Entertainment Weekly celebrates the 40th anniversary of Rumours
 

Writer Leah Greenblatt ranks the 11 songs, and writes a telling tidbit about each song. I included the three more amusing or scathing comments.

1) Dreams

2) The Chain

3) Songbird

4) Gold Dust Woman

5) Don't Stop

6) Never Going Back Again

7) Go Your Own Way

8) You Make Loving Fun- Basically Christine's sweet way of letting her then husband John know what an amazing time she's having boning the band's lighting director.

9) Second Hand News- Buckingham's giddy, album-opening ode to a post-Stevie re-bow-bow-bah-bow-bound chick who has no idea how much she will not be missed.

10) Oh Daddy

11) I Don't Want to Know- On any other album, it would be a highlight; here, it's just the third best Western-tinged guitar romp about infidelity and forgiveness and rehashing the past while also being totally, totally cool with letting go.

You Make Loving Fun is probably the best song on the album. Gold Dust Woman and Dreams are the other two bests from the album.

I don't know if I could rank them, but Go Your Own Way is the best Fleetwood Mac song of all time.

Yes, this. It is definitely not middle of the pack for this album.

do you have a link to the full article? I couldn't locate it.

GYOW is up there but for me it's The Chain.

I subscribe to EW and got it in the mail yesterday. It's a double issue dated Feb 3/Feb 10 and has the Oscars on the cover. Sorry, I don't have a link.

Yeah--The Chain feels to me like the premier track. But GYOW and then YMLF are not close behind. GDW always struck me as Stevie's best Rumours song.

Everything on the album works so well that ranking the songs seems pointless. But I can't think of another topper than The Chain.

Rumours is a hard album to rank- as the writer noted, even I Don't Want to Know, which she put last, would have been a highlight on any other album. I mean, you've got lyrical masterpieces or showstoppers like The Chain, GDW, Songbird, and GYOW next to simple pop perfection gems like YMLF, SHN, and IDWTK.

Generally, I think most people might rank GYOW, Dreams, Songbird, and the Chain at or near the top, and maybe Oh Daddy, IDWTK, and NGBA at or near the bottom. Though personally, IDWTK is one of my favorites.

The Chain
Songbird
You Make Lovin Fun
Gold Dust Woman
Oh Daddy
I Don't Wanna Know
Go Your Own Way
Dreams
Don't Stop
Second Hand News
Never Going Back Again

Then shake it up and do it again because they are all amazing tunes.

I have The Chain, GDW, Dreams and GYOW at top. Don't Stop at the bottom. Very hard to rank these. This is one brilliant record.

You've heard Why, and Gypsy and Sara, right?

Yes--the shake up method! But your top and bottom choices here are mine always.

I have to agree with @Wdm6789 Many true fans would beg to differ that GYOW is the best of all time. In fact, while it is a great song and is several Top 100 Rock Songs or Angry Breakup Songs, I can't say its their best. Perhaps one of the most recognizable, but the best?? My top FM songs vary based on what I'm feeling at that time or whats going on??

Ranking the Rumours songs is like nailing jello to a wall. Its really impossible to do. The album flows nicely and is a complete project.

I think you could apply different definitions for best.
In some ways I think The Chain is the best...I'd certainly describe it as the 'greatest' FM song.
Go Your Own Way is also up there.
But I'm with you on those three songs- they are just perfection. I was listening to Sara in the car very recently and it struck me as being the most beautiful piece of music...ever. Some people dismiss it as simple and monotonous but it really is just heavenly.

I agree, it's what really drew me into Fleetwood Mac (along with the Gypsy video). It still captivates me each time I listen to it. My preference is for the original album track, not the edited, live, or demo versions (the "cleaning lady" phrase is cute, but those "ooh-aahs" are so tacky and ruin the song for me).

The Chain
Go Your Own Way
Second Hand News
Oh Daddy
Gold Dust Woman
You Make Loving Fun
Never Going Back Again
Dreams
Songbird
Don't Stop
I Don't Want to Know

That can change day by day. Not a bad song in the bunch.

FLEETWOOD MAC-RUMOURS 40TH ANNIVERSARY-LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM, STEVIE NICKS, MICK FLEETWOOD

When California musical duo (and lovers) Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined British blues-rock veteran band Fleetwood Mac, their first collaboration in 1975 (their “white album” ) sold more copies than any previous album in the long history of their label. No one was in any way prepared for this new line-up’s stunning initial success, so you can imagine the in-house anticipation for Fleetwood Mac’s next effort. They had to wait a full year for it, however, as four of the five members were breaking up literally in the studio while Rumours was being recorded. Fleetwood Mac co-founder drummer Mick Fleetwood joins Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks with me In The Studio for one of history’s most popular albums ever at an estimated forty million sold worldwide, an album that Rolling Stone magazine ranks at #25 on their Top 500 All Time list .- Redbeard

YOU CAN STREAM IT HERE: http://www.inthestudio.net/redbeards...-rumours-40th/

Listening now!

That was fantastic!

It was good. The Lindsey stuff was fresh but the Mick and Stevie parts were rehashed from other interviews. Part of me is very tired of hearing the Rumours stories over and over for the past 40 years. Lindsey did tell new stuff that I have not heard before. Lindsey also is the only one to mention the 40th anniversary of Rumours which is more evidence the Stevie and Mick parts were recycled.
I have to correct the record with Redbeard though. Fleetwood Mac (1975) had 3 hits, not 2 hits. Over My Head hit #20 was the biggest "hit" of the Mac at that point. I hear Over My Head on the radio as much as Say You Love Me. It drives me crazy when people discard hit songs that don't make it to the top 10 or 11. One of the Doors biggest hits is Riders on the Storm. It hit #20 on billboard. No one discounts its a hit from the Doors :eek:

Lindsey's interview was old too, it was just more recent.

P.S. Found it, most if not all of Lindsey's parts were from his 2014 Readbeard interview here: http://www.inthestudio.net/online-on...ckingham-pt-1/

We rank every tune on Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ from worst to best

Great albums come with great stories. Sometimes they’re born of horrendous heartbreak, like Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago or Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Sometimes they’re born of rage, like Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill or Kanye West’s Yeezus. Sometimes they’re born out of drug-addled daydreams, like The Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow.
Sometimes, they’re born from an explosive combination of all of those things. Rumours is such an album.
In 1976, Fleetwood Mac were falling apart. John McVie and keyboardist-vocalist-songwriter Christine McVie divorced after eight years of marriage. Guitarist Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks finally called an end to their volatile, on-off again relationship. Mick Fleetwood’s wife had an affair with his best friend. To add further fuel to the emotional fire, the band’s cocaine habit was spiralling out of control.
Despite all this, the band pressed forward with recording the follow-up to 1975’s Fleetwood Mac. In the Spring of 1976, they retreated to a studio in California and proceeded to pull together Rumours.
What emerged was a a once-in-a-lifetime record. Rumours is a brutal examination of the politics of relationships, personalities, and ambition. Despite barely speaking to each other – or in Buckingham and Nicks’ case, screaming at each other – they still managed to produce work that capitalised on their best qualities. Each member hit their stride as songwriters, from Buckingham’s immortal ‘**** you’ to Nicks with ‘Go Your Own Way’, to Christine McVie’s delicate ‘Songbird’, to Nicks’ twisting and beguiling ‘Dreams’.
To listen to Rumours is to hear the profound tensions and innermost thoughts of the band played out through music. Even 40 years later, the songs sound as immediate and raw as they felt when they released. To listen to Rumours is to listen to a bottled moment in time.
Here’s every track from the album, ranked from worst to best.

11. ‘Don’t Stop’
‘Don’t Stop’ doesn’t just take the cake for the worst song on Rumours, it’s in the running for the worst Fleetwood Mac song of all time. The glib, saccharine piece of positivity has been the bane of primary school child ever since it was released.

10. ‘You Make Loving Fun’
It’s the squelchy bass line and cascading harmonies that makes ‘You Make Loving Fun’. During recording, McVie told husband John that the lyrics referred to her dog, only later revealing to him they were written about an affair she had had during their relationship breakdown.

9. ‘Second Hand News’
“I know there’s nothing to say / Someone has taken my place.” The opening lines of ‘Second Hand News’ – and by extension, Rumours, as it’s the opening song – well and truly set the tone of the album. Also those strange, percussive sounds? That’s Buckingham hammering on a plastic chair.

8. ‘Oh Daddy’
The instrumentation and production on ‘Oh Daddy’ is arguably the best on Rumours. From the intertwining of guitar harmonics with the sliding bass line, to the guttural stabs of piano, to the sudden crescendos of drums – ‘Oh Daddy’ is musically enthralling.

7. ‘Songbird’
Christine McVie had been persistently overshadowed by the more beguiling Nicks, but not on Rumours. McVie’s gentle songwriting is a salve to the fire of Buckingham and Nicks, and nowhere is this more apparent than through the softness of ‘Songbird’.

6. ‘I Don’t Want To Know’
‘I Don’t Want To Know’ wasn’t written during the Rumours sessions, but was a track from when Buckingham and Nicks were performing as a duo prior to joining Fleetwood. It’s inclusion on the album was rather last minute, as a replacement for Nicks’ song ‘Silver Springs’, which the rest of the band felt wouldn’t fit on the album. Nevertheless, ‘I Don’t Want To Know’, with its conciliatory approach to the end of a relationship, fitted well.

5. ‘Gold Dust Woman’
Famously recorded at 4AM, with Nicks having wrapped her head in a scarf to dull her senses and heighten her memories and emotions, ‘Gold Dust Woman’ is the peak of Rumours’ mysticism – and was heavily inspired by a dust of a different colour.

4. ‘Never Going Back Again’
‘Never Going Back Again’, with its Ry Cooder-inspired finger picking and bubbly beat, is by far the prettiest thing on Rumours. Written after Buckingham had a rebound affair after breaking with Nicks, it captures him at a rare moment of introspection.

3. ‘The Chain’
‘The Chain’ is the dark and tempestuous core of Rumours – and the only song on the album to be credited to all five band members. Buckingham and Nicks trade stinging lyrical barbs over a sea of bass and drums – it’s hard not to recoil when Lindsey spits: “If you don’t love me now/ Then you’ll never love me again.”

2. ‘Dreams’
Nicks wrote ‘Dreams’ in 10 minutes, sitting on a bed with just a keyboard drum pattern and a small cassette recorder. The band were initially reluctant to include it on the album – Christine McVie famously called it “boring” – but lucky they did, for ‘Dreams’ is Stevie Nicks’ magnum opus.

1. ‘Go Your Own Way’
If, at the end of the day, Rumours comes down to the complex interplay of Buckingham and Nicks, then nothing can top the free-falling emotional barrage of ‘Go Your Own Way’. It’s thunderous, with drum fills that Buckingham pinched from The Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’, and clanging acoustic strums that lift up Buckingham’s sprawling guitar solos.
It’s Buckingham’s final, angry goodbye to Nicks. During recording, when Nicks requested that he remove the lyric “packing up, shacking up is all you wanna do”, he refused.



http://fasterlouder.junkee.com/rank-...st-best/870599

Ready to feel old? Rumours by Fleetwood Mac is turning 40, and we dug up 5 facts to celebrate

Hearing the age of a classic album can serve as a pretty mean punch in the face. Who wants to know that the gem of their youth, a record they grew up obsessed with, has turned 10, or 20, or 30? Nobody likes feeling old.
Well time to apply for your first pensioner’s card, because this one will hit you like a freight train stocked with a ton of bricks.
Rumours, the drama-studded dream pop masterpiece of Fleetwood Mac is turning 40 years old. On the 4th of February 1977 this iconic record hit the shelves, starting a four decade journey through every genre, sub-genre and experimental metagenre which has popped up since.
Somehow, it reigns supreme. No joke, it was the 5th best selling vinyl in Britain last year. It’s high time to celebrate this glorious mid life crisis, as we run through some things you didn’t know about.

Was it the drama, musicality, character or celebrity culture which made Rumours so iconic? Likely, all of the above.

“Shacking up is all you wanna do”
Stevie Nicks wasn’t a huge fan of the lyrics to the album’s most successful track Go Your Own Way. Obviously a song about yourself being the singer’s past paramour is never going to land well, but that doesn’t mean Nicks wasn’t vocal about it.
She called the lyrics “angry, nasty and extremely disrespectful.”

Success immeasurable
Rumours was obviously a successful record, one of the most successful ever, but the numbers it clocked up are simply staggering. It’s gone platinum 11 times in the UK and 20 in the states, hitting a cool average of just over one million sales per year since 1977, which is around 2500 copies every day.
What’s curious was an initial divide in the record’s success between it’s two main audiences. In the US Rumours held the number one spot on the charts for 31 weeks, while in the UK it managed… one.

A dynamite demo
It’s night impossible to think of Go Your Own Way with even the slightest difference – the song is on a level of familiarity up there with Here Comes The Sun or Smells Like Teen Spirit. It’s ingrained.
The first take of the track was surprisingly close to the last, with some choral layering, atmospheric instrumentals and some lyrics being the only difference. Buckingham’s aforementioned “Shacking up is all you wanna do” was nowhere to be heard in this early take.

It’s complicated
While Rumours is nigh on your perfect album, it’s canonical status can be attributed in part to the extensive, soap-opera drama which surrounded it’s recording process.
A diagram of relationships between each of the band members, their lovers and even their spouses would look more like a spider web than any regular polygon.
However, the magic of Rumours was the anaesthetic effect it had on Fleetwood Mac’s tumultuous inner workings. While Nicks was known to glare at Buckingham between takes and sling insults like “**** you, asshole. You can go to hell”, there was an electricity in those recording rooms brought on by the record’s potential energy.
Later Mick Fleetwood explained it perfectly; comparing the situation to a divorced couple remaining united over the love of their kids.
“You break up but you want to do the right thing, not to hurt the *children. The album was our baby. That’s what made an impossible thing possible.”

The balls
A standout feature of the album cover is the set of family jewels proudly draped between Fleetwood’s legs. Unless you had been privy to their live shows, you wouldn’t know that these had actually been a recurring element of his stage get-up for a number of years.
They’re actually a set of toilet chains Fleetwood nicked from a club where the band played one of their earliest gigs. He’s since lost them but don’t fear – he has a new pair of ‘lucky balls.’



http://hhhhappy.com/ready-to-feel-ol...-to-celebrate/

These posts are starting to annoy me now :eek:
I hate these Rumours "experts" ranking the songs. To trash Don't Stop with cheezy lyrics is a bridge too far. Yes its been played to death but if it was not released as a single it would be the lost gem of Fleetwood Mac. The piano shuffle is cool and its a great melody. The flow of the song and production are top notch. ...period...end of story.
Worst song ever by Fleetwood Mac? Not by a long shot. Oh my gosh a positive song? Off with her head!

Why Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' Hits Home Right Now
Band confronted their own romantic chaos on 1977 masterpiece, asking tough questions that still resonate

Happy birthday to Fleetwood Mac's masterpiece Rumours, released 40 years ago this week, on February 4th, 1977. Human beings had been mating and separating for several dozen thousand years before Fleetwood Mac existed, but this band walked out of Rumours basically owning the whole concept of breaking up. The emotional trauma behind Rumours is the stuff of legend. As Lindsey Buckingham confided to Rolling Stone at the time, "Being in this band really ****s up relationships with chicks." Buckingham split with Stevie Nicks. Christine McVie divorced the bassist and moved in with the lighting director, shifting John's wedding ring to a different finger. Mick Fleetwood left his wife Jenny Boyd and fell for Nicks. As John McVie put it, "About the only people in the band who haven't had an affair are me and Lindsey."

"Of all the elite bands of the Seventies, we're the only one touring with the same lineup we had in 1975."
It's an album that has eerie soothing powers when you hear it in the midst of a crisis, which might be why it hits home right now, with our minute-by-minute deluge of apocalyptic news, the rottenest month to be an American since FDR died. People have always gravitated to Rumours in hard times – it's the sound of five rock stars trying to plant their feet in the middle of a landslide, looking for strength amid all the emotional carnage. "Everybody was pretty weirded out," Christine McVie told Rolling Stone. "Somehow Mick was there, the figurehead: 'We must carry on. Let's be mature about this, sort it out.' Somehow we waded through it." You know things are desperate when the voice of maturity is Mick Fleetwood. But Rumours remains so powerful because it's so ruthlessly clear-eyed about the crisis, instead of smoothing it over. After all the tantrums and breakdowns and crying fits, the album ends with Stevie Nicks asking you point blank: "Is it over now? Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?" If the answers are "no" and "no," you flip the record and play it again.
The battle of Lindsey vs. Stevie is the heart of the album – it's still strange to see the Mac take the stage and open each show with these two lovebirds chanting "The Chain" together. As Stevie told me in 2014, "We write about each other, we have continually written about each other, and we'll probably keep writing about each other until we're dead. That's what we have always been to each other. Together, we have been through great success, great misunderstandings, a great musical connection."
Maybe, as Stevie warns in "Gold Dust Woman," rulers make bad lovers – but these two are just so damn great at being bad lovers. You can hear the tension explode in Lindsey's "Go Your Own Way," where all three singers join their voices for a rant about packing up and shacking up. For some reason, this song generated harsh vibes. "Now, I want you to know – that line about 'shacking up'?" Nicks said in 1980. "I never shacked up with anybody when I was with him! People will hear the song and think that! I was the one who broke up with him." So what went wrong? "All he wanted to do was fall asleep with that guitar."
The Seventies had so many divorce classics – Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Carole King's Tapestry, David Bowie's Low, Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear – except Rumours is where you hear the broken couples do their mourning and moaning together. It's like if every woman on Blood on the Tracks got to narrate her own verse, from the topless dancer to the Dante freak to the mathematician. There's pain all over the music, but there's also enough playful energy and lust to remind you why these bad lovers find it tough to let go. As Sly Stone sang in "Family Affair," perhaps the finest 1970s divorce song that doesn't involve a single member of Fleetwood Mac, it's a story where you don't want to leave because your heart is there, but you can't stay because you've been somewhere else.

Strangely, when Rumours dropped, the question was whether it could follow up the success of their 1975 blockbuster Fleetwood Mac, which looked like a fluke. The long-running English blues band, originally led by doomed guitar guru Peter Green, rolled through a strange haze of lineup changes, with guys like Danny Kirwan or Bob Welch taking over and moving on. Lindsey and Stevie joined as new kids in town, a pair of hungry San Francisco singer-songwriters scrounging around L.A. The new Mac became a surprise smash – but they paid for it, in a blizzard of narcotic and sexual chaos. "I don't care that everybody knows me and Chris and John and Lindsey and Mick all broke up," Stevie said. "Because we did." But she had no way then of knowing – none of them did – that Rumours would become a myth of monstrous proportions.
Part of it is the musical chemistry, anchored by Buckingham's virtuosic guitars and a rhythm section with a decade of blues gigs behind them. It's Fleetwood and Mac who define the groove – listen to any other band cover "Dreams" and you can hear right away it's not the same song. "The Chain" climaxes with a bass breakdown – remarkably akin to Peter Hook's epochal punk bassline in Joy Division's "Shadowplay." Buckingham showcases his finger-picking in "Never Going Back Again," which sounds like a breezy acoustic interlude until you hear his wounded, defeated vocals. And "Second Hand News" is such an evergreen pop riff, it became a career-making hit two decades later for Hanson, who changed the words to "MMMBop." For some daft reason, the Mac left "Silver Springs" off the album – barely anybody knew it existed until Stevie revived it on their 1997 reunion The Dance, giving Rumours a whole new self-sabotage legend.
There's an optimistic post-hippie fantasy at the core of Rumours, the hope that these civilized adults can be gracious in heartbreak and even empathetic, building a new community in the ashes of the old one. Christine McVie hides behind the "free to be you and me" sunshine of "Don't Stop" and "You Make Loving Fun," even though she's forcing John to play bass on an ode to how awesome it is to bang the new guy. ("I don't have to tell you, but you're the only one" – sure, Chris, that goes without saying.) It didn't work out with a happy ending for Fleetwood Mac – they kept torturing each other through the sublime madness of Tusk and the gloss of Mirage. Stevie made her big solo move with Bella Donna, and generously gave an autographed copy to Lindsey, who set it down on the studio floor and left it there unplayed for two weeks, until Stevie got mad and stole it back. That's why Rumours resonates – instead of a cozy ending where everyone ends up friends, it points to a future of struggle. How do you go on living in a community full of broken faith, face to face with the people who've betrayed you? Forty years after 1977, that question is a lot more than just these five rock stars' problem.



Watch five things you didn't know about Fleetwood Macs 'Rumors': http://www.rollingstone.com/music/fe...ht-now-w464358

How does it make sense to single out Rumours as the one instance when Chris isn't overshadowed by Stevie, and then rank all of Stevie's songs higher than Chris's?

How Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ Became One of the Best Albums Ever

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, this intense, intimate, engaging miracle that we often take for granted, turns 40 this week.

It’s important that we separate this stellar achievement from the ludicrous time in which it was made.

Those of us old enough to remember the 1970s—or rather, when the mid-ish 1970s became the late-ish 1970s, that un-shining time when the freakish, frantic optimism of the Bicentennial cracked into the blackouts and Bowery-trash fires of 1977—may be too quick to file away Rumours with the other gargantuan leviathans of the Jimmy Carter/Ohmygod-Cheap Trick-is-on Midnight Special-era, i.e., do we just throw it all in a bin with the first Boston album, Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell, Frampton Comes Alive, or Hotel California, and be done with it?
But Rumours isn’t having any of that. It is far better than that.

Rumours may have a place in our 1970s experience, but the 1970s experience doesn’t tell us anything about Rumours.

Rumours is virtually nothing like any contemporary record, either mainstream or alternative.

How strange is that?

Rumours was Fleetwood Mac’s 11th studio album, released nearly a decade after Fleetwood Mac’s debut. How many bands attain that rare spot in the sweet and rapturous air of multi-platinum, record-breaking commercial Arcadia—much less achieve artistic transcendence!—on their 11th album? My God, it was their 11th studio album. Their fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth albums hadn’t even charted in the U.K. Only two and a half years prior to its release, the group had been considered so commercially invisible that their manager attempted to send imposters on the road in their place.

Yet Rumours is not only the ninth-best-selling album of all time, it is an adamantine artistic accomplishment that deserves to be mentioned when we discuss The Greatest Albums Of All Time—and it merits being removed from all the silly cultural confetti usually thrown in its direction, and should be examined with great, loving detail.[i]

Rumours is an old, sweet and complicated friend who gets more interesting every time you talk to them. Even when they tell you a story you have heard 88 times, you find some new details, some new angle, some new twist or emphasis you never noticed before.

But first, a few words about the fascinating story of Fleetwood Mac, and the road that led them to Rumours.

Circa 1974 there was no reason to think Fleetwood Mac’s commercial future would be any brighter than that of Savoy Brown, Renaissance, or Fairport Convention (to name three other credible and well-liked acts of English origin who could play medium and small/medium-sized venues in the States and place themselves on the mid-lower rungs of the U.S. charts). More confusingly, by 1974, the Mac had shuffled through a startling array of lineup changes and musical styles.

Between their formation in 1967 and 1970, Fleetwood Mac were an ass-tearing, incendiary blues and boogie band who pioneered some proto-metal tricks (they also had a penchant for both the ridiculous and, occasionally, the elegiac). A listener who was hearing early Mac for the first time might, not entirely inaccurately, lump them in with Gary Clark Jr., Stevie Ray Vaughan, or Cream.[ii]

For the sake of understanding where Rumours came from, our story really begins in 1970, when Danny Kirwan—originally a second guitarist and third vocalist—emerged as a co-leader of the band. Kirwan introduced an element of near-pastoral folk-pop into the mix, transforming Mac’s boogie churn into a platform for gentle and intense excursions into a sad blue pop.

Shortly thereafter, Christine Perfect, a buttermilk alto vocalist of almost aching sensitivity (and a keyboardist of great skill) joined the band, further supporting the transition of the “blues” Mac into a band with folk-pop and art-folk overtones (I covered some of this in a piece I wrote for the Observer in November of 2015 on Danny Kirwan; please pour yourself a Clamato and vodka and read it).[iii]

The initial foreshadowing of Mac’s mid-‘70s mega success can be found on the two Kirwan/Christine McVie-dominated Mac albums, Future Games (1971) and 1972’s Bare Trees.[iv] The difficult and fascinating Kirwan left Mac in late 1972.

American guitarist and vocalist Bob Welch joined the Mac in time for Future Games, and it’s easy—too easy—to identify this as an integral factor in the road to Rumours; I think this is a false flag. Some might say that gummy, tobacco-stained pop songs like “Sentimental Lady” (from 1972’s Bare Trees) preview Mac’s mega-gold future, but I think Welch’s sly, winking, pallid attempts at California snarl and FM bong-blues are an outlier in the Mac story. It is, in fact, Christine McVie’s simplicity and melodicism and the elegant sorrow of Danny Kirwan that anticipates Mac’s future as a gentle yet persuasive bittersweet macramé-and-satin pop machine.[v]

The first Fleetwood Mac album unquestionably recognizable as a “modern” Mac album is 1974’s Heroes Are Hard to Find. This is largely thanks to Christine McVie, whose material combines British post-folk wistfulness with an easily graspable rhythmic and chordal structure that recalls All Things Must Pass-era George Harrison.

McVie’s alluring and affecting contributions to Heroes show that the Rumours-era Mac was already fairly well articulated before Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks even joined the band, and I don’t think she gets enough credit for this. The idea that Mac would be a band that mixed the simple, the soaring, the aching and the accomplished is very largely the gift of Christine McVie, and we see hints of this as early as 1970s Christine Perfect album.

Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac at the very end of 1974, and their first album with the band, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, reached No. 1 (to date, the best performing Mac album in America had been Heroes, which reached No. 34).

I think it’s fair to say that Fleetwood Mac is clearly a beta version of Rumours. Rather dramatically, within the first second of Fleetwood Mac, we meet the clipped, hiccuping hyper pop of Lindsey Buckingham. Buckingham sounds like he’s Andy Partridge writing songs for the Cowsills, or maybe like some holy cross between David Byrne and Harry Nilsson; his opening salvo on Fleetwood Mac sounds almost alien, connected to a new wave future or to the sunny bubblegum of the Rubinoos or Paul Collins (though with that constant, peculiar overlay of an almost Orbison-esque Americana). Even over 41 years later, it still startles.

Although I find Buckingham’s songwriting contributions to Fleetwood Mac thin, his style, his presence, his aggressive and precisely syncopated guitar playing, and his simple but scientific leads are always nearby and pointing clearly to the (near) future.[vi]

And then there’s “Rhiannon.”

On track four of Fleetwood Mac, honey and opium have been poured over the future of the band in the form of this utterly compelling black light and Eve cigarette cat’s heartbeat of a song. In fact, the song itself had been dosed in opium and over-sweetened chamomile tea, since in its original form (performed live, but never recorded, by Buckingham and Nicks), “Rhiannon” was nearly twice the speed, had an almost Southern rock-ish twist, and Nicks’ seductive purr is replaced by an almost Joplin-esque howl.

This transition is very important to note, since it provides a clue about the core genius of the Fleetwood Mac/Rumours-era band: there is something about Fleetwood Mac (whether it’s the grace and glow of McVie, or the Bullet Train-clean pulse of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie) that ropes and wrangles “Rhiannon,” and makes it dreamlike and nearly perfect.

Finally, we arrive at Rumours, released a year and a half after Fleetwood Mac.

One of the defining aspects of Rumours is claustrophobia. Sonic claustrophobia, that is. This, I believe, provides the context for all of its achievements.

The sounds on Rumours are tight, closeted, and largely lacking in ambience. This is virtually unique for a California-based mega-pop band of the 1970s (though more common to the punk records being made at this time in the U.K.).

Ambience—meaning, literal ambience, as in reverb, presence, and the listener’s awareness of the size of the room a band is performing in—is a vastly underrated and important quality. Ambience telegraphs a great deal to the listener about how they are involved in the experience. By creating this masterpiece of virtual non-ambience, on Rumours Fleetwood Mac makes the epic (those amazing arrangements, those amazing songs, those amazing performances) intimate and personal. It’s a very tough trick.

Each and every listener, even if they are listening to the album in a social setting or in a crowd, hears it as if it was a story being told just to them. Because of this, Rumours feels almost like a condensed epic, arranged within an inch of its life but never losing the small-electric ensemble feel.

This intimate ambience also provides a fascinating environment for Buckingham’s intensely orchestrated guitar parts, which are tucked so neatly into the mix that they do not display their feathers, except upon intense examination; discovering the depth and detail of Buckingham’s guitar work on Rumours is like an Easter Egg, or like taking out a magnifying glass and finding the Lord’s Prayer written on the side of a popsicle stick.

If this tight, intimate ambience provides the context for Rumours, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie provide the framework. I cannot stress this enough: For all the praise we can heap on Lindsey Buckingham and the shiny apples he puts in front of the listener, for all the admiration I can express for the warm, expressive genius of Christine McVie, for all the appreciation I have for Stevie Nicks’ sexy, horny voice and the lacy, blowsy cult that sprung up around her, I think that Fleetwood and John McVie are the reason Rumours is Rumours.

Taut, powerful, and utterly devoid of one single bar where they insist on the spotlight, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie’s performance on Rumours is, well, nearly perfect. Because Fleetwood largely eschews crash cymbals, often keeps the four beat on a tom, and plays a tightly screwed hi-hat, his drumming is often nearly invisible; but that just means he’s doing something very, very right. I can think of no English drummer, with the possible exception of session king Bobby Graham, who played with such a mixture of economy and power.[vii]

Bassist McVie, although certainly conscious of the chord changes, plays Fleetwood more than he plays Fleetwood Mac; which is to say he echoes, almost seamlessly, the steady, fat, flat kick drum, crisp snare, and heartbeat toms of Fleetwood’s playing. He underplays the chord changes, and plays exactly with and on top of Fleetwood. The rhythm section’s approach leaves a phenomenal amount of room for the guitars and the vocals to expand, emote, hum, harmonize, twinkle, and chug. Honestly, I think Fleetwood and John McVie’s performance on Rumours is one of the great album-length rhythm section performances in rock history, yet it never draws attention to itself.

Listen to the whole last quarter of “Don’t Stop.” At precisely the time when 99 percent of the drummers, dead or alive, would be trying to throw some variety, rolls, or time-tricky energy-boosting into the piece, Mick Fleetwood remains unwaveringly loyal and constant to the nearly motorik-like metronomic high hat/snare beat he has played through the entire song. Aside from Tommy Ramone, Klaus Dinger, or the aforementioned Graham, I don’t know of any other drummer who would have made this choice.

There is something about Lindsey Buckingham’s accomplishments on Rumours that defies easy description. Where does this gift come from, this ability to spin Harry Nilsson/Brian Wilson-level melody over “Farmer John” chords with Becker/Fagen precision (yet without ever dipping into Steely Dan’s jazzy pastel Capezios)? It’s virtually unique, almost as if Jeff Lynne was producing the Monkees, or Mutt Lange was producing the Association, or Phil Ramone was producing Captain Sensible (hey, that’s a good idea).

Who else, other than gorgeous oddities like Jason Faulkner, R. Stevie Moore or Sean O’Hagan, devote this much attention to getting the most sugary pop so very, very right, and then do it again and again?

As for Christine McVie, the captivating post-folk/pre-Kate Bush melodic melancholy of her presence (often, her blue, sugary woe reminds me of Nick Drake channeled by Hope Sandoval) provides the gorgeous lilting night-light to Buckingham’s proud, rumbling sun.

As for Stevie, well, she’s Stevie, ‘nuff said, and I am very fond of Stevie Nicks, but oddly, I would contend that she’s the most dispensable element to Rumours’ genius. She exists as a public face for this extremely well-tuned machine, but the gears function fine without her. Actually, I’m not sure Rumours contains a Stevie song half as good as “Rhiannon” or her extraordinary “Beautiful Child” on Tusk.

Rumours was a single, shining moment. With Tusk, the extraordinary ensemble playing that had kept Rumours centered and consistent flies off the rails, and that’s probably the reason that the best moments on Tusk belong to Nicks and Christine McVie, because unlike Buckingham, they are still thinking and acting like band members.[viii]

Buckingham’s work on Tusk is damn good (“I Know I’m Not Wrong” is pretty much as good as anything he wrote for Rumours), but it doesn’t sound like Fleetwood Mac. It sounds like Lindsey Buckingham. There is nothing on Rumours, not one bar, that doesn’t sound like Fleetwood effing Mac.[ix]

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is a gift that keeps on giving. What was a generational touchstone has become, with time, a masterpiece worthy of detailed analysis; it is as joyful when heard in 21st-century headphones as it was when it was played on an over-heated stereo at some hazy high school party. It has grown with us, and will no doubt continue to do so.

[i] Confession: I adore Rumours, but it isn’t even my favorite Fleetwood Mac album. I prefer both Tusk and Bare Trees, and if I am going to take off my weighty thinking cap and just throw my head back and shimmy and scream a little bit—not a pretty sight—I would rather listen to the live albums Mac recorded at the Boston Tea Party in 1970.

[ii] The founder and original leader of Fleetwood Mac, guitarist and vocalist Peter Green, somewhat perversely named the band not after himself, but after his rhythm section, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie.

[iii] Perfect, who issued one exquisite must-have solo album in 1970, would be known as Christine McVie when she joined Fleetwood Mac.

[iv] This isn’t entirely true—there’s some hints in the Kirwan-penned material on 1970’s Kiln House—but how bloody complicated do you want me to make this?

[v] Having said all that, here are four fairly important things to note about Bob Welch: First, he introduces the idea that Mac could survive as a one-guitar band, a concept that would have been unthinkable just two years earlier, when the band had three guitarists; second, he compels the group to move to California, and that’s huge; thirdly, his departure in late 1974 paves the way for history; and finally, considering all the extraordinary and damaged characters who have been in Fleetwood Mac (the band has had 16 full and active members) it is an interesting statistical improbability that only three of them—Bob Welch, Bob Brunning, and Bob Weston—have died.

[vi] 1975’s Fleetwood Mac is actually the second Mac studio album to be eponymously titled; the band’s spitting, gray, Chicago-via-Soho debut, released in 1967, is also titled Fleetwood Mac.

[vii] If for some bizarre reason Mick Fleetwood is reading this, I would love to ask him if the vastly important and under-heralded Bobby Graham influenced him.

[viii] In my opinion, the second-best song in Fleetwood Mac’s entire catalog is Christine McVie’s shimmering, ghostly “Never Makes Me Cry” from Tusk. The first, if you were wondering, is “Albatross,” the heavenly instrumental from 1968, which is one of the greatest recordings ever made.

[ix] Buckingham’s solo work in the 1980s is so swallowed up with the desire to be seen as the precocious child in the classroom (a quality evident throughout Tusk, though nowhere on Rumours) as to be almost universally unlistenable. His ’80s solo catalog is replete with quirks and studio giggles that must have seemed smart at the time, but probably sounded dated, distracting, and useless by the time Buckingham got into the parking lot. This stuff is a prime example of what I have always referred to a SMPTE Code Syndrome—when someone becomes so utterly fascinated by all the little noises that the mixing board can make that they completely lose track of what those noises are contributing to the songs. But there is none of that on Rumours, not one iota.



http://observer.com/2017/02/fleetwoo...ersary-review/

"Listen to the whole last quarter of “Don’t Stop.” At precisely the time when 99 percent of the drummers, dead or alive, would be trying to throw some variety, rolls, or time-tricky energy-boosting into the piece, Mick Fleetwood remains unwaveringly loyal and constant to the nearly motorik-like metronomic high hat/snare beat he has played through the entire song. Aside from Tommy Ramone, Klaus Dinger, or the aforementioned Graham, I don’t know of any other drummer who would have made this choice".

THANK YOU TIM SOMMER
FINALLY some love for Don't Stop

I remember Mick saying how prior to the SN/LB era the shuffle Christine played could have been on one of their earlier albums. Mick and Christine rock it and of course Lindsey adds good chops with vocals and some great guitar.

I love Don't Stop. After I saw Christine come back and add her magic back to the Mac... I really appreciated it even more.

What an astonishingly good article. I certainly don't agree with absolutely everything this chap writes but most of it is spot on. I never thought of the 'All Things Must Pass' comparison before but I do kind of get it.

Best bits of this article for me:


For the sake of understanding where Rumours came from, our story really begins in 1970, when Danny Kirwan—originally a second guitarist and third vocalist—emerged as a co-leader of the band. Kirwan introduced an element of near-pastoral folk-pop into the mix, transforming Mac’s boogie churn into a platform for gentle and intense excursions into a sad blue pop.


This intimate ambience also provides a fascinating environment for Buckingham’s intensely orchestrated guitar parts, which are tucked so neatly into the mix that they do not display their feathers, except upon intense examination; discovering the depth and detail of Buckingham’s guitar work on Rumours is like an Easter Egg, or like taking out a magnifying glass and finding the Lord’s Prayer written on the side of a popsicle stick.

If this tight, intimate ambience provides the context for Rumours, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie provide the framework. I cannot stress this enough: For all the praise we can heap on Lindsey Buckingham and the shiny apples he puts in front of the listener, for all the admiration I can express for the warm, expressive genius of Christine McVie, for all the appreciation I have for Stevie Nicks’ sexy, horny voice and the lacy, blowsy cult that sprung up around her, I think that Fleetwood and John McVie are the reason Rumours is Rumours.
Honestly, I think Fleetwood and John McVie’s performance on Rumours is one of the great album-length rhythm section performances in rock history, yet it never draws attention to itself.

As for Stevie. She exists as a public face for this extremely well-tuned machine, but the gears function fine without her.

Rumours was a single, shining moment. With Tusk, the extraordinary ensemble playing that had kept Rumours centered and consistent flies off the rails, and that’s probably the reason that the best moments on Tusk belong to Nicks and Christine McVie, because unlike Buckingham, they are still thinking and acting like band members.[viii]

Buckingham’s work on Tusk is damn good (“I Know I’m Not Wrong” is pretty much as good as anything he wrote for Rumours), but it doesn’t sound like Fleetwood Mac. It sounds like Lindsey Buckingham. There is nothing on Rumours, not one bar, that doesn’t sound like Fleetwood effing Mac.

Buckingham’s solo work in the 1980s is so swallowed up with the desire to be seen as the precocious child in the classroom (a quality evident throughout Tusk, though nowhere on Rumours) as to be almost universally unlistenable. His ’80s solo catalog is replete with quirks and studio giggles that must have seemed smart at the time, but probably sounded dated, distracting, and useless by the time Buckingham got into the parking lot. This stuff is a prime example of what I have always referred to a SMPTE Code Syndrome—when someone becomes so utterly fascinated by all the little noises that the mixing board can make that they completely lose track of what those noises are contributing to the songs. But there is none of that on Rumours, not one iota.



http://observer.com/2017/02/fleetwoo...ersary-review/[/QUOTE]

With the exception that I don't find all of LB's 80s work "universally unlistenable"

"Don't Stop" Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours"

February 4 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of one of the most beloved, not to mention best-selling, albums of all time: Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. While the making of the album was full of drama due to drugs and band in-fighting, Stevie Nicks still looks back on the experience as "fantastic."

While recording Rumours, newly divorced keyboardist Christine McVie and bass player John McVie were on the outs, and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks also were breaking up. In addition, drummer Mick Fleetwood had learned his wife had an affair. But Stevie says they seemed to thrive on the turmoil.

"We were all writing little movies around what was really happening, and we were digging it," she tells ABC Radio. "We were having a lot of fun recording those songs, even though we were falling apart...if anything was keeping us from falling apart, it was going into the studio everyday. And we were totally having a great time."

Rumours co-producer Ken Caillat tells ABC Radio how the band "started throwing champagne in each other's faces and yelling at each other," and that fights broke out in response to the song lyrics, which they all wrote about each other. Stevie, though, insists everything was terrific.

"It was not awful at all, it was fantastic!" she gushes. "We were rich, we were young, we were falling out of love with each other, but, hey... there was a lot of other men and women in the world, and we were all moving on...So as bad as it was, it was still great."

Rumours topped the Billboard album chart and won the Grammy for Album of the Year. It's sold more than 45 million copies worldwide. It featured the hits "Go Your Own Way," "Dreams," "Don't Stop" and "You Make Loving Fun."

Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.



http://abcnewsradioonline.com/music-...wood-macs.html

Don’t Stop: Fleetwood Mac’s Grammy-Winning ‘Rumours,’ 40 Years On

It was the album of a generation — a bestseller boasting hits galore and a backstory that would rival Dynasty and Dallas and the other TV soaps soon to emerge.

It was made by a colorful, attractive band whose first Rolling Stone cover depicted all five band members in bed together.

The year was 1977, the band was Fleetwood Mac, and the album was Rumours.

Incredibly, it turns 40 this week, on Feb. 4.

To say that Rumours changed popular culture would not be an exaggeration. It was the album that lifted what had been a successful, long-lived, onetime British blues band into the sales stratosphere; that launched the unforgettable image of the bejeweled, twirling, scarf-bedecked, deliberately mystical singer Stevie Nicks; that was filled with catchy but often deeply personal songs about disintegrating relationships — and, not incidentally, a polished piece of pop perfection that sounds equally inspirational four decades on.

A significant amount of drugs were involved in its making.

But then, that was the ‘70s, wasn’t it?

Founded in 1967 in London by legendary blues guitarist Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac played wonderful music but changed band members with alarming regularity. By the time Rumours had come to be, gone were great slate of players including guitarists Green, Jeremy Spencer, Danny Kirwan, and America’s own Bob Welch — and in were the colorful pair of Nicks and onetime romantic partner Lindsey Buckingham. They’d joined the band in 1975, and with remaining Mac members Mick Fleetwood and then-married couple John and Christine McVie, recorded an eponymous album that — unexpectedly for all concerned — hit No. 1 and would go on to sell more than 5 million copies.

Then things really got weird.

With the last album’s success of the Christine McVie-penned “Over My Head” and “Say You Love Me” and Stevie Nicks’s own, culturally myth-making “Rhiannon,” recording a follow-up might have been a breeze. But it absolutely was not. Not helping? The decaying personal relationships of literally every band member. The McVies had split and were barely communicating; Buckingham and Nicks were a couple no more; and drummer Fleetwood himself was facing an on-again/off-again relationship with wife Jenny Boyd, which finally ended in 1978.

And about the drug thing: “Those days were crazy,” drummer Fleetwood would later tell writer Craig Rosen in his book The Billboard Book of Number One Albums (Billboard Books, 1996). “It’s no secret that we were definitely abusing drugs in those days. It was one major lunatic party.”

Finally, there was an almost freakishly obsessive drive to record a sonically perfect follow-up. The band first moved en masse to Sausalito, spent nine weeks recording material they ultimately found unsatisfactory, stopped to tour a bit while Fleetwood Mac reached Billboard’s No. 1 slot, then watched in horror as their intended master tapes for the new album started wearing thin due to multiple overdubbing.

But when it was done, it was done, and Rumours — as it was called, at John McVie’s suggestion — was first announced by the December 1976 arrival of lead-up single “Go Your Own Way,” a top 10 hit with a telling title and lyric that well represented the coming album’s emotionally turbulent themes.

And then: BOOM!

Rumours soared to No. 1, knocking off no less than the Eagles’ Hotel California, and with its surplus of new hits including “Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” and “You Making Loving Fun,” stayed there for 31 weeks. It would later win the 1977 Grammy for Album of the Year, sell more than 45 million copies worldwide, and in 2014 receive the extremely rare diamond (translation = even better than gold or platinum) certification from the RIAA for U.S. sales of over 20 million. And that was three years ago.

But back then, success — and excess–was taking its toll. There was rough emotional going, and while other albums by this diamond-version Mac would follow — the rewarding and experimental Tusk, a live set, the mildly disappointing Mirage, and the extraordinary (and soon to be re-released in a deluxe version) Tango in the Night — Lindsey Buckingham would then depart, and things were never quite the same again.

Sort of.

While there was an unexpected respite in 1993, when the full band memorably reunited for President Bill Clinton’s inauguration ball and gave “Don’t Stop” — Clinton’s chosen campaign song — an unexpected re-performance, solo albums by nearly every Mac member was the norm for most of the ‘90s.

Fast forward to May 22, 1997, and guess who’s back? Live on a Burbank soundstage, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Rumours, it’s the newly reunited Fleetwood Mac: Buckingham, Nicks, Fleetwood, and the McVies. If making that album had been a case study of study of the impact of excess on business efficiency, time has changed much: From this reunion performance would come an MTV special, a separate VH1 special, a live album (The Dance), and eventually a home video release. And it all served as a preview for an upcoming live tour. Fleetwood Mac: They’re back!

It is still May 1997, a bit later, and I am sitting in a small waiting room in Conway Studios in Hollywood. In one of those uniquely journalistic scenarios, while I sit in the room, recorder and notes nearby, each of the members of Fleetwood Mac is brought in for questioning. Surreal? You bet.

Lindsey Buckingham is discussing his original reason for departing the band back in 1987. “It really was a survival move, emotionally and physically,” he says. “It was just the atmosphere was not very conducive to being creative. A lot of the people had personal problems. It was just in order to regroup — and get back on a track where I felt I was really grounded in the process again, and was sort of, in theory, doing it for the right reasons again.”

Rumours and all that it entailed did much for popular culture, but it’s a good bet it did even more for — and to — the five members of Fleetwood Mac who were a part of it.

Buckingham says the time away from the band has done him very well indeed. “I’ve settled down a lot emotionally, and a lot of that comes from just having been away,” he says. “Really, you break up with Stevie in ‘77, and then you work with her for the next 10 years. I mean, it’s just not normal. It’s just not the way it’s done.” He laughs.

“And you would think, ‘Well, 10 years, get over it, buddy,’ but certain things just did not get resolved until I removed myself from the situation. So there’s that, there’s the fact that everyone’s habits are little bit different now. I mean, Stevie especially — she’s like very reminiscent of the person I used to live with, the person I fell in love with. There’s a sweetness that was totally absent, or blank, before.”

Later, and separately, Stevie Nicks is sitting down, exuding warmth, candor, and the sort of difficult-to-pinpoint personal appeal that made her an entire generation’s most-favorite-ever Welsh Witch.

Did she ever wish things in Fleetwood Mac, back in those days, had gone down differently?

“Oh, it could never have been any different than it was,” she says with absolute conviction. “You know, Lindsey and I didn’t even drink when we joined Fleetwood. We couldn’t afford to drink. So we started drinking like anybody else starts drinking — just to handle the mental pressure. We were really young, you know? Twenty-seven years old, really, really young, and this was all so big and so heavy around us, and people expected so much from us. And all of a sudden we went from barely having enough money to pay for a small apartment to being rich overnight — and how do you deal with that when you’re 27 years old?

“You kind of don’t deal with it very well. And nobody dealt with it very well.

“But all of those problems, and all of those drugs, and all of the fun and all of the craziness, all made for writing all those songs. If we’d been a big healthy great group of guys and gals that just were, you know…” She looks for a word that conveys regular or ordinary. “…then none of those great songs would’ve been written, you know?”

Reconfirming that point of view with warmth, charm, and noticeably excessive height, lanky drummer Mick Fleetwood takes his seat at Conway and discusses the mythology of the Mac, of that Rumours time and all that came with it. And even later.

“No matter how many horrors stories people were told,” he says, “and how many horror stories we told, I think you’ll find when you speak with everyone — the reality is that we never lost, there’s a real underlying love, a true love that is fairly unique, in this band, in my opinion. We’ve all done terrible things to one another, just as lovers do. And now, we truly look at that and go, there’s business involved, but this is not business.”

It was an interesting time back then in 1997, for Fleetwood Mac and how Rumours was then perceived. Don’t forget, it came at the height of punk rock’s popular emergence, and in some ways the band and all they represented — dollars, lifestyle, conspicuous consumption — was the antithesis of all then deemed cool. But not for long. Conspicuous era hipsters like Billy Corgan and Courtney Love were singing Fleetwood Mac’s praises back then. Corgan’s Smashing Pumpkins would go on to cover “Landslide,” and Love herself took on “Gold Dust Woman” and “Silver Springs.”

Buckingham mentions it when we speak of the timeliness of the Mac’s 1997 reunion. “You’ve got this whole younger group of people whose parents used to come see shows,” he says. “And they know the Fleetwood Mac music on record, and maybe because people like Courtney and Smashing Pumpkins have sort of been vocal about saying, ‘Hey, Fleetwood Mac is, whatever, not the enemy anymore — or whatever you want to say about that. The timing of that is great.”

And while the music of Corgan and Love continues to fall in and out fashion, in 2017 the 40-year-old Rumours sounds as fresh and inspiring as ever. These days, music reviewers refer to it when they want to describe a new musical work reflecting deep personal turmoil, frazzled relationships, even gleeful excess, etc. And its impact has only grown with time. As of today, “Go Your Own Way” has been played 110,903,863 times on Spotify — and I reckon that it will continue to be listened to long after that streaming music service ends its run.

Of all people, it might be Nicks who nails what it is that makes Rumours so special.

She is recounting what it felt like to perform that material again — with Fleetwood Mac, in front of that live audience. The reception could not have been more enthusiastic, I tell her.

“It makes you feel a little bit like you’re having a kind of a holy experience,” she says, a bit of the mystic apparently hitting her. “Like we’re all going back to how we were when we heard ‘Gold Dust Woman’ on the radio — when we were driving down the street with the top down on the car, we’re all back there, and the ‘silver spoon’ and ‘dig your grave’ lyrics, and ‘Don’t Stop.’

“It’s like, when I think of those songs, I remember where I was and what I was doing when I was hearing them. And I can see it in people’s faces. I can see… it’s like all of us get to go back. For a little while in time, we get to escape back there.”



https://www.yahoo.com/music/dont-sto...234954265.html

Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ – A Timeless Classic Turns 40
Their greatest album never seems to get old.



“No matter where I am in the world, and I don’t know why it is, I keep hearing Fleetwood Mac tracks.” This is a quote from U2 bassist Adam Clayton in a recent Rolling Stone interview. “Why is it those songs have got such big, strong legs?”

While Fleetwood Mac has had a great career with a bevy of hit albums, let’s say that at least 50% of the time when Clayton — or anyone else — hears a Fleetwood Mac song, it’s from 1977’s Rumours, which turns 40 this weekend (February 4). It’s an album that has sold over 45 million copies worldwide, so it has strong legs, indeed.

Their prior album, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac (also known as “The White Album”) marked a new beginning for the band. It was their tenth album, but the first with new members Lindsey Buckingham (a singer/songwriter/guitarist) and Stevie Nicks (a singer/songwriter), who joined long-time singer/songwriter/keyboardist Christine McVie, and founding members Mick Fleetwood (drums) and John McVie (bass).

Fleetwood Mac was a great album: it had “Rhiannon,” “Over My Head,” “Say You Love Me” and “Landslide.” It put the one-time blues rock band on the map as a major pop act, and has gone on to sell over five million copies.

But Rumours took Fleetwood Mac to a whole other level: it topped the Billboard album charts, spawning an onslaught of hits including “Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” “Go Your Own Way,” “The Chain,” “You Make Loving Fun” and “Gold Dust Woman.” It has sold over 45 million copies.

How great was Rumours? So great that one of Nicks’ finest songs, “Silver Springs,” didn’t make the cut. It was first released as the b-side to “Go Your Own Way,” and the band later recorded it for their 1997 live reunion album The Dance, and today is considered a classic among fans.

As most pop culture fans know, Rumours chronicles the end of several relationships within the band. Buckingham and Nicks, who joined as a couple and as a duo (they’d recorded their debut album as Buckingham/Nicks before entering the Fleetwood Mac fray) were breaking up. Fleetwood was going through a divorce (and would eventually have an affair with Nicks) and the McVies were splitting up as well. Christine was starting a new relationship… with the band’s lighting director.

In the liner notes of Rhino Records’ excellent 2013 reissue of the album, Buckingham says, “I really think there came a time when the sales of Rumours became less about the music and started being more about the phenomenon and the musical soap opera of it all. Something about it really tapped into the voyeur in everyone — including us. And it was voyeuristic in the best way possible; not in a tabloid or exploitative way, but on a more honest and real level.”

Decades later, there are surely those who enjoy listening to these songs and knowing the context in which they were written, as Buckingham notes. But it’s safe to say that the songs have not only transcended their era, but also the drama that spawned them. Listening to Nicks’ “Dreams” today, it’s clear that it’s a breakup song, but it could be about your breakup. “Now here you go again, you say you want your freedom/Well, who am I to keep you down?” Same with Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way”: “Tell me why everything turned around.” Who hasn’t felt that about a relationship as it’s going south? On the other hand, Christine McVie’s “You Make Loving Fun” reads as an enthused ode to a new relationship: “You make loving fun, and I don’t have to tell you that you’re the only one.” To a younger audience, it may not matter that she still shares a last name with the guy plunking the amazing bassline on the song.

“Don’t Stop,” famously used as Bill Clinton’s campaign song, is another Christine McVie composition. “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.” Is that a trite way to say “goodbye” to an ex-? Maybe, but there’s sweetness and compassion there too. And, clearly, what Clinton’s team gravitated towards is the song’s optimistic message, rather than the circumstances that spawned it: “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.” The song was so vaguely written that it could work for anyone: any number of candidates or campaigns could’ve used “Don’t Stop.”

And therein may lay part of the album’s enduring popularity. Sonically, it doesn’t sound especially attached to any era, but more than that, the lyrics — whether you know the context or not — have a universal appeal. It’s not just about breaking up, it’s about breaking up and still being able to look at each other. In a country where so many divorcees have children and still need to be able to communicate with some level of civility, that resonates.

It also resonates because we’re in an era the country seems to be coming apart at the seams. As estranged as protestors may feel from Trump supporters, and vice-versa, it feels like the country is as divided as it has ever been. You may be angry at someone who voted differently than you, but you’re probably even angrier at someone who broke your heart and left you. Perhaps, there’s something to be learned from Fleetwood Mac.

Despite their history, Fleetwood Mac always come together every few years to remind us how great they are together. It’s not always neat; after 1987’s Tango in the Night, Lindsay Buckingham left the band, leaving Nicks, Fleetwood and the McVies to replace him with two guitarist-singers for a tour and a (forgettable) album, Behind the Mask. Of course, the five came together for 1997’s The Dance, but Christine McVie once again left the band the following year. Nicks, Buckingham, Fleetwood and John McVie trudged on with 2003’s double album Say You Will and 2013’s Extended Play EP, before McVie once again rejoined in 2014 for a tour.

While there’s been talk of a new Fleetwood Mac album for a while, Stevie Nicks has spent a lot of time on the road lately doing solo tours. So the latest development in the band’s drama is an upcoming Lindsey Buckingham/Christine McVie duets album, featuring the rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. If this album ever sees the light of day, it will, in all but name, be a Nicks-less Fleetwood Mac album.

Fleetwood Mac fans have been through this before; at this point, there’s little doubt that Nicks will eventually return to the fold. Because all five musicians seem acutely aware that they are stronger together; sometimes they just need some time apart to be reminded of this. And given that their music still seems ubiquitous four decades later, they’re likely to be reminded often.



http://radio.com/2017/02/04/fleetwoo...ours-turns-40/

40 Years Ago: Fleetwood Mac Make a Masterpiece Out of Messy Relationships on ‘Rumours’

After years simmering beneath the surface of mainstream tastes, Fleetwood Mac finally hit the big time in late 1975. The British blues group, which had been around since 1967 and through various lineup changes since then, recruited a pair of California singer-songwriters for its 10th, self-titled album, and everything almost suddenly changed for them.
Thanks to Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood finally scored a No. 1 album, a string of Top 40 hits and a massive tour that helped make them one of the biggest rising bands in the world. And things were about to get a whole lot bigger.
Behind the scenes of all this success, Fleetwood Mac were in a state of disarray — nothing really new for them. But the wrinkles were new this time, as the band’s two couples — Buckingham and Nicks, and the McVies — fell apart. Tensions were high as the three chief songwriters — Buckingham, Nicks and Christine McVie — channeled their aggressions, frustrations and hurt into their new songs.
The result was one of the era’s all-time greatest albums, and a landmark breakup record: Rumours, which was released on Feb. 4, 1977.
The plan was to keep the momentum going after Fleetwood Mac, which was on its way to becoming a hit just as the band began work on its next record. But the group’s personal lives were crumbling around them. The McVies, after six years of marriage, divorced; Fleetwood found out his wife was having an affair around the same time; and Buckingham and Nicks, whose eight-year dating history was marked by fights and periods of cooling off, would barely speak to each other outside of their work.

Plus, other benefits of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle — like massive amounts of drugs every day and night — were finding their way inside the once low-key group. All of this made the recording of Rumours, which started in February 1976 at California’s Record Plant studio with co-producers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut, a fractured and turbulent process. The plan was to have the album in stores in time for the holidays, but when September rolled around — right around the same time Fleetwood Mac hit No. 1 — and the record still wasn’t completed, the schedule was pushed back and a sold-out tour was canceled.
Part of the delay was attributed to Buckingham’s increasing control within the studio. Unlike Fleetwood Mac’s earlier albums, which were rooted in blues, the 1975 album was a pop record, a direction Buckingham steered Rumours toward even more. He, along with Christine McVie, became the album’s architect, as he blended electric and acoustic instruments, pushed for a brighter radio-friendly sound and balanced the voices of the band’s three strong songwriters and singers.
Sessions would begin late and last long, if they ever got started at all. Fleetwood had removed all the clocks from the studio, so nobody had their eyes on the time. Not that it really mattered — between all the coke consumed during the recording and various band members not on speaking terms with other members, sometimes not much would get done anyway.
But once they started to finalize the set of songs they had, the band — along with their producers, who were serving as Buckingham’s engineers, more or less — began to piece together the parts of their greatest album, overdubbing sections on top of sections. Buckingham contributed “Second Hand News,” “Never Going Back Again” and “Go Your Own Way.” McVie wrote and sang “Don’t Stop” (the inspiration behind the LP’s original title, Yesterday’s Gone), “Songbird” and “You Make Loving Fun.” And Nicks — Fleetwood Mac’s breakout star thanks to “Rhiannon” — checked in with “Dreams” (the group’s only No. 1 single) and “Gold Dust Woman.” And the entire band was given credit on “The Chain,” a sorta self-referential look at the state of the band at the time.

They strived for an album with no filler, and they pretty much achieved it. The band’s disintegrating relationships were at the center of the record’s best songs. Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way,” a middle finger to Nicks, is all seething, spiteful fury capped by an angry, tension-filled guitar solo; McVie’s “You Make Loving Fun” was written for her new boyfriend, the band’s lighting director; and Nicks’ “Dreams” was a reality-soaked assessment of the end of her relationship with Buckingham.
Rumours was loaded with emotional highs and lows, as well as the bitter turmoil they had put each other through and had been through together. It was a personal record about very real breakups, but it was also universal in its approach to the subjects. And, probably for those reasons, it was an immediate hit, reaching No. 1 and staying there for 31 weeks. It’s still one of the Top 10 bestselling albums ever made.
But the toll on the band was huge. Nicks — who sank deeper into a coke addiction — was distraught that one of her best songs, “Silver Springs,” was pulled from the album and relegated to a B-side. Buckingham emerged as the group’s leader, which didn’t sit particularly well with some members, especially Nicks, whose relationship with her ex-boyfriend was at its lowest point (it probably didn’t help matters that she was super-pissed about “Go Your Own Way” and had a rebound fling with Fleetwood to boot). And the band went on tour for what seemed like forever.
By the time they returned in late 1979 with the double-record Tusk, Fleetwood Mac were one of the biggest bands on the planet. Over the next decade, records became less frequent, solo albums took priority and Buckingham left until their 1997 reunion. The messy relationships that inspired their masterpiece were far behind them, but the scars were still there. But what glorious, career-defining scars they were.



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Every Song on Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' Ranked

It was 40 years ago today (Feb. 4) that Fleetwood Mac would release Rumours, one of the most successful albums of the rock era, and a rare mega-blockbuster whose thrills are as intricate and subtle as they are broad-stroked and head-smacking.

As much as the record lives on for the lore of the drugs and tangled-web heartbreak that fueled its writing and recording sessions, it's the unnervingly raw emotion and performance -- and the peerlessly immaculate composition and production -- that the album's soap-opera surroundings inspired that makes it still worth writing about in 2017.

Generations later, the songs on Rumours remain nearly as omnipresent on radio and in popular culture as they were in the Carter era, but the set remains exhilarating and inscrutable, because so few songs of love, faith and addiction have ever been this bloody or brilliant.

Here are the album's 11 tracks, ranked from worst to best. (And include an asterisk around No. 4 or 5 for classic B-side "Silver Springs," whose exclusion from the album is basically all you need to know about what a self-destructive hot streak Fleetwood Mac were on at the time.)

11. "Don't Stop"

The only one of the album's original megahits -- peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1977 -- that time and overplay have been somewhat unforgiving towards, its shimmering stomp feeling more pushy than empowering in its forward-march insistence. Bill Clinton didn't help, of course, but the fact that the song was co-optable for sloganeering purposes in the first place simply means that it was a cut more basic than the rest of Rumours to begin with.

10. "Oh Daddy"

If there's one song you forget about trying to count off the 11 tracks on Rumours, it's probably Christine McVie's penultimate creeper "Oh Daddy," a Neil Young-paced heartache testimony with perilously low self-esteem ("Why are you right when I'm so wrong/ I'm so weak but you're so strong?") It's not the most striking lyric or melody, but the song's gorgeously windswept production makes for some chilling moments, and also allows for a brilliant lead-in to the album's significantly more memorable closer.

9. "Songbird"

Apologies to Christine McVie, who ends up with the three lowest-ranked songs on the album -- she makes up for it with her fourth song on the set, which we'll get to much higher up -- and no hate meant for "Songbird," an entirely lovely piano-and-guitar ballad that makes an exquisite end to the album's A-side. But Fleetwood Mac only have one truly timeless, unforgettable acoustic anthem, and this isn't it.

8. "Second Hand News"

For one of classic rock's definitive albums, it remains a little jarring what a red-herring the set opens with: Lindsey Bukcingham's rollicking "Second Hand News," a sort of "Monday Morning" redux that points towards little of the intrigue and brutality of the rest of the album. Still, the folk jam sneaks in some bitterness among the knee-slapping -- "I know there's nothing to say/ Someone has taken my place" are the set's telling opening lines -- and "Won't you lay me down in tall grass and let me do my stuff" is pantheon-worthy euphemising.

7. "I Don't Want to Know"

Another of the set's folkier numbers, propelled ever forward by some antsy handclaps and a tempo that feels set about 10 bpm faster than it should, creating a nervous energy that would set the tone for much of the album's controversial follow-up, 1979's Tusk. Buckingham and co-lead Stevie Nicks sound almost breathless just trying to keep up, but still manage to bring the necessary anxiousness to point-of-no-return lyrics like "Finally baby/ The truth has been told/ Now you tell me that I'm crazy/ It's nothing that I didn't know."

6. "The Chain"

Not Rumours' best song but arguably its most definitive, and certainly the greatest team effort -- it's the album's only track in which all five members receive writing credits, and also the only one in which McVie, Buckingham and Nicks all contribute to the lead vocal. And with all the gorgeously frayed vocals of betrayal and broken promise, "The Chain" might still be most memorable for Mick Fleetwood's heartbeat-like bass drum, and the slithering John McVie low-end that introduces the song's inspired, not-getting-away-that-easy coda.

5. "Never Going Back Again"

The shortest song on Rumours but also one of the most complete, a masterfully finger-picked Buckingham solo piece that only features the rest of the band in ghostly backing vocals. "Been down one time/ Been down two times/ Never going back again" is a rare statement of resolve on an album full of emotional incapacitation, and as much of an affirmation as it makes from Lindsey's delivered perspective, it's just as devastating when considered from Stevie's received viewpoint.

4. "Gold Dust Woman"

Nicks has openly admitted that she has no idea what Rumours' mystical closing track is even about, which is probably one of the reasons it's played such a large part in building the frontwoman's own gypsy-woman mythology. With its desert-like production, guitar riffs spilling from everywhere like sand through the song's fingers, and Stevie's uniquely possessed vocals, "Gold Dust Woman" is as alluring and enigmatic as its singer -- a note of anti-closure for the LP to end on, the mysteries of love and life forever unknowable.

3. "Go Your Own Way"

A masterpiece of illogical layering and universal songwriting, Buckingham designed the verses of "Go Your Own Way" to sound like the world around him as he cried, "If I could, baby, I'd give you my world/ How can I when you won't take it from me?" before the sing-along chorus applied necessary order to the situation. But Buckingham's critical flaw in this brilliant stop-start rocker was in making going your own way sound less like a dismissal than a granting of release -- compared to spending further time in Lindsey's world of control, another lonely day seems pretty free and easy.

2. "You Make Loving Fun"

The secret weapon of Rumours, shimmying its way out from the thick of the album's B-side, just when you thought it was finally starting to run out of hits. The song's swagger is all hips, like writer McVie trying on a dazzling sequin dress for the first time, while the pre-chorus -- setting up a refrain that doesn't actually show up until the song's very end -- is the album's greatest revelation; Christine offering an ode of hymnal rapture to the man who got her believing in miracles, while the rest of the band plays her sighing gospel choir in the back.

1. "Dreams"

Fleetwood Mac's all-time greatest song (and only Hot 100 No. 1 hit) was a demonstration of the entire band's strengths, from Fleetwood's instantly recognizable opening drum fill to McVie's somehow singular two-note bass pattern to Christine's sweetly bubbling keys giving the groove its plush texture. But it was also the song that proved the band was never more themselves than when Stevie was on the mic, bringing both the thunder and the rain, her unguarded, open-veined rasp painting every one of her crystal visions in such rich, vibrant color that they actually sound like they're causing Buckingham's guitars to openly weep.



http://www.billboard.com/articles/co...ed-anniversary

I've always thought Go Your Own Way to be the best FM song of all time and just one of the best songs of all time in general. For me at least it's one of those songs like Satisfaction or Smells Like Teen Spirit or Hotel California or Can't Help Falling in Love.

I think that and GDW and The Chain are the best songs on the album. I also really, really love Never Going Back Again so it's weird for me to see people place it kind of low when ranking the album. One of my friends isn't even too much of a FM fan but NGBA is her favorite song ever.

From the Record Crate: Fleetwood Mac – “Rumours”

What else could possibly be said about one of the highest-selling albums of all time? What could be added to one of rock music’s juiciest bit of backstage gossip? Is it worth talking anymore about the album that turned a folksy California rock band into one of the biggest bands on the planet?

There is relevance to today’s 40th anniversary of Rumours. 1977 was a torn and frayed year for rock and roll as it seemed to be at an awkward crossroads. Punk was starting to kick in with the likes of Television and The Ramones making headway, David Bowie was getting experimental with Brian Eno in Berlin, Queen released the stadium anthem to end all stadium anthems, and Pink Floyd used a floating inflatable pig to mock current politics. It seemed like the easily-digestible, radio-friendly, AOR rock was the least interesting thing about music at the time. So how does an album like Rumours become an international hit and turn Fleetwood Mac into legends? Relationship drama.

Before Taylor Swift was even a gleam in her dad’s eye thinking of the first song she’d write about boys, Fleetwood Mac’s band status was like an episode of Jerry Springer (or for this era, let’s say Phil Donahue). It was a case of good news/bad news for Fleetwood Mac leading up to Rumours: the good news was that the band finally broke into the mainstream with their self-titled 1975 album and hits like “Landslide” and “Rhiannon.” The bad news was that the band was on the verge of breaking up thanks to marital bliss and rockstar life not blending together. Bassist John McVie and keyboardist Christine McVie ended six years of marriage together after nonstop touring took its toll on their relationship, while guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and singer Stevie Nicks were in an off-and-on relationship because the rockstar lifestyle doesn’t encourage monogamy. While Mick Fleetwood thought he’d be exempt from relationship drama being the fifth wheel and all, but it turns out the mother of his two children was having an affair with his best friend.

Despite everyone being on the verge of an emotional meltdown (or possibly already having one) the Mac stepped into the studio and laid their soles out bare. As mentioned when we talked about their 1975 album, Rumours took the blueprint the band laid out on Fleetwood Mac and beefed up the production. Fleetwood’s drums on “Go Your Own Way,” You Make Loving Fun,” and “The Chain” pack a bigger punch, while Buckingham’s finger-picked guitar on the likes of “Second Hand News,” “Dreams” and “Never Going Back Again” feel much more like the lead instrument of the band. The McVie crew also sound crisper, providing a more prominent rhythm backing. The songs continue the combination of the band’s blues origins with the folksy style of Nicks and Buckingham. Whereas on Fleetwood Mac the styles were either separate or early fusions, Rumours had more complete combinations of styles as if the band knew where to place themselves.

Right from the get-go on “Second Hand News,” Rumours makes itself clear that it’s a breakup album (“I know there’s nothing to say/Someone has taken my place”). And Stevie Nicks responds in kind on the very next track, “Dreams” (“It’s only right that you should play the way you feel it/But listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness/Like a heartbeat drives you mad/In the stillness of remembering of what you had”). It’s so fascinating to listen to the back and forth between Nicks and Buckingham throughout the album, picking apart each other and kicking each other to the curb. From the emphatic throwing-up of the hands of “Go Your Own Way,” the folky-stomp of “The Chain,” or the heartbreaking realization of “Oh Daddy” (“Everything you do is just alright/And I can’t walk away from you baby, if I tried”). It closes with “Gold Dust Woman,” a slow-burn ballad with Nicks describing the pursuit of love as an “ancient queen” that no one can ever truly tame. Nicks’ vocals, covered in sexual mystique, are used expertly to question what’s the next move after a broken heart (“And now tell me, is it over now?/Do you know how to pick up the pieces/And go home? Go home, go home”). There are brief bright spots on the record, like the schmaltzy, vanilla “Don’t Stop” that might as well fit in a promo for Ronald Reagan’s presidency. But there’s also “You Make Loving Fun” a funky jam that features Christine McVie singing about moving on to new love (“I never did believe in miracles/But I’ve a feeling it’s time to try/I never did believe in the ways of magic/But I’m beginning to wonder why”).

There’s no mystery as to why Rumours sold like hot cakes. Fleetwood’s songs were crisp yet free-flowing, and featured some of the sharpest writing of 70s rock. In a time when rock was being pulled in multiple directions, Fleetwood Mac were straight to the point and honest with their audience, as well as themselves. Today, drama and torn romance is commonplace what with social media practically a factor to music nowadays. But Rumours had a magic to it, an open forum where a band laid out their hurt bare.



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