lots of cocaine helped fuel Rumours.
“SILVER SPRINGS”
The Stevie Nicks penned song “Silver Springs” is one of the best songs she’s ever written. Full stop.
Initially recorded to be included on Rumours, but the song clocked in at over eight minutes. In those days of vinyl, you could only have 22 minutes of music per side. So, to make “Silver Springs” fit onto Rumours, it would have to be trimmed down, OR Stevie Nicks would have to give up another song.
Neither being ideal for Nicks, she opted to trim the song rather than miss the publishing royalties of cutting one of her songs from the record to accommodate the eight-minute version of “Silver Springs.”
They eventually trimmed “Silver Springs” by almost half, down to 4:33.
Then the discussion became how it fits with the flow of the album. “Silver Springs” doesn’t work. Yes, it fits contextually:
Silver Springs
You could be my silver springs
Blue green colors flashin’
I would be your only dream
Your shining autumn, ocean crashing
And don’t say that she’s pretty
Did you say that she loved you
Baby, I don’t wanna know
So, I’ll begin not to love you
Turn around, see me runnin’
I’ll say I loved you years ago
Tell myself you never loved me, no
And don’t say that she’s pretty
And did you say that she loved you
Baby, I don’t wanna know
Oh, no
And can you tell me was it worth it
Baby, I don’t wanna know
Time casts a spell on you, but you won’t forget me
I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me
Time casts a spell on you, but you won’t forget me
And I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me
I’ll follow you down ’til the sound of my voice will haunt you
(Oh, give me just a chance)
You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you
(Was I such a fool?)
I’ll follow you down ’til the sound of my voice will haunt you
(Oh, give me just a chance)
You’ll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you
Time casts a spell on you, but you won’t forget me
And I know I could have loved you, but you would not let me
I’ll follow you down ’til the sound of my voice will haunt you
There was just something about “Silver Springs” that made everyone think it didn’t belong on the finished album. They were right.
As producer Ken Callait wrote in his book Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album: “It [Silver Springs] was like a great scene from a movie that gets left on the cutting room floor.”
Rumours is that rarity among rock albums — perfectly arranged and sequenced.
“Silver Springs” ended up as a b-side to Rumours’ first single “Go Your Own Way.” The song would become a hit for Fleetwood Mac 20 years later in 1997 when released as a single from their reunion album The Dance.
Rumours ultimately contained four top 10 singles:
“Go Your Own Way”
“Dreams”
“Don’t Stop”
“You Make Loving Fun”
“Dreams” was the only single to reach #1 on the Billboard Top 40 charts. The album itself charted in 14 different countries and went to #1 in over half of them.
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is about as “white” of an album as one can imagine. All of the band members are white and hail from countries that stand as exemplars of white colonialism (Britain and the United States). The ballast to what could’ve potentially been a very vanilla sounding album was the band’s origins as a blues-rock band.
Rumours may sound “white,” but by taking the pain and hurt of heartbreak (integral ingredients of blues songs), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours sheds some of its “whiteness” by applying the very real emotions and feelings in their lyrics. It’s that universality of hurt that makes the album resonate …and one of the reasons it sold 10 million copies worldwide in its first year of release.
The subject of love, or hurt, has little tolerance for the narrow confines of race and regionalism.
Rumours is universally regarded as one of the greatest rock albums of any era.
CRITICS:
The British music magazine Q placed Rumours at number three — behind The Clash’s London Calling and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon — in its list of 50 Best Albums of the 70s.
Robert Christgau gave a typically cryptic review while giving Rumours an A grade: “Why is this easy-listening rock different from all other easy-listening rock, give or take an ancient harmony or two? Because the cute-voiced woman writes and sings the tough lyrics and the husky-voiced woman the vulnerable ones? Because Mick Fleetwood and John McVie learned their rhythm licks playing blues? Because they stuck to this beguiling formula when it barely broken even? Because this album is both more consistent and more eccentric than its blockbuster predecessor? Plus, it jumps right out of the speakers at you? Because Otis Spann must be happy for them? Because Peter Green is in heaven?
Jessica Hopper, at Pitchfork, gave it a 10/10 saying: “A flawless record pulled from the wreckage of real lives. As one of classic rock’s foundational albums, it holds up better than any other commercial smash of that ilk (Hotel California, certainly). We can now use it as a kind of nostalgic benchmark — that they don’t make groups like that anymore, that there is no rock band so palatable that it could be the best-selling album in the U.S. for 31 weeks. Things work differently now. Examined from that angle, Rumours was not exactly a game-changer, it was merely perfect.”
Clark Collis at Blender wrote: “The most famous Mac lineup’s second album should have been a disaster, given that the intraband romances — John and Christine McVie, Buckingham and Nicks — had reached the breaking point. Instead, the seminal, misery-detailing material and coke-assisted studio craft resulted in FM rock’s finest hour — and, at the time, the best-selling album ever. STANDOUT TRACKS: “Don’t Stop,” “The Chain”. . . hell, all of them, really.”
Even if you have heard all the songs individually, you’re doing yourself a disservice by not listening to the album as a whole. The singles are great, but Rumours is about as perfect an album as you’re likely to find.