RUMOURS: Happy 30th Anniversary

[Livia]

Thursday, February 15, 2007
Thirty years of 'Rumours'

It was the soundtrack of my late teenhood, along with the Eagles' Hotel California. You heard it everywhere: on record players at your friends' houses, on the radio 24/7, in Muzak versions on the elevator and the checkout line. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Everybody talked about it. Everybody hoovered up each morsel of gossip about the band's storied love affairs and breakups and how it played out in the songs. We all studied that famous in-bed cover of the band in Rolling Stone and decided which end of the bed we'd like to be in. We were either hot for Stevie Nicks, who then was the epitome of every witchy, hippie chick you wanted to sleep with, or hot for Lindsey Buckingham, the tall, bushy-haired, rock god guitar genius who you wanted to sleep with and maybe trade a few raging solos with. We all stared for hours at that album cover, with Stevie's gorgerous black-stockinged thigh draped across Mick Fleetwood's leg. And those two balls.

It was on this day 30 years ago that Rumours sold enough copies to get its coveted gold record status. It was only 11 days after the album had been released and it was the beginning of a long streak: It spent 31 weeks in the No. 1 position on the charts, won the Grammy for Album of the Year and has reportedly sold 18 million copies to date, making it the No. 5 best-selling album of all time. I have a deep fondness for the disc and for the band at the time, but I also never want to hear Rumours again.

It's one of those discs that you've heard so often that you can call it up at will in your mental iPod: The acoustic guitar strumming that kicks off Go Your Own Way, still the band and Buckingham's finest moment; John McVie's throbbing bass solo on The Chain and the choral burst of "Chaaaaaaaaaaaay-yain, keep us together! Living in the shadows!"; the sultry, sensual intro to Gold Dust Woman; the crisp, overall production sound. Buckingham, Ken Calliat, Richard Dashut and the band really created a warmth on that record that's rarely been duplicated, and gives it an ethereal, timeless quality. I can smell the late '70s on that album.

I listened to it a couple of years ago, and realized that it was mostly Buckingham's songs that spoke to me. In the hindsight of years, Nicks' music seems too wispy and I just never could get into Christine McVie. But there is one thing that I will always be grateful to Rumours for: It led to Tusk. The mega-success of Rumours prompted Buckingham to convince the band to unleash that two-disc wonder of quirky soundscapes and oddball songs (although it hardly seems that odd or quirky now; Nicks' and McVie's contributions are very straightforward). When it flopped, the band reined in Buckingham, which effectively sounded the death knell for them as a creative unit. Buckingham stayed for the cash, they all stayed for the cash, but the directions Tusk could have led them to would never be known. It's too bad that their fame blinded them to their potential artistry, but I doubt any of them save Buckingham spends any time fretting over it. The chain was stronger than they ever realized.http://roundheadedboy.blogspot.com/2...f-rumours.html