Happy Birthday to Rumours

[michelej1]

Excerpt from a Paste article on band romances, by Gregory Himes, February 20, 2012:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/article...the-years.html

Almost as unflinching as Doe and Cervenka were the three songwriters in a very different Southern California band, Fleetwood Mac. When the relatively unknown American duo, Buckingham & Nicks, joined in 1975, the group was transformed from a middling British blues-rock band into a Beatlesque pop-rock juggernaut, with Lindsey Buckingham playing the iconoclastic John Lennon role, Stevie Nicks the mystic George Harrison role and Christine McVie the Tin Pan Alley Paul McCartney role. Giving this lineup’s debut album, Fleetwood Mac, an extra squirt of juice was the public knowledge that Buckingham and Nicks were longtime lovers, while McVie was married to founding bassist John McVie. Hearing them sing about each other on the album was mesmerizing; seeing them glance at one another across a stage while doing so was even more so.

The album was a huge hit, but success shattered all their relationships—even drummer Mick Fleetwood’s offstage marriage. With immense financial incentives before them, they decided to soldier on together. They took their problems as an artistic challenge as well as a personal challenge, however, and wrote a suite of break-up songs that became the 1977 album Rumours, a commercial and critical triumph. Emblematic of that album was its No. 1 single, “The Chain,” credited as co-written by all five members. Describing coupledom as a chain in two senses—as an indissoluble bond of loyalty and as a prisoner’s restraint—the song raced along so quickly that neither the singers nor the listeners could decide which was the more apt comparison. There was no time for pondering, because a decision had to be made immediately: “If you don’t love me now, you will never love me again.”

It turned out to be a false choice. When the passions had cooled, when Fleetwood and Nicks had ended their own affair, the five musicians realized that they would never again be in love as they had but wouldn’t have to hate each other either. They settled into a wary coexistence and created three more very good albums—1979’s Tusk, 1982’s Mirage and 1987’s Tango in the Night—before Buckingham left in 1987, Nicks in 1991 and Christine McVie in 1998 (Buckingham and Nicks returned in 1997). But they would never again be as passionate with love as they were on Fleetwood Mac nor as passionate with anger as they were on Rumours. And that’s proof enough of how real-life relationships can provide the fuel for the fiction that pop songs are.