(Credit: Alamy)
Fri 14 November 2025 14:58, UK
The fact that Fleetwood Mac made Rumours sound pristine is a minor miracle.
Throughout the recording of the album, every single member of the band was going through their own hangups in their personal lives, not to mention shouldering massive drug problems that brought a few sessions to a crawl. Even when leaving their baggage at the door, some sessions weren’t safe from tension boiling over.
Since Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had just come on board as songwriters, it was their effort to try and make the band more radio-friendly, combined with the fantastic keyboard stylings of Christine McVie, which took the band to a different level. Although Fleetwood Mac could make beautiful music in the control booth, their romantic relationships with each other started to turn up during the session.
In fact, the relationships would end up being an instrumental part of Fleetwood Mac’s dominance. The band would be deeply set on tearing itself apart as soon as it began to truly collaborate and write the songs which would turn their success into worldwide adoration.
In the book Making Rumours, engineer Ken Callait remembered how quickly sessions could have gotten out of hand. Since John and Christine McVie were breaking up, there was one occasion in which Christine’s new boyfriend would turn up at the session, only to be shunned away so he wouldn’t come within eyesight of John during the recording.
Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Trying to hide her feelings about her new flame, Christine channelled her creative energy into writing the song ‘You Make Loving Fun’. Although Christine would claim for years that she had written it about one of her pets, many people understood it as a subtle love song to her latest boyfriend. However, Christine’s contributions were far from the most dramatic piece.
After working on the backing track, both Buckingham and Nicks were supposed to add background vocals to the song, which didn’t go well once the tape rolled. As Callait remembers: “We played around with some ideas, and Stevie and Lindsey were sitting on two high stools in the studio. When I stopped the tape to rewind it, Stevie suddenly cried out, ‘Fuck you, asshole! You can go to hell!”.
The two singers were never truly convivial ever again. Though they would work together as part of the group for the majority of their most successful careers, Buckingham and Nicks represent opposing forces both on stage and in the studio.
Since the pair started having romantic trouble during the start of Rumours, this would become their dynamic throughout most sessions, turning from professional to hostile in a second. Though the aftermath involved a lot of yelling, Buckingham would eventually channel his anger into his music, writing the song ‘Go Your Own Way’ about his pent-up feelings towards Nicks.
That didn’t dissuade them from finishing up the takes, though, with Callait stating, “I couldn’t rewind the tape fast enough. When I got to the beginning, Stevie and Lindsey looked at each other. Then they turned towards their microphones, right on cue, and nailed the parts.”
While there was no real explanation for the pair’s outbursts, it could have been the result of boiling tension with Buckingham as well. Becoming one of the group’s leaders, Buckingham would adopt a perfectionist mindset that would slowly eat away at the band, culminating in him almost strangling Callait when one of the tapes accidentally got erased.
Regardless of the heartache and the mountains of cocaine it took to make the record, Fleetwood Mac spun radio-rock gold with the finished product, with nearly every song seeing some success on the radio. The Mac may have had animosity towards each other, but it’s probably best to use those vocal cords for singing rather than screaming at one’s bandmates.
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