Rumours was the first Fleetwood Mac album I ever heard – 43 years ago…..and in just 39 minutes, I instantly, and forever fell in love. With this album – and with the band. The record (or was it a cassette?….no I’m almost certain it was vinyl) belonged to the older sister of one of dearest friends at school. Strangely, Fleetwood Mac weren’t a particularly popular band on the radio in Delhi and so I heard this album with fresh ears – lucky me! And it was love at first listen!! 😍 Of course, I “pretty please” borrowed the album. And listened to it over and over and over, entranced by the music, the melodies, the voices, the harmonies, the guitar work…. and those amazing lyrics. Four decades later, I can still put this album on anytime – night or day – and listen to it end-to-end, lost to the world. From the opener – “Second Hand News” – to the closer “Gold Dust Woman” – every song is simply… Perfect.  IMHO, this is one of only three such “immaculate albums” ever – the other two being “Dire Straits” and “Dark Side Of The Moon”, where every song is a 10.

Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham – the classic Fleetwood Mac line-up – came together for the first time in ’74 – with their relationship catastrophes just hiding under the surface. Stevie and Lindsay’s relationship was on it’s last legs. Christine and John McVie’s five-year old marriage was imploding under the pressure of touring, John’s heavy drinking and Christine’s infidelity. And, Mick Fleetwood, was just becoming aware that his wife (Jenny Boyd – sister of Patti Boyd, of the George Harrison / Eric Clapton fame!) was having an affair with his best friend.

And then in 1975 as they came together to record their second album together – “Rumours“…. it all spectacularly came apart at the seams. Lindsay and Stevie broke up. Very loudly, very angrily and very openly- very American. They wrote songs about their anger at each other. Christine and John broke up too. Very stiff upper lip, very civil, passively-aggressively not talking to each other anymore – very English. Christine wrote songs about her new love and moving on, while John had revenge sex with groupies. And Mick, nursing a broken heart, somehow ended up in a short, torrid affair with Stevie. But this band of incredible musicians took the dark coal of all this heartbreak and brought forth a diamond of an album!  

The opening track on the album – “Second Hand News” – is Lindsay Buckingham‘s go-to-hell song to Stevie Nicks! The first Fleetwood Mac song I ever heard, I still remember how I had a mug of tea in one hand and a samosa in the other as the song came on. I literally stopped – mid-samosa – as the opening riff came on👌. I actually feel it’s the perfect album opener as the opening two lines – “I know there’s nothing to say / Someone has taken my place” – summarise the private life of all five band members in just eleven brutal words. Specifically, it’s a song about rebound sex and how Lindsay is making out with other women “Lay me down in the tall grass/ and let me do my stuff”. And then, his single finger final f-u to Stevie –  “One thing I think you should know / I ain’t gonna miss you when you go”.

Actually, the first song Lindsay Buckingham wrote for Rumours was “Go Your Own Way”. It’s a raw, hurting, angry, break-up song – and it absolutely rules! Lindsay was lashing out at Stevie Nick’s, while plaintively telling her he still loved her

“Loving you / Isn’t the right thing to do
How can I ever change things/ That I feel?
If I could / Baby, I’d give you my world /
How can I /When you won’t take it from me?”

How sad is that! 😔…..And in true Lindsay style, he followed that with a big f-u line to Stevie, dissing her with  “Packing up / Shacking up is all you want to do”. This song was all about pushing Stevie’s buttons, getting her mad and hurting her – and boy, did Lindsay succeed! Every time Lindsay sang these lyrics in a concert, Stevie was the one doing backing vocals / harmonies with him. As she says herself, each time she just wanted to walk across the stage and strangle him for saying that all she wanted to do was sleep around! 🤬

“Dreams” was Stevie’s philosophical response to “Second Hand News”.

Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom / Well, who am I to keep you down? /
It’s only right that you should play the way you feel it / But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness”.

Knowing that Lindsay must hurt and needed to deal with their breakup in his own way – even if that was making out with lots of other women. As someone who still cared about him, Stevie wanted to warn him that these women are all “players”, only interested in him because he’s famous. And that such women will come and go, till one day he’s be emotionally mended …

“Oh, thunder only happens when it’s raining / Players only love you when they’re playing/
Say, women, they will come and they will go / When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know”.

“Dreams” went to #1 in the US. Bizarrely, it is Fleetwood Mac’s only US #1 – I don’t mean it doesn’t deserve to be #1 but what about the rest of their songs – there are at least 10 other Mac songs that should have been #1!!

Over the year that the band spent recording Rumours, Lindsay did seem to come to terms with their breakup. Having found someone new, the last song he wrote for the Rumours album was “Never Going Back Again”. For me, it’s one of the most beautiful songs on the album – Lindsay’s voice and his incredible acoustic guitar are just magical. And the lyrics – oh man, what pathos! Someone coming out on the other side of a breakup, reminding himself not to repeat his mistakes again. 😞

Now, while Stevie and Lindsay’s relationship was exploding messily, the McVie’s were going through the quieter, more English slow-motion crash of their marriage. A few months before they got together to record Rumours, Christine told John she wanted out of their marriage. She then wrote this incredible love song for the album. It’s one of my favourite songs of all time – a joyous celebration of the mad, glad, giddy feeling of being in love. 😍

Sadly, Christine wasn’t writing about loving John McVie 😥. She had started an affair with the band’s lighting director, Curry Grant and this song was about him. And to avoid a fight with John, she told him the song was about her new dog! Surely, John must have been very drunk all this time – after all, how can anyone believe that lyrics like “Sweet wonderful you / You make me happy with the things you do” and “You, you make loving fun / And I don’t have to tell you but you’re the only one” are about a dog?! And I shudder to imagine what John must have felt like standing on stage, playing the guitar while his soon-to-be-ex-wife sang about how someone else makes loving fun for her! Heart wrenching!

As if to make up for this, Christine then wrote “Don’t Stop”, an optimistic message to John (and to herself) about moving on from their breakup.

If you wake up and don’t want to smile / If it takes just a little while
Open your eyes and look at the day/ You’ll see things in a different way
All I want is to see you smile / If it takes just a little while
I know you don’t believe that it’s true / I never meant any harm to you

Even without the context of this tragic love story, it’s a fantastic upbeat song about the future. I must confess that there have been enough times I’ve been down and out, when this song has given me the courage to get back on my feet and recharge my batteries. Thanks Christine!🥰 RIP

“Songbird” is Christine’s finale on the album. Apparently, it took her just 30 minutes to write it, around midnight one evening. However, when the song came to her, she had nothing to record it with. Scared that she would forget the melody if she went to sleep, she stayed up all night, humming the tune to herself! 😱☺️

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

Fleetwood Mac signed off the album with “Gold Dust Woman” – their ode to the mountain of cocaine that fuelled their creative fires in a year of emotional storms that would have destroyed lesser bands. The band had so much cocaine they actually wanted to acknowledge their dealer in the liner notes of the album! 😂 Unfortunately, the dealer got shot just before the album was released and so was never celebrated on what became one the biggest selling albums of all time! 😅

Do yourself a favour – now that you know the back stories of all these songs – please listen to the album again. Do tell me in your comments if you can feel all new emotional dimensions – the joys and the despairs, the betrayals and the promises – in each poignant lyric from this incredible band!