How Personal Breakups and Band Drama Created Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ Masterpiece

When it's said that a band is like a marriage, it's usually a figure of speech. However, this saying matches Fleetwood Mac's experience in the mid-1970s. Despite an avalanche of broken marriages, failed relationships, and secret affairs between band members, they stayed professional and kept working. The resulting Rumours album was one of their best.

Fleetwood Mac was originally a blues band. However, the band adopted a more pop-oriented sound after the departure of founder and legendary guitarist Peter Green in 1970. The first step of this transformation was the addition of Christine McVie, the wife of the band's bass player, John McVie.

Christine McVie was a keyboardist and vocalist, so despite filling the void left by Peter Green, the band still needed a guitarist. During a 1974 trip to Los Angeles, drummer and founder Mick Fleetwood heard folk duo Buckingham Nicks perform and thought guitarist Lindsey Buckingham would be a perfect addition to the band, but Buckingham only agreed to join together with his girlfriend and bandmate Stevie Nicks. Fleetwood agreed, and the first result of their collaboration was the hugely successful 1975 Fleetwood Mac album.

The band's newfound success came at a steep price, and by 1976, things got incredibly complicated. John and Christine McVie's marriage was failing, while Nicks and Buckingham were also ending their long-term relationship. At the same time, Mick Fleetwood was going through a divorce from his wife, Jenny Boyd, who had had an affair with former band member Bob Weston a few years prior. To add fuel to this explosive situation, Mick Fleetwood also had a brief affair with Stevie Nicks. But ultimately, this complicated personal and professional journey resulted in Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album.

Instead of going their separate ways, the group decided to record their next album at Robert Plant's Record Plant studio in Sausalito, California, at the end of 1976. As co-producer Richard Dashut said at the time, "Mick [Fleetwood] thought that if he took us out of our homes, we'd all have to hang out together with very few distractions."

But the distractions were right there with them. Besides the complicated nature of the band's personal relationships, the California-based studio was famous for its bohemian atmosphere and drug culture. While this gave the band the energy to record for multiple hours at a time, it also fueled their paranoia and anger at each other. Despite their best efforts to stay professional, explosive arguments were common, but the band's talent and work ethic shone through this toxic atmosphere. Their challenging personal situations may have made working together a living hell, but each member had a way to channel their feelings creatively.

The results of those recording sessions born from love and heartbreak were nothing short of spectacular, and the album sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Some of the songs that best express the drama that the band members were going through as they were crafting their masterpiece include "Go Your Own Way," "Dreams," and "Don't Stop."

The album's first single was "Go Your Own Way," written by Lindsey Buckingham and most probably directed at his ex-girlfriend Stevie Nicks. He described the writing process as a "stream of consciousness," where his raw emotions suddenly came out and were captured on paper. Musically, it took a while for Buckingham to make it work, but he eventually found the right mix and groove. As for lyrics, the song was clearly inspired by his failed relationship with Nicks, who was infuriated by the line "Packing up, shacking up is all you wanna do," which suggested infidelity on her part.

"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.", she later confessed.

The other half of the broken couple also channeled her emotions through music, resulting in the band's most successful single ever. As opposed to Buckingham's anger-filled goodbye, "Dreams" is mellower and feels more introspective, as Nicks used the songwriting process to reflect on her failed relationship.

As a testament to the band's remarkable professionalism, Lindsey Buckingham smiled and looked up to Stevie Nicks when she played him the song for the first time. It was a sign that, despite their personal turmoil, he could recognize the song's potential and had the band's best interest at heart.

Each band member had a different outlook regarding the drama in their lives, with the songs they created acting as proof. While Buckingham wrote an angry goodbye and Nicks created a melancholic reflection on a failed relationship, Christine McVie's contribution was more optimistic and upbeat. She wrote it after her marriage to John McVie ended, focusing on the future instead of the past.

Lyrics such as "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow / Don't stop, it'll soon be here" are rumored to have given the band the unifying energy it needed to go through the Sausalito sessions.

The saying "never mix business with pleasure" seems to have been created for Fleetwood Mac. Despite the personal hell they went through to create the Rumours album and the ordeal of having to perform songs about each other live on stage, the result was arguably worth it. These songs will be heard many generations from now and will inspire listeners long after their creators are gone.