STACK #212 June 2022

MUSIC FEATURE

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FLEETWOOD MAC RUMOURS In AlbumTales, Bryget Chrisfield hits you with some juicy nuggets of wisdom surrounding classic records.This month it’s Fleetwood Mac’s

Year 1977

flawless 11th album, Rumours . Head to stack.com.au to read the full article.

McVie on the volatile Rumours sessions During an interview with famous music journo Cameron Crowe (who wrote/ directed the semi autobiographical film Almost Famous ), McVie described the Rumours sessions thusly: “Trauma, trau ma. The sessions were like a cocktail party every night – people everywhere. We ended up staying in these weird hospital

Fleetwood’s wooden balls Already a staple of his stage get-up, the wooden balls dangling between Fleetwood’s legs in the Worthington, were in fact toilet chains pinched from a club the Mac played during their formative years. “I must admit I had a couple of glasses of album’s cover photo, snapped by Herbert

Largely considered Fleetwood Mac’s magnum opus, the Grammy-winning, diamond-certified Rumours – which turned 45 earlier this year – was recorded amidst a cocaine haze and multiple marriage/relationship/affair splits within this British-American band. Rumours sold over ten million copies globally in its first month, topped the Billboard 200 for 31 non consecutive weeks, and has been in the UK charts for an incomprehensible 939 weeks to date. In 2003, the album itself was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame (joining the outfit’s preceding self-titled album). Boasting singles including Lindsey Buckingham’s Go Your OwnWay , Stevie Nicks’ Dreams (the band’s only U.S. number one) plus Christine McVie’s You Make Loving Fun and Don’t Stop (written by McVie, sung by McVie and Buckingham), Rumours also features a tune written by all five band members in The Chain (which Harry Styles famously covered in 2017). So what makes album number 11 by the ‘Mac one of the most commercially successful LPs of all time? It contains exactly zero stinkers.

English ale, and came out of the toilet with these,” Fleetwood confessed during a 2009 interview. “I was very destructive – I ripped them off the toilet and had them hanging down between my legs.” Record Plant studio for endless recording sessions, Chris Stone, one of the studio owners, described the scene as “excess at its most excessive.”“The band would come in at 7 at night, have a big feast, party ‘til 1 or 2 in the morning, and then when they were so whacked-out they couldn’t do anything, they’d start recording”. Cran-Raspberry Dreams When an Idaho potato warehouse worker named Nathan Apodaca uploaded a video selfie to TikTok – cruising down a freeway on his skateboard, lip-syncing to Dreams and sculling a bottle of Ocean Spray Cran Raspberry juice – we’re tipping he never dreamed that Fleetwood himself would create his own TikTok account and upload a homage. After Apodaca’s video went viral, many virgin listeners Shazamed and streamed this classic song, which resulted in Dreams re-entering the charts. “Excess at its most excessive” When Fleetwood Mac took over the

Stevie Nicks, 1977

rooms... and of course John [McVie, her bassist ex-hubby] and me were not exactly the best of friends.” Lyrical digs through song “I very much resented him telling the world that ‘packing up, shacking up’ with different men was all I wanted to do,” Nicks has admitted of Buckingham’s Go Your Own Way lyrics (which he refused to take

out despite her objections). “He knew it wasn’t true. It was just an angry thing that he said. Every time those words would come onstage, I wanted to go over and kill him. He knew it, so he really pushed my buttons through that. It was like, ‘I’ll make you suffer for leaving me.’ And I did.”

Fleetwood Mac in New Orleans, 1977, L - R: John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood

76 JUNE 2022

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