Making Rumours by Ken Caillat

[michelej1]

La Jolla Light by Pat Sherman, June 4, 2013

http://www.lajollalight.com/2013/06/...80%99s-june-6/

What: Book signing with Ken Caillat (producer of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’)
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 6
Where: Warwick’s, 7812 Girard Ave.
Contact: (858) 454-0347, warwicks.com

Ken Caillat says he’s thankful for the year he spent producing Fleetwood Mac’s Grammy Award-winning pop rock masterpiece, “Rumours.” However, more than 35 years later he still finds it hard to sit back and enjoy hits such as “Dreams” or “Don’t Stop” without recalling the well-documented drama, tension and drug use the band was caught up in while recording the album in 1976.

“There was Champagne thrown in people’s faces, yelling, screaming and storming out of the room — and a lot of tears,” recalled Caillat, who has also produced albums for Harry Chapin, Michael Jackson, the Beach Boys and, more recently, his daughter, Grammy Award-winning pop star Colbie Caillat.

“There was a point where we wondered, are we actually going to be able to finish the record? Are people going to be able to hold it together? Are they going to want to hold it together?

“I personally had thousands of hours invested in the project and we (Caillat and co-producer Richard Dashut) were concerned that all this great work we’d done might just disappear.”

Caillat will be at Warwick’s bookstore 7:30 p.m. June 6 to read from his new book, “Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.”

Released Feb. 4, 1977 (less than a month after it was finished), “Rumours” would go on to sell 44 million copies and include the chart-topping hits, “You Make Loving Fun,” “Go Your Own Way” and “The Chain.”

The lyrics, written almost entirely on the spot during sessions, reflected the failing personal relationships between band members, most notably the breakup of guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and vocalist Stevie Nicks, and of vocalist-keyboardist Christine McVie and bassist-husband John McVie.

“Everybody wanted to break up with their significant other, for one reason or another, and it all kind of came out in a therapy session with me in the room,” Caillat said.

However, amidst the acrimony and mayhem, there was plenty of magic, Caillat said, including Nicks’ haunting howl at the end of the song “Gold Dust Woman,” recorded while Nicks was twirling around the studio with her headphones on.

“We sat there for two or three hours (waiting) for her to get in the mood, the spirit,” Callait recalled. “I believe we turned the lights down and lit candles around the studio. She had a little bit of pot, a little bit of Courvoisier — and I’m sure a little coke, too.”

Of the band members, Caillat said Buckingham lit up the most.

“As I wrote in the book, Lindsey was a very nervous guy. … He’d continuously, nonstop be rolling a joint … maybe only take one puff and put it down and then five minutes later light it up again. Most of the rest would only do it every two hours or something — just a little bit. … They were always looking for the right headspace to be creative and spontaneous.”

Though the sessions, largely recorded at Record Plant Studios in Sausalito, Calif., were constantly on the verge of derailing, during the midst of a particularly heavy “crying session,” the band’s manager phoned to offer some persuasion.

Fleetwood Mac’s previous, self-title album (“Rhiannon,” “Over My Head,” “Landslide”) was making its way up the charts, and their manager promised a big payoff if the band could keep it together to finish “Rumours.”

“He said, ‘If you’re able to duplicate the success of this record, you’ll probably be guaranteed superstars and be rich for life. … They looked at each other and said, ‘Holy crap … I get it.’ They all kind of said, basically, let’s put all our suffering and differences aside and we’ll make a great record” — and dissolve Fleetwood Mac after it’s finished, Caillat said.

However, he added, “It wasn’t quite so easy to do, because the lyrics were all about the breakup. So, every now and again, somebody would be working on a song and one of the lyrics would (sting) and another fight would break out.”

However, Caillat said, that familiar human drama “was embedded in the music so deeply that 35 years later it still resonates with people. It’s probably why the record sold 44 million copies.”

Despite working 14-15 hour days, nearly seven days a week, recording “Rumours” was also a transformative experience for the young Caillat, who was hired as an engineer, then eventually given more duties and creative license, eventually being granted a portion of the album royalties.

“Partly why I wrote the book is because it was such an amazing year for me — being at the right place at the right time and watching this amazing music go down,” he said.

The book is written in diary format, allowing the reader to follow the band through the recording process.

“I wanted people to feel what it (was like) … to sit with the real band every day —they come in, they’re cranky, they’re hung over, whatever, they’ve got to work and they hope they have some magic that day.”

The follow-up
Despite the band’s promise to “go their own ways,” two years later Caillat and Dashut were back in the studio working on Fleetwood Mac’s follow-up album, “Tusk.”

So, had the band mellowed or gained perspective during those two years?

“No, just the opposite,” Caillat confided, noting that the now affected rock stars each arrived at the studio with personal assistants and their preexisting grudges.

“The relationship issues were still there,” Caillat said. “John could never forgive Christine, … Lindsey would always be on Stevie’s case. …

“They had made a lot of money off of ‘Rumors’ and they were now superstars and there was a decadence factor. They all had their own personal stash of whatever their favorite drugs were and we had lobster brought in every night for dinner and built our own million-dollar studio to record. Christine had to have her Pouilly-Fuissé wine or the session would end and she’d be furious.”

To make matters worse, Buckingham demanded complete creative control, threatening to leave Fleetwood Mac if the rest of the members didn’t follow his lead, Caillat said.

“Lindsey decided he didn’t want to do another record like ‘Rumours.’ He was looking for a new self and he didn’t know who he wanted to be. … He wanted everything to sound grungy.

“That record was basically made under a hostage situation, if you will, loosely speaking. It was very strange, just very decadent,” including the nearly impossible task of recording the USC Trojan marching band at Dodger Stadium for the album’s title track (Mick Fleetwood’s brainchild).

“Actually, it’s a terrific album but at the time I had my doubts,” Caillat said. “I was so embarrassed of the sound. It was just so grungy. It took every bit of effort we could to make it clean and enjoyable.”

[michelej1]

The Examiner, December 27, 2014

http://www.examiner.com/article/flee...making-rumours

Ever try listening to a Fleetwood Mac song and not singing along? It can’t be done. For me, Fleetwood Mac are memories of being a kid, car rides and Stevie Nicks’ voice over the radio-airwaves. During the early 80s when MTV emerged, Fleetwood Mac’s music videos circulated all across the music channel. “Gypsy,” off of the band’s 13th studio album, “Mirage,” became the first “World Premiere Video” on MTV in 1982, and images of Stevie Nicks’ twirling are forever engrained in my mind. In later years, working in the radio industry, I would become more familiar with the band’s earlier music and enamored with its charm. Fleetwood Mac rendered an image of complete synergy, as if each member were born into the group, and from it they released music that was deeply rooted in majestic melodies, that has transcended generations.

In March 2014, Fleetwood Mac announced that they would be going on a 2014-2015 tour, titled, “On With The Show.” This tour would include all of the original members, which meant the return of keyboardist, Christine McVie, who quit the group in 1998 after three decades. To fully appreciate the significance of this “coming home” you have to delve into the band’s history. During the pivotal years surrounding Fleetwood Mac's momentous 1977 album, “Rumours,” coproducer of the record, Ken Caillat, documented his experience working with the group in the book entitled, “Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.”

Music documentaries have a universal appeal, the narrative stories take you inside the striving creators and you envision their dire hopes and dreams of trying to make it. Often these stories are told through the eyes of the musician, it’s rare when the experience is shared from another perspective, a viewpoint from someone that is equally connected to the music - such as the audio engineer and producer. The book, “Making Rumours,” is not only a behind the scenes look into the making of the phenomenon that was “Rumours,” but is expressed from a very personal voice whose hands crafted each song through layers upon layers of many moving parts.

In “Making Rumours,” Caillat skillfully details the formation of threading together a song to where you can visualize him in the control room carefully manipulating different sounds and acoustics. Easy to grasp that a job of a recording engineer is key in the mixing and reproduction of sound but to be responsible for completely changing the direction of a song based on your ear is a talent all on its own. “I had actually played the console as if it were a musical instrument. In fact, I learned that it was. I almost felt as if I was one of the musicians in the band,” Caillat said when mixing “Go Your Own Way.” As I read each chapter I felt the intimate production that went into each song, the producers were guiding the musicians to bring each track to life by opening it up and stretching it to its ultimate potential, they were a team.

“Making Rumours” shares a similar vibe to the film documentary, “Sound City,” directed by Dave Grohl. The book opens the doors inside the studios of the 70s and you feel how each recording space created its own unique extension of sound, “Recording studios back then were designed to feel like a cocoon,” Caillat describes in the book. For Caillat and his coproducer, Richard Dashut, the studios were their haven for upwards to a year while composing from start to finish, rarely getting days off. Secluded from the world and thrown into close quarters for months with a group of rising musicians in the 70s you’d have to imagine there’d be some drugs, drama and good times, and there was. Family ties bonded and broken, and sadly, once success creeps in, the camaraderie once shared is all but forgotten through the years. But “Making Rumours” does not harp on the negative aftermath of stardom, perhaps that tale will be told in another book, yet it’s the story of a young aspiring recording engineer who just wanted to be good at his job, respected by the people he worked with and how he landed an opportunity of a lifetime working on the third largest selling album of all time.

I met up with Ken Caillat and my love of music, its history and the curiosity of the old studio days prompted me to ask the Grammy-winning producer, “What is the biggest difference recording in analog versus digital as far as the “feel” of the whole studio experience?” Caillat responded, “Digital Pro-Tools are so fast — there’s no rewind time, no time to talk to the artist and tell them what you liked, keep the doubts out of their mind.” “We need to slow the process down, give more time to digest and feel it.” We talked about making records today and how most musicians record at home, not because they want to but because it’s cheaper. Caillat suggested that if young artists want to record themselves, record at home - but then go to a studio and mix, sounds like a good compromise that would prevent so many studios from closing their doors. “Studios need to offer something that you can’t get at home, like really great reverb, really great speakers,” added Caillat.

Thirty plus years after the release of “Rumours,” Caillat watched Fleetwood Mac perform at The Forum in Los Angeles, not from the side of the stage or with a backstage pass but as a regular fan in the crowd. I asked Caillat, “So how did they sound?” Caillat replied, “They sounded great but it was like I fell asleep for thirty years and woke up and everybody was so old.” Caillat added, in regards to the music business, it’s sad when touring becomes “a grab for the money” and that most musicians in groups don’t get a along; they go on tour and they’re “stuck with each other, it’s like they can’t get a divorce.” Caillat isn’t especially close with the members of Fleetwood Mac anymore implying that the musicians are not accessible through their herds of assistants. The former Fleetwood Mac producer has managed to keep in touch with the group’s co-founder, Mick Fleetwood, and still talks to coproducer, Dashut, which is comforting as you get to know him in the book and follow their friendship through the making of the record.

Today, Caillat keeps busy as the CEO of Sleeping Giant Music Group, a pop and rock label in Los Angeles and heads a production facility in West Los Angeles, Village Studio E, inside Village Recorder Studios. In January 2015, Caillat will open a school for young adults interested in pursuing careers as performers, songwriters, engineers, producers and music industry professionals and his daughter, singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat, will hold the first session.

For more information on Ken Caillat visit his website KenCaillat.com and to grab your copy of “Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album” goto MakingRumours.com.

[elle]

Originally Posted by michelej1

Thirty plus years after the release of “Rumours,” Caillat watched Fleetwood Mac perform at The Forum in Los Angeles, not from the side of the stage or with a backstage pass but as a regular fan in the crowd. I asked Caillat, “So how did they sound?” Caillat replied, “They sounded great but it was like I fell asleep for thirty years and woke up and everybody was so old.” Caillat added, in regards to the music business, it’s sad when touring becomes “a grab for the money” and that most musicians in groups don’t get a along; they go on tour and they’re “stuck with each other, it’s like they can’t get a divorce.” Caillat isn’t especially close with the members of Fleetwood Mac anymore implying that the musicians are not accessible through their herds of assistants. The former Fleetwood Mac producer has managed to keep in touch with the group’s co-founder, Mick Fleetwood, and still talks to coproducer, Dashut, which is comforting as you get to know him in the book and follow their friendship through the making of the record.

except regular fans in the crowd pay beaucoup moolah for their seats, while Ken got comped tickets from the band and was sitting in family and friends section.

[michelej1]

Making "Rumours" - The Inside Story Of Classic Fleetwood Mac Album

http://www.smmirror.com/articles/New...ac-Album/43080

Posted Apr. 11, 2015, 10:34 am

By Mary Avila

In February 1976, Fleetwood Mac convened at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California, with hired engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. The more technically adept Caillat was responsible for most of the engineering and producing of the band's eleventh studio album "Rumours."

Caillat, now a Santa Monica resident, said he nor anyone else could ever imagine what the future held for this album.

The tension was so immense, with two couples breaking up. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buchkingham had a screaming match while recording the song “You Make Loving Fun” while Christine and John McVie were not speaking to each other.

Caillat’s ability for a particular sound is amazing. He felt that Christine Mcvie’s “Songbird” should be recorded in a concert hall’s ambiance. This was recorded in an all-night session at Zellerbach Auditorium, across San Francisco Bay in Berkeley.

But, through everything, the music was heartfelt. The intense emotions and expertise of Caillat made Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" album one of a kind.

First of all, I want to thank you for this interview. It is such an honor to interview an award winning producer. You produced three albums from Fleetwood Mac, but also Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, and Michael Jackson just to name a few major artists.

Thank you, Mary.

What inspired you to write your book after so many years had passed?

I actually wrote it because my friends kept repeating my stories of the events of making "Rumours" to their friends and eventually one of them told a New York City literary agent. He contacted me and said he was interested in representing me in shopping a book about my experiences and stories making "Rumours."

In your book you told numerous stories of drugs, drinking, and fights between couples. What was the worst experience in making this album during that year? And were there a few bad experiences?

There weren't very many bad experience except sleep deprivation, but I think the worse thing was when the master multi-track tape wore out in the middle of recording and we thought we were going to lose the entire album. Fortunately a miracle occurred and allowed us to save the album.

You produced the albums "Rumours," "Tusk," and "Mirage" for Fleetwood Mac. Do you feel that "Rumours" was the most excruciating album to produce?

Not at all, as we all got wealthier and more spoiled, life became more intolerable.

Now, you have known all of the members of Fleetwood Mac. Do you think they have changed from the "Rumours" days?

Absolutely now that they're older, wiser and sober they are enjoying more their success.

How do you feel about the music industry of now, compared to the music industry of 40 years ago?

Artists are getting young and more talented now but the labels are fighting digital piracy and a shorter audience attention span. So the industry wide sales are down and labels take fewer chance and want more assurances from artists on their success potential, leaving a growing pool of unsigned talent. My label Sleeping Giant Music Group was built to help the many unsigned artists.

You have quite an ear for mixing the tracks. What was missing in "Gold Dust Woman." And what did you do to get that sound for the track?

Well I think the song hinged on the keys and the cowbell and of course Stevie's vocals. Ultimately, we took it to the weird/spooky side with things like an electric harpsichord thru an effects box called a jet phaser. We actually had to order it, to make gold dust spookier, mick actually played the keyboard like a percussion instrument. We had to put marker tape on the keys that would be in the songs key so he wouldn't play a bad note. After that we turned down the lights and let Stevie howl like a banshee in the end of the song. And we bought some large panes of glass and bought Mick overalls and a hammer and goggles, put him on a ladder with the glass and had him swing away!

Your daughter Colbie is such an amazing singer. Are there any plans for a concert tour in the future for Colbie?

Thank you. My daughter will be touring throughout the spring and summer on and off while writing new songs for her next album and also writing songs for movies.

Will you be writing another book soon?

Yes, I'm considering write the full sorry about the magic and dysfunction and tension of making the two follow-up albums to "Rumours." I also have a sci-fi planned and a children's book about music.

Ken are you still friends with Fleetwood Mac?

Yes, but we are all so busy, I did go to their recent concert, On with The Show. They were excellent as usual.

Thank you Ken, I am sure everyone can’t wait for you new book.

Thank you Mary, I will let you know when it is published.

[michelej1]

[They don't help people. That's not what they do]

https://30daysout.wordpress.com/tag/stevie-nicks/

30 Days Out Interview: Ken Caillat on January 14, 2013 by 30daysout

by Denny Angelle

Fleetwood Mac was one of the most successful and unique rock bands of the 1970s. After toiling for nearly a decade as a journeyman British blues-rock band, the Mac exploded into mainstream consciousness when they added American pop rockers Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to the lineup.

The peak came in 1977 when Fleetwood Mac released the album Rumours, which yielded four Top 10 singles, sold more than 40 million copies and won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The band took almost a year to cut Rumours and while doing so lived a rock and roll soap opera marked by divorce, infidelity and constant drug use, all of which threatened to tear the band apart.

Buckingham and Nicks were no longer a couple, and they wrote thinly disguised songs about their failed relationship. Christine and John McVie were in the throes of their own divorce, as was drummer Mick Fleetwood. And all the while, the drugs and booze flowed freely.

Ken Caillat, as one of the producers of Rumours, had a ringside seat to the drama. He’s written a book, Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album, that pulls back the curtain on the making of this masterpiece rock album. We caught up with him after he visited Austin to talk about his book at the Texas Book Festival.

30 Days Out: How did you come to write the book?

Caillat: It was a time and an event that means a lot to many people. It was extraordinary to be a part of this album. I’m one of the only people who can write about how this great album was made. It’s kind of my responsibility to tell the story, I wish somebody had done that with the Beatles. While we were making Rumours I wanted to try and jot it all down, and I have extensive records and track sheets of everything we did. Not only was I a producer, I was also a kind of documentarian, I knew the facts of everything we did and when we did it.

Caillat: Actually when I began writing the book I had the intention of going to the band and getting their perspective. So I started trying to set up the interviews with the band, telling them I wanted to make sure it’s 100 percent correct and accurate. And after a while I got this phone call … They declined! They said they don’t help people, that’s not what they do.

30 Days Out: What does that mean?

Caillat: You got me!

30 Days Out: We really like the way you did it, sticking only to your point of view. You really didn’t need the band, right?

Caillat: Well, I am sure there was something they could have enlightened me on … the type of guitar strings they used, or some trick they did that I didn’t know about. I made a rule I wasn’t going to speculate on what they did when they went home. What I knew, what I saw, that’s what I wrote about. It would have been cool to have some of the intrigue that went on, that I only heard about. For example with Christine (McVie) … John (McVie) kept sniffing around the hotel, she didn’t want anything to do with him. Christine had to hide in Stevie’s room.

30 Days Out: We get the impression from the book that Christine was sort of your favorite person in the band.

Caillat: Um, you know, sort of, but not necessarily. She was constant, she could be (unreasonable) at times, but most of the time you could just talk to her. Mick and the others, it wasn’t so easy. Sometimes you didn’t know what was going on and where you stood with them. If they were too high, you couldn’t talk to them.

30 Days Out: Were the members of Fleetwood Mac upset when they learned you were going to write this book?

Caillat: I don’t know … the funny thing is, I have done two DVDs about Rumours for two different companies at two different times. I interviewed the band for each one, and there was no problem. This time, though, after about two months of not getting any answers, I get a phone call saying the band has decided not to participate in my book. I think it was because Lindsey Buckingham may want to write his own book at some point. So he doesn’t want the band helping.

30 Days Out: You had a few problems with Lindsey down the road. How was he to work with?

Caillat: He was just a real nervous, intense guy. I used to say he’d walk in and suck the fun out of the room. There was an engineer who worked on the album after Mirage – Tango In The Night – the engineer read my book and called me up. He said ‘it’s so true. Whenever everyone walked out of the room and I was alone with Lindsey, it was very uncomfortable.’ You know he’s judging you, he’s thinking about something. He’s thinking that you are thinking something about him. At that point, while we were doing Rumours, he was a nervous nellie. He’s just like that: he’d come in in the morning, always rubbing his hands together. He kept a big tape box full of pot, and he was always rolling a joint. Nonstop, rolling a joint. One time I got into an argument with Lindsey in Reno at a casino … he starting yelling at this dealer. I said you don’t treat people like that, you are just a ****ing asshole.

30 Days Out: But musically, he’s a genius …

Caillat: Absolutely, he’s a genius.

30 Days Out: When we look back at 1977 and Rumours, there really was nothing like that album or anything that even sounded like it at the time. When you were making that album, did you have a sense you were doing something really special?

Caillat: Never got that idea. We were all so tired, we were exhausted. If you go to my website and listen to some of these songs in their original form, you’d probably say this is not very good. How those songs grew over 12 months to become these amazing things, it’s truly astonishing. We didn’t know!

Caillat: A friend of mine got to listen to Rumours when it was almost done. He said “I don’t hear a hit.” And we were totally devastated. It’s astonishing to me, that album had 10 radio hits out of the 11 songs. But at the time it came out we were so tired, working 15-18 hours a day on it for the good part of an entire year. I remember at one point driving into the studio in Hollywood, and I saw Christmas decorations on Hollywood Boulevard. And I said ‘Oh, is it Christmas again already?’

30 Days Out: There must have been incredible pressure from the record company to follow up their “white album” (Fleetwood Mac from 1975) with another hit.

Caillat: Just the opposite, no pressure. The record company was sitting
back smoking big cigars, they weren’t in our face. I guarantee it would not be like that if we did the same record today. With a record already sliding down the charts, they’d come in and say who the hell are these new guys? We’re going to use our ‘genius’ which they don’t have to try and make it more commercial. They would ask, why don’t you make it more like Adele?

Caillat: My daughter (singer Colbie Caillat) is going through that now. On her second album the label had a whole team, they came in … and said you should try everything, do some hip hop, do some rap stuff. I said, ‘would you like it if we dyed her hair red and got her a boob job? Would you like that too?’

30 Days Out: With that kind of atmosphere, could you make another Rumours today?

Caillat: Sure! The thing that was amazing was that budgets were big then, and costs were relatively small. We were able to spend 12 months in the studio perfecting every little bit. Analog tape was our tool at the time, it rolled on a heavy reel, and you built a song from top to bottom. When it came time to rewind the tape it may take 2-3 minutes to rewind. While you’re doing it the artist sitting in the studio at the microphone, and you end up talking, you talk about what you did, you played this, I thought you were going to go here … you get this kind of conversation which doesn’t happen in today’s digital world. Now you instantaneously you go back to the top. I have to tell my engineer don’t press play every time, so we can have that time to communicate with each other.

30 Days Out: Rumours is about to come out in a 35th anniversary edition. Are you involved with that reissue?

Caillat: No. Why not? I don’t know, it always astounds me. I’m sure it’s the money. I would have done it for nothing! There was some of that in the first two years, but as time has passed I have really nothing to do with it anymore.

30 Days Out: Going beyond the scope of the book a bit, how did you get to Tusk (1979)? It was so different than Rumours.

Caillat: Yeah, well that’s Lindsey Buckingham. I had full intentions of improving our work on Rumours and making Tusk be Rumours II . Do better on everything. But the second or third day Lindsey came in, he had a bunch of home recordings all full of distortion and grunge. Punk was getting big then, and he was into all of that. He had this big hairdo during and after Rumours …, but now he had freaked out in the shower and cut all his hair off with scissors. It was really weird looking. He said OK, we’re going to do everything different. He made me take all the edge off the guitars, saying that’s how we are going to make this record. It wasn’t what I wanted. Tusk became something totally different, kind of experimental. I said to Lindsey, so you want a darker album? There was a lot of decadence at the time … a lot of drugs, excessive living. It was tough to work with Lindsey at that point. He was just a pain in the ass.

30 Days Out: Do you think you’ll write another book, maybe about Tusk and beyond?

Caillat: You’re the fourth guy to ask me that just today! I have all the information … I went through the tape vaults, all the scans of all the track sheets, instrumentation, date they were recorded. I’ve got all that … I was ready to go, ready to write a Tusk book. In fact, I got about a quarter of the way through. But I stopped because I’m not sure there’s a market for it. This book has only had modest success … for us to get another book out it’s gonna take somebody to come in and say we can do better with a second book. Rumours is a pleasant story, it has a happy ending. I don’t think books about Tusk and Mirage are gonna have happy endings.

30 Days Out: Tell us a little about working with John McVie.

Caillat: It’s weird, John was kind of like Jekyll and Hyde, he was the greatest guy in the world. So soft spoken, then all of a sudden he’d turn on you. Mostly he’d do that when he was drinking, he was a closet drinker. Ninety percent of the time he was just great. Great bass player. He was always complaining I never had the bass loud enough. He made me very conscious of the bass, so I’d leave it up in the mix. One time Gary Katz, Steely Dan’s producer, came in and said you have the best bass sound – how do you do it? I told him, bitching! Have your bass player complain to you all the time!

30 Days Out: What about Stevie Nicks?

Caillat: Back then she was just the cutest little hippie chick. Adorable! She was funny, she had a cute giggle. She loved music, she only knew about three chords on the piano but she could make about 30 songs out of them. Her quirky side was she was always thinking about herself. I learned not to ask how she was doing that day. You’d spend 10 minutes just listening to her talk about herself.

Caillat: I always thought it was amazing, Lindsey and Stevie could never pass a mirror without looking at themselves. That’s just the kind of people they are. They are the kind of people who see a stage and want to be up there. They want the limelight. It’s kind of a double-edged sword … I’ve seen this sweet picture of Lindsey, taken right before Rumours, he’s sitting on the floor in an airport playing guitar. That guy’s gone. As they grew, as the Tusk album got really difficult for me, everybody became an asshole, really decadent, rather full of themselves. Not saying that’s a bad thing, it’s natural. But it wasn’t pleasant.

30 Days Out: How did it end with you and Fleetwood Mac?

Caillat: I had done Mirage (1982) and the live album, and they were gonna do Tango In The Night (1987). It was taking about a year to do and
I just said, you know I’m gonna bow out this time. It ended great. I’m still friends with them, I think.

30 Days Out: So what’s next for you?

Caillat: I am starting a new label, Sleeping Giant records. Gonna be working with new artists, our main thrust will be artist development. And I’m going to continue working with my daughter Colbie. I can take no credit for her, she was born with this perfect voice and she loves to sing. She’s the nicest person in the world, she’d rather roll on the floor with the dogs and do just about anything else. And right now I’m working on on Spanish, Japanese and Portugese translations of Making Rumours. The audio book comes out in April, paperback comes out in April too. And I’m going to keep producing, all the time. Making the best music I can.

[bombaysaffires]

see, Richard often would allude to these same things on his blog, and occasionally would say them, but then he'd immediately pull back or hide behind some rather metaphysical cliches. It was like he felt saying anything honest was disloyal. Think what you want about Ken and whatever axe he may have to grind, but I'm grateful there's at least one person who was inside the circle who doesn't completely toe the company line and only tell the narrative the band wants told.

[johnnystorms]

I guess this explains Stevie's reticence about going into the studio again

[Frankenstein]

Originally Posted by michelej1

I don’t think books about Tusk and Mirage are gonna have happy endings.

I wonder what this means. Maybe the fact that those albums weren't the monster success that Rumours was, but it's not like they were total bombs either. I'd love to read about the making of Tusk and Mirage. Also, I can't see Lindsey writing a book, ever.

[jbrownsjr]

Originally Posted by Frankenstein

I wonder what this means. Maybe the fact that those albums weren't the monster success that Rumours was, but it's not like they were total bombs either. I'd love to read about the making of Tusk and Mirage. Also, I can't see Lindsey writing a book, ever.

When I asked him about it. He said Tusk and Mirage drugs and fighting were far worse than Rumours. One particular member would threaten to leave if she didn't get her way... ;0) The politics became worse as time went on.

[louielouie2000]

Originally Posted by johnnystorms

I guess this explains Stevie's reticence about going into the studio again

How so? Ken is describing the band's behavior 35-40 years ago while they were all strung out on drugs and completely intoxicated by their sudden fame.

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by jbrownsjr

When I asked him about it. He said Tusk and Mirage drugs and fighting were far worse than Rumours. One particular member would threaten to leave if she didn't get her way... ;0) The politics became worse as time went on.

some things never change......