Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours': Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that gives you the secret history and little known fascinating facts about your favorite movies, music, TV shows and more. My name is Jordan Runt Tuck and on Alex Hegel and what are we talking about today? Today we are talking about Rumors, one of the best selling albums, most memed albums, most over possibly over discussed albums, and we're here to continue to discuss it. I know, you know, I was reluctant to tackle this, but you know, I know it's so well trod territory, but so much of the focus of the discussion before has been about the relationships and all the in personal drama in the band, and there's so much more that went into the making of this great album. But give me a taste, Give me a taste. What do you what do you got? Well, we're gonna get in't it. We can't give it all the way up front, but we got I mean, we've got so many things. For example, the balls on the cover of the album, Mick Fleetwood's balls. There's a story there. Yeah, that's what I wanted. That was literally you read my mind. That was what I wanted you to talk about was Mick Fleetwoods Balls. So if you want to know more about Fleetwoods Balls, stay tuned. We'll be right there. But no, I mean it, make sure to tweet at us, make sure between at as using the hashtag Mick Fleetwood's Balls presented by Tide. It really is. I mean, you know, despite all the soap opera that when you know that, when in the discussion of it, it really is a perfectly produced pop album. I mean it's pretty, you know, unimpeachably great. How do you feel about this record? I can see you'd be more of a Tusk fan. I'm definitely more of a Tusk fan because Tusk is weirder. But this album is also, despite having being so overexposed at this point, it is also very weird. I mean, it's a record by what three quarters of like a blues rock band who imported a couple of Americans, one of whom doesn't play guitar with a pick. Uh. It's like just a bizarre formula for a record that became so ubiquitous. Yeah, I think a lot of that go away when people talk about the everybody's having sex with each other and all the cocaine. But you know, the music still holds up. As one dude skateboarding on TikTok reminded us all this past magical year, isn't that great? Fleetwood Mac continuing to bring us all together even in times of great crisis. Except for the actual band, they are very much not still together. Was fired summarily. Sorry, well, we've got a lot to tackle. So without further ado, here's everything you don't know about Fleetwood Max. So Jordan's I know that Fleetwood Mac, maybe more than any other rock band with the exception of Maybe the Fall, has a lengthy membership list and a history that rivals some of the smaller Russian novels. So if you could give us just a top down view of the world of Fleetwood Mac, I guess the starting point is ninety seven, when it was founded as a vehicle for the great Peter Green, who really was sort of the only serious challenger to Eric Clapton as the greatest British blues guitarists in the sixties. I think BB King once said that Peter Green was the only guitarist who ever gave him the cold sweats, which is obviously incredible praise coming from from BB King, You're gonna get a lot of angry people tweeting you about Jeff Beck and uh, probably Jimmy Page. But I do think I do agree with you. I think Peter Green is consistently one of the great and I don't mean this pejoratively, but blues formalists. He was like, I want to play traditional blues, you know, I mean for anyone who has never heard the Peter Green ara Fleet with mag and we definitely check it out. Songs like Man of the World Albatross is this gorgeous instrumental song. It's really amazing to get an idea for like what they're The sound originally sounded like, you know, pre Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie they did the original version of Black Magic Woman later popularized by Santana, So if you can kind of imagine that that's what Fleet with Mac used to sound like in the pre Stevie Lindsay pop days. Peter Green an absolute genius, but a troubled one. As a genius is off and our fame really didn't sit well with him, and he kind of uh he he dabbled in LSD is one dabble in LSD. I think that's the accepted word. But he did not dabble. He went for basically exacerbated his underlying anxiety with with fame and kind of what was happening to him. He began to exhibit I guess what could best be described as paranoid behaviors. He grew a beard and donned robes and large crucifixes, and began to talk at length about giving his money away. His mental health deteriorated even further when when Fleetwood Mac played in Germany and they visited a German hippie commune and his drink was spiked with a heroic dose of LSD and untold other psychedelics. And according to band insiders, I cannot believe people used to do that to each other, Like the dead Um I was reading the other night about least thing about John Bonham used to give people bumps of heroin while like cocaine was going on. He'd be like and then they'd be like, oh, I feel like I'm going to die, and he'd be like, ha ha, that was heroin. What a funny prank I played on you. People were this, These musicians were savages back it was. It did not help his his underlying I guess what I'll call anxiety, and he quit the band soon after and drifted into um professional obscurity and a lot of you know, dealt with the whole array of mental health crisis. Is He ended up getting help and made music again in the eighties and nineties, and he eventually died sadly in the summer of But he is an absolutely amazing guitarist. His work is beautiful. I definitely recommend checking it out. But he's sort of the godfather of Fleetwood Mac, and it's really setting the tone for what is sort of quite obviously i'd say, a cursed enterprise. Yeah, at least the guitar chair. Yeah, the guitar chair. You know, if you've ever seen Spinal Tap, there's a joke about the band not being able to keep a drummer. Well, it's kind of the case with guitarists and Fleetwood Mac guitar let's guitarists lightning round. So after Peter Green, who did a bunch of acid and quit? Who who comes in after Peter Green? We have Jeremy Spencer, who what kind of drugs did Jeremy Spencer do? Um, I don't know what drugs he did, but he left the group shortly before and we're talking like hours before a gig in Los Angeles when he was approached on the street by a member of an organization called the Children of God, which is a religious also organization, and not coult to avoid getting sued. Uh. So that was one. Uh. There were a number of other guitarists, a guy by the name of Danny Kerwin who also suffered from severe mental issues. He was a show that he was playing where he smashed his head against the wall at a show until he began to bleed, and then he refused to play on stage that night at the show, and his steady sat in the audience and just jeered at his bandmates the whole time. Uh. It's a powerful move. Is a powerful energy to that move. I cannot think of another person who quit the band on stage and joined the audience to boo the band that they had just quit. Yeah, that that is. It's quite a power move. Yeah. Um yeah. Danny Kerman's replacement, Bob Weston and Dirt a really brief, unhappy tenure before leaving the group in four. That's three. What are we on four were I think we're on four. And then there's Bob Welch, who was in there. I I think less than two years he was. There are so many people who cycled through this guitar chair that I almost corrected you on Bob Weston by saying, oh, no, that was Bob Welch, just a different guy with the Bob departed Fleetwood Mac guitarists category w E. There's just so many uh. And so by the end of the seventy four amid this parade of brilliant yet unstable guitarists, really the only constant were the rhythm sections. Was drummer Mick Fleetwood and basist John mcviegeh the Fleetwood Mac from which the band take their name. And John McBee was married to a great British blues singer with the credible name of Christine Perfect. And when she married John, she became Christine mcvige. And she used to always joke, you know, I used to be perfect and then I met John, and then you like you do it, you do a smash cut over to John mcviege and his eyes are just rolling so far back in his head that only the whites show. I you know, Lindsay and Stevie are like the golden couple of Fleetwood Mac. But whenever I am looking at old footage of them, I always go right to John mcvigh because he's completely over it. Attitude is so perfect. He I don't know, I love him. He's my spirit animal. He's just seems dour and it's just like a bass So he's a great basis, but it's just, you know, seems like a grave digger. He's just like the punch punch the cloak today. Anyway, I love if. If in all, in all archival footage Ifleetwood Mac, you gotta go back and see what John McVeigh is doing in the background, because it's probably grimacing. I don't know, like mc fleetwood is also a pretty big grimace or too well, he's insane. He's just he always a sea footage of him, like making a cartoon werewolf faces. I mean, but we'll get into the cocaine later. But good lord, so this is this is prior. I just I feel like it's important to note that all this drama and interpersonal strife and drugs and cults and witchcraft, it was all pre dates Lindsay and Stevie, So again a slightly cursed enterprise. So at the end of the nineteen seventy four they're looking for a new guitarists to replace Bob Welsh and they find Lindsey Buckingham. Mick Fleetwood invites him to join the band and Lindsay says, well, you're gonna have to take my girlfriend too, and that was Stevie Nicks. Should we get into Yeah, also an extremely powerful move, I mean everything, maybe a heartbringer of what of what's to come with, like how how it is to deal with Lindsey Buckingham of not being in a position of power but assuming and negotiating as though he is a talk about fake until you make it. Man, this band who's like already a million seller comes to you and they're like, oh, we'd like to offer you. He's like, cool, you gotta take my old lady too. I don't know why I think he talks about they were they weren't a millions, They weren't a million because Lindsay, well, there's famously the history. Well are we getting into their their record? Yeah, tell us a little bit about Stevie and Lindsay. Well, Stevie Nicks was just a teenager. When she and Lindsay got together and started making music in nineteen sixty six, she was a senior and he was a junior, so there was nothing kind of untoward going on there. But if you have a keen memory, a Proustian sense memory of your high school year relationships, her being a senior in him being a junior will color their entire relationship in a certain ways. Um, they met at a young Life meeting, which seems sort of bizarre when you consider the cocaine and the and the kimonos. And they got around a piano and they played California Dreaming, which is the most California. You're already in California and you have to get it's the most theater kid California ever. Sorry. Interview with the Source, Stevie would actually say of Lindsay, I thought he was a darling. Let's save for this for a moment. Yeah, I just hold that in your head. I need you to hold that energy because it'll go awry. So around the same time, it's just like getting Yeah, he's not yet a voting age. Bucking him starts performing in a group initially called the Fritz Rabine memorial band. I don't know what that's a reference to. What is that a reference to? Have no idea, I don't know what. Maybe I might be nothing. Californians are weird, later shortened to just Fritz thankfully. They played talent shows. Yeah, Fritz is good. They played talent shows at their alma motto, which was menlo Atherton High School, as well as student dances and family parties across suburban San Jose. When their lead singer dropped out, bucking him actually flashes back in another I'm gonna keep referencing Proust because I give this little I low culture juxtaposition. In a moment of Prustian sense memory, he flashes back to that young life theater kid piano duet from years earlier, and at the wise and old age of nineteen or whatever. He says, I'm gonna call Stevie back and we're gonna just make this, make that duo our thing, And they actually got pretty far. They opened for Santana the second time Santana pops up in the Fleetwood Mac story. They opened up for Steve Miller Band, They opened up for the Icon Tina to turn a review, and they opened up for Chicago, which is just fine. I feel like everyone opened up for Chicago around this time period. But then so we get to Buckingham Knicks, of one of the most famous album covers. The two were platonic mostly throughout this Fritz era, the Fritz era of bucking Him Knicks, but they both decided they wanted something a little more out of music, and they also start to, you know, make a different kind of music together. I'm so sorry I said that, but we're keeping it um. And then they may the relatively big decision to jump ship to l A to try and make it as a name as Buckingham Knicks. And to hear Stevie tell it, it sounds like she was kind of the one who actually was like, oh, I guess I'll go out and like get a job. And I think she was like cleaning studio producer and engineers like homes for for money and working as a waitress and stuff and basically to allow Lindsay the time to just sort of sit at home and pontificate. And she why, she tells it, she would like come home from a long day at work and he was like sprawled out on the floor smoking a joint, like dreaming on melodies and stuff. Um, so maybe when I get a job this week, honey, No, So I babe got this idea for a fingerpick and pattern. So they're recording with with this engineering producer called Keith Olsen at a famed Sound City studios in in Los Angeles and they completed their debut Buckingham Knicks Loved now ignored at the time, but it features in the story because Mick fleetwould stop by the same studio to scope it out for potential use for Fleetwood Mac and Um. The engineer, Keith Olsen was showing him around and basically wanted to demonstrate what the room sounded like on record, and he played this tape he was working on, which was bucking m Nicks, and he played it and Nick Fleetwood has really taken with the guitar work on it, Lindsey Buckeyhames guitar work, and so he asked to be in touch. He asked the engineer to put him in touch with his guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham, and that's how Fleetwood Mac finds Lindsay Buckingham for the first time. And then that's when Lindsay says, you know what I'll join you if you let me bring Stevie too. And Stevie really, I mean we're talking to a matter of weeks here was thinking about giving up on music. I mean, she was ready to throw in the towel and just go back to school. And she was kids. She told she would say years later that when she showed up to her Fleetwood Mac auditions, she came in her waitress outfit because she came right from her day job. I mean, the reversal of fortunes was you know, this was December nineteen seventy four. I think they all met up for the first time in a Mexican restaurant and then by mid nineteen five, they're they're touring and the album the White Albums what everyone calls it, but the Fleetwood macaponymous album Rhannon and Say They Love Me and all those great songs entered the charts. Really their life changed, and you know, Overnights kind of a cliche, but it wasn't far off. Yeah, and uh, you know seventy six we're talking. They're like, they're enormously popular, but the same thing that always happens happens, which is like a band that gets enormously popular and has to tour bunch together. Stuff starts happening, and it's always worse when there's multiple couples in the band. And this is when we start getting into the juicy, non merit, non musical stuff. Almost said non marital, but there's plenty of juicy non marital stuff. So what's the first what's the first relationship that starts to go? Jordan's okay, Well, the first relationships that starts to go is John McGee and Christine McGee the White Album tours. Really, I think what what finished them off? I mean, they have been deteriorating for years, but they they split up around the same time that Lindsay and Stevie also started to Uh, Lindsay and Stevie started breaking up a little bit later, because Christine would later say, yeah, John and I just didn't talk during the sessions for rumors, unless it was like something like what key is this song in? They just didn't, whereas Stevie and Lindsay were still in the like fighting screaming at each other in the middle of it takes phase of the breakup. So that was that, and also the interpersonal relationship that I don't think it's discussed enough in the Rumors debacle. Is Mick Fleetwood the only guy in Fleetwood Mac that isn't dating somebody else in Fleetwood Mac at the moment, but his marriage is disintegrating. His wife is Jenny Boyd, who is the sister of Pattie Boyd, who is George Harrison's wife who is having an affair with Eric Clapton. Pattie Boyd inspired George Harrison's song Something inspired Layla inspired Wonderful Tonight, and then Jenny Boyd inspired you know, some of the feelings on Rumors. So the boy's sisters really are, you know, two of the biggest muses in music history. I should say, yeah, it's wild, such a such a wealth of music comes from those two women. And the funny thing to me about this whole album thing is that a lot of times in bands with there's a couple in a band, like the person who's not in a couple in the band is kind of forced into like a child like mom and dad are fighting again. But in this band, it was just a different archetypes of angry mom and dad divorcing that we're just in this whole thing. There's the guy who's having a fair and that's bringing up the marriage. There's the really demonstrative couple who's fighting all the time. There's the like old waspy couple who just isn't looking or speaking to each other, but still leaves in the same car at the end of the night. Truly, every archetype of unhappiness goes into making this band, but not financially it isn't. Yeah, I mean, the record company is basically saying, you know what, your album is really starting to sell. The White album started selling a million copies at this point, and over my head, Rhiannon and say that You Love Me, we're all hit singles at this point, and Warner Brothers the record label saying, you know, stardom's yours for the taking, go and make the best album you've ever made. So that's really what compels them to put on a brave face and hold up in the studio because they want to capitalize on everything that's happening and again try to make the best album they've ever made. And you know, I mean much has been said about how you know the heartache is palpable on the grooves of this record. I mean that turmoil just surfaces in these brutally honest lyrics, and it's become this like you know, musical soap opera. This he said, she said, romantic confessional. And again, the thing that's so amazing that this record is that these people are singing these songs about each other to their faces. Also, it's not like they're improv They're not improvising these songs for each other. This isn't like, well, let's see what like you came up with today, like the process of I mean you I thought about this recently because of the get A documentary where it does show like the actual craft that goes into making a record, like these guys were sitting down and singing really horrifying personal stuff in a very dispassionate way. I mean, like, oh, well, how am I supposed to sing the third on this note where you accuse me of being a slut? Like they had to sit down and tear apart all of these songs in a really like workman like way, and that's probably where her being just gacked out of their mind was really helpful. Yes, So the band in February, they go up to Saslito, California, to the record plant, to make this album, and Lindsey Buckingham really is the one who took the lead on the sessions because you know, as you said earlier, three fifths of this group had a blues background, and that's more about you know, live performance, and Lindsay really had an ear towards making a good record like that was kind of the name of the game with this was was not just great songs and good performances, but they wanted to make a record it sounded as perfect as you could. Uh So he was kind of the one who took the lead on this, and he enlisted the help of Richard dash It and a guy named Ken Calais who happens to be pop singer Colby Calai's father. I know you remember Bubbly, Sure don't You don't know? I don't I who is that? Why do I know that? A pop singer? Like I don't know the name. I know the name, but no, I don't remember that song. You could, you could stick in the sound as sound, a sound bite of it, and then I would continue to not recognize it. I could, but I don't want to be sued. So the band for this actually has a basically a blank check from Warner Brothers. And this is also the height of the record industry. I mean, this is like I used Crosby, Stills and Nash is my yardstick for all of music industry excess. But this record is emblematic of that. Chris Stone, who was one of the record plants owners, said in seven he called the experience that Fleetwood Mac brought to the record plan excess. At its most excessive, the band would come in at seven at night, have a big feast party till one in the morning, and then when they were so whacked out they couldn't do anything, they'd start recording. Um, which I don't know how old they all are. I guess Lindsay and Stevie are pretty young, mixed on the older side, but like like late twenties to early thirties. Yeah, I still don't want to do anything on that schedule, like eat a bunch and then have to work. One of the most offensive part to you not just getting gacked out two in the morning, but it's the big meal before you record. Yeah, I mean, like imagine sitting down and having to play drums after you eat like a bunch of l a like, like, I don't know what are they eating Mexican food, turkey legs, Like what is what does make? What does make? I was thinking like hummus, I don't know, California maybe tofu yeah. Um. Anyway, And like a lot of things in l A around this particular period of time, it's Don Henley's fault. Yeah. Stevie, who later when she and uh Lindsay were done breaking up, had had a brief relationship with Don Henley and she later said that he was the one who taught her how to spend money. And she said she was talking. I did an interview with uncut and she said he was responsible and I blame him every day. The Eagles had spending money down They had lear jets and the presidential suites long before we did. So I learned from the best, and once you learned to live like that, there's no going back. It's like, get me a lear jet. I need to go to l A. I don't care if it costs fifteen grand I need to go now. That's bone chilling. The flip side of that is Joe Walsh talking about waking up for one of his vendors and being like, oh, why have a Why do I have a hotel? Receipt from Paris in my pocket, like I guess I was in Paris for the weekend. Like I mean, God love him. Glad you guys had a good time. The rest of us aren't speaking of spend money in ridiculous amounts. This brings us to the cocaine use during these sessions. It's while studying the recording of rumors, it's impossible to avoid the topic of absolutely rampant cocaine use. It's really a sixth member of the band, right. Mick Fleetwood worked out once that if he laid all the cocaine that he'd ever snorted into a single line, it would stretch for seven miles, which kind of sounds low to me. I want to check that. Well, there's a there's also like didn't Bowie like have a recycled line about snorting half of Columbia or something? So it's like, all it might have been Elton John, any of them. All of these guys just have like these easily at hand comparisons quantifying their cocaine abuse. Apparently it was seven miles, idn't thought longer, but um, good for him. They would kind of justify in later years by saying, you know, for the work schedule that they were on. It was more of a necessity trying to just combat fatigue during these you know, really grueling multi hour sessions. Not to mention just archerous emotions that were flying around. I mean, you know, Stevie said an interview with Mojo in you felt so bad about what was happening that you just did a line to cheer yourself up, which I mean, you know, it's kind of given the fraud, pressure cooker of an environment that they were in, it's sort of understandable. It played such a major role cocaine did in the production of Rumors that the bands seriously considered thanking their drug dealer on the album credits, and apparently mcfleetwood says in his ninety nine memoir Fleetwood My Life and Adventures and Fleetwood Mac said, unfortunately the dealer got snuffed executed before the album came out, so they didn't end up. I'm surprised they didn't like put a tribute. Well, Black Sabbath did that around the same time. They Yeah, in volume four, you can see them thank the great Coke Cola, because that was their idea of a subtle joke. But yeah, My favorite anecdote from this is that these guys kept their coking like these little velvet baggies like probably not on not similar to like a cram royal bag. And they would have the engine the I guess it was the engineers Ken Kelly who they would have Ken Klain and Richard Dash were like co producers and engineers. They treated them like interns. They were like bringing the bag and um. So at one point ken clay Is decides to mess with them a little bit and um on one once he's when he's summoned, he brings it in a bag that he has, unbeknownst to the band, replaced all the cocaine with talcum powder and does this like elaborate like given high and like you know, spills the cocaine all over the room and just you watch the blood drain out of the band's face and then um, they realized they've been pranked and did not murder him this day. But my god, it also Mike Fleetwood's like a big dude. Can you imagine like all six four of like an angry gang glee wild eyed British man, like rising up from a drum set after holding two sticks because he thinks you've spilled his cocaine braver men than I am. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. But the famously happy go lucky atmosphere behind the recording of Rumors didn't just extend to cocaine based humor. Christine got a little in on the action at one point. That's right, Christie mcfeeds hold their manager that they were breaking up as an April Fool's Day prank. Now again, this wasn't even this, This is not as quite as lighthearted as it sounds. She called their attorney to tell her that the band was breaking up and they would not be finishing the album. And she she was running through the speech she was going to give him all day, really working it out, ringing every emotion, every tortured emotion from every word. And so she called this attorney and told him to call the head of Warner Brothers Records to let them know that this was what was going down, and then the band were done. So she hangs up, and everyone in the group's trying to like figuring out when to call their attorney back because they don't want him to actually call the head of Warner Brothers, you know, ten minutes, like just long enough for him to like work out what he's gonna tell the head of Warner Brothers that they're their new biggest stars. Is done. And then um, she called him back and reminded him that it was April for a staple Fool's Day, and they all had a big laugh, which we're probably fairly rare during these sessions. That's borderline sociopathic. I'm sorry, It's just a mean thing to do to someone. It's not quite George Clearney sending Julia Roberts twenty bucks and saying, I hear you get twenty a picture now, and you're just telling someone this their income stream is about to dry up, and that whatever they seem fun, they looked like they had a fun time. Everybody had a fun time making rumors. If there's one thing to take away from this podcast, it's that Rumors was a laugh a minute pill ride. But that happy go lucky atmosphere doesn't just extend to the pranks. It also extends to the songs such as You Make Loving Fun, which is one of my least least favorite song titles of all time. Imagine saying that to someone you love, I mean, you're married. That's not like that wasn't part of your vows or if I if, I if if I now disregarding that my wife is a Fleetwood macfan, if you were to say to that to someone you were with like Darlin you make loving fun. What I mean says that. It just says that a whole era of like you know, calling someone you know, you're my teddy bear, it was an all of us. I don't know that there was whatever. It's a great song. It's a great song. It's a great song. Dumb title. It's a great song. But but Christie McVeigh wrote this song about a new relationship that she was in with Flutwood Max Lighting Tech, but in order to keep the peace in the very small studio live room, she told her now ex husband John that the song was about her dog, which I gotta say. The lighting designer is probably the guy who came out the best in all of this, except for the band who got rich. But like he's talking about punching out of your weight class a lighting designer suddenly getting involved with the keyboardist vocalist of the band, especially when that woman is like nineteen seventies, like Christine mcvege, like that man, truly, Pete Davidson of the l A seventies music industry, Good Lord. But according to Ken Kelly's memoir, John eventually figured out the true meaning of this song and boycotted the sessions for a few days. At least that's his version. John himself told a different story in an interview from with Mojo. He claimed that it took him years to figure out that this song was about his wife's rebound relationship. So yeah, I don't know. We're getting into like the led Zeppelin problem, which is that all these people were extremely picked up and all of them are like low grade ego maniacal, so they're all kind of unreliable narrators. Which do you think it is? Which do you think it is? Do you think he caught onto it or do you think it took him years and follow up? Which one makes him look worse. I think he must have caught on because the lighting designer, his name is Curry Grant, he was like around during the sessions, and in Ken Call's memoir he's talking about these like, you know, almost like a rom com style, like him sneaking in the back door to like see Christine briefly and wall John's in the control room or something. I mean, it was like he was definitely around, So I've got a guess that. But but then again, I mean this was a guess at the same time that um that John apparently rigged up basically like a wine bottle i V. I think he had like a wine bottle upset down with like a chord coming out of it that he could presumably stick into his mouth. Um, I hope it wasn't intravenous. Jesus God. I was gonna say, if there's one dude who I like, don't trust, like self rigging up an ivy, it's John McVie. I mean the wine bottle I V. And the cocaine probably didn't help matters. So I mean, I think the jury still out on whether or not the clock that you make Loving Fun was not about Christine mcvie's dog but about her new boyfriend. Yeah. Maybe just like seven days later or seven years later, he woke up and was like, wait, it's like the song I've been doing on stage for seven years now. And wait a minute, wait the guy on the spotlight, but funny little side fact about You Make Loving Fun. Cyndi Lauper, when she was first getting her start as a singer, was commissioned in seven to record sound alike covers for like budget releases and um, I guess. She later said that she was paid twelve dollars to sound like someone else. And the only session that she ever did during that era that was actually released was a version of You Make Loving Fun. And that's the first song she ever released that Cyndy Lapper's first release, and it was so rare that she actually didn't even have a copy of it. I think a fan on that to give her a copy of it, like years and years later. So there is a fun little side fact about Cyndi Lauper and You Make Loving Fun. Just when you think that this band can't ensnare anyone else, they pull in Cyndi Lauper like they're They're not even just pulling in people from the West Coast of America. Now they've got their fingers in New York too. Um. Lindsay and Stevie have a pretty interesting moment in this. You know, Mick mixed breakup is pretty unilateral. His wife just as like I'm going to leave you and was for his best friend. By the way, yea again for his best friend. And John and Christine are just like not talking to each other, but she has moved on. John is in a committed relationship with alcohol, but Lindsay and Stevie are still in the like high school junior senior having knocked down drag out arguments in front of everyone else. And Ken Klay has this recollection of them doing the background vocals to You Make Loving Fun, and they're just on two stools in front of a pair of microphones and during every moment of playback while they were tracking that anytime they weren't singing, they would just immediately go screaming at each other, like them guys, all right, we got check levels. You ask you can go to hell. H you were moving out when we get back to l A. You just I mean, it's truly get to like, you can't write this stuff, you know. Um, And they nailed it. You're right, they still nailed it. You're absolutely right. Consummate professionalism. But let's get let's get away from let's get away from the damn vocalists. Three vocalists for a band, too many vocalists. Let's let's let's put this spotlight back on our dear sweet mc fleetwood for a second. Yes, well, I guess we got to talk a little bit about the vocalist because no, so we're gonna talk about sweet mc fleetwood and his drumming on Go Your Own Way, which written by Lindsey Buckingham, one of the truly great Kissoff songs of all time. It was written at a house that the band rented in Florida, between legs number one, right, it was between legs of their Fleetwood mac tor and Mick Fleetwood. Remember that the house, and I'm quoting had a distinctly bad vibe to it, as if it were haunted, which did nothing to help matters. I don't want to shame Mick Fleetwood more than life already has. But you know, if you lose six guitarists and it's like that, you might be a redneck. If you lose six guitarists in a year and you're writing songs in a house that you think is haunted, it might be you, Mick. Ten years of bad luck and bad vibes in a van. You look who the common denominator is. Oh I I would not Mick Fleetwood is a ball of joyous energy. I would not blame him for six guitars leaving. No, it's John mcviege. We all know it's John McVie. Sorry, but go your own way was uh, I think the first song that was written for Rumors, first song Lindsey Buckingham wrote for Rumors at least, and um, he picked up an electric guitar and sort of chugging out this chord progression. You know. He described it as a stream of consciousness. In the first phrase that he hit was loving you isn't the right thing to do, which, um, you know, kind of quickly opens itself up to a stream of bile about his his ex girlfriend Stevie Nicks. So he's working out the song and he uh, he's driving into the session to record it, and he hears Street Fighting Man by the Rolling Stones and has a really distinctive kind of rolling drum beat, and he goes over to Mick Fleetwood and tells him he wants to sound like Street Fighting Man. Mcfleetwood is dyslexic and we'd describe it in later years. He couldn't nail it. He said. His own ineptness contributed to the fact that he had this like really disorienting, unsettled beat for this song that Lindsay was working on, and it worked and they just kind of went for it. It ended up being a perfect fit for the track. Uh. He later said in an interview, I never quite got to grips with what he wanted, so the end result was my mutated interpretation. It became a major part of the song, a complete back to front approach that came I'm ashamed to say from capitalizing on my own ineptness, but really, I mean, to me, it makes the song. Yeah, I think he's short selling himself there. I mean. The other thing too, is that like Lindsay supposedly came in and was just kind of like clumsily like bashing this out on the drums and being like this is what I want. Like we're like, I'm a living god, this is what I want, and make Fleetwood's like, oh, well, uh, you know you're not a drummer. But okay, so I'm just imagining like full on Afro era Lindsey Buckingham in a kimono, high on coke, standing over a drum set, like bashing out a drumbeat and like yelling at Mike like, did you get it yet? But that's not even the craziest thing Lindsay did during the making of this album. He uh, you know, it extended to the engineers and it was unsurprisingly it was a guitar our solo that brought it out of him. So why don't you tell us that story? Jordan's yes, uh so. Perhaps the most extraordinary part of this song, aside from just the pure venom of the lyrics, is this searing guitar solo. Apparently it was the guitar solo that finally won over the original Fleetwood mac guitar. As Peter Green, I guess up at the lapt point he wasn't all that sure about Lindsey Buckingham, which I mean fair, But this fiery guitar solo had some real heat behind it. According to Ken Kelly's memoir, making Rumors, Lindsay was so high strung, strong out whatever version of strong you want to call it, that he strangled him during sessions for this guitar solo. I guess Lindsay laid down a version they were tracking different versions of it. He heard it back, said he didn't like it, told Ken the record over it. Uh. He went back out there, did another take on the solo, went back in and listened to it back. Didn't like it, so let's go with the last one. And everyone was like, well, you told Kennon deleted. He it over it. And this is when I'd like to go directly to uh, to Ken's book. You did what, Lindsey demanded. His face turned bright red and the veins in his neck began to throb. Then he put his guitar down and charged in the control room, approaching me from the front. While I was in my control booth seat. Lindsey placed both hands around my neck. You're an idiot, Lindsey screamed at me, his hands tightening around my throat. Lindsey had pushed me all the way back in my seat and his hands could have crushed my windpipe. At that moment, time slowed down for me. I didn't feel fear or anger. I just thought that Lindsay was being a really stupid uh. And then I guess, you know, everyone in the room although the bands look Lindsey, what what the hell? And you know record scratch. He looks up and realized that his bandmates are all looking at him and you know, it's worth saying. These bandmates have all done some pretty terrible things to each other, like this is finally a too yeah, And I guess they all demanded he apologized to Ken, and I guess Lindsey like left the room and got him a beer and tried to smooth things over, which you know, I didn't quite do it in Ken's book. He continued and said, of course Lindsey could have sent one of the road crew to get me a beer, but he wanted to get out of the studio, and I was happy to see him leave. I didn't really believe that Lindsay was sorry that he tried to choke me. Maybe he was sorry he'd done it in front of other people, but somehow I think he thought he had the right to mistreat people. I just love that. I love that Ken, that he talks about entering a state of like latest Nirvana and and with like no thought for his own life. But all he can think of is Lindsay, you idiot, Keep stupid, idiot. That's so great. Good for King makes me want to listen to his daughter's music. Um, but Lindsay succeeded in choking that guitar solo out of Ken KLA's throat. Yes, I mean Ken later assembled what was the final guitar solo from six different lead guitar takes, and I guess he had all the tapes up of the control board and he fade them in and out one at a time, which is kind of why it all sounds like this kind of dream like, like one melody line would come in and then another one would come in after that. So Ken, despite the fact that Lindsay tried to strangle him, worked his magic and uh brought forth a really incredible guitar sound for him. Yeah, which is you know, the job of every studio engineer in the world is to each tack from the band and then polish their turns into gold. Anyway, so how did Stevie feel about this song? Not great? Uh, perhaps unsurprisingly the line packing up shacking up is all you want to do, you know, it's not just a lazy rhyme, it's not just reductive, but it's me And Stevie asked him to get rid of that, and of course he did not, and she said rolling stone. She later said, I very much resented him. He knew that it wasn't true. It was just an angry thing that he said, and every time those words would come on stage, 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. I think the thing that's really insidious about this is that, like how much of this was really covered when they were talking about it. You know, she wasn't able to give her side of this story at the time, so she just had to suffer through this song accusing her of all of this stuff becoming one of their major hits. I don't know, it's gross, man, It's sad, but a nicer A nicer anecdote involves another person that that the rumors Fleetwood Mac universe in the extended Universes, which is kind of out of left field. Sly Stone Baby, Um, that is right. Yeah. Stevie Nicks wrote her hit song I Think the fleet Back's only number one song, Dreams in sly Stones Bed. We'll talk more about in the second, but first Dreams really was kind of her answer song to go your Own Way. I mean she would call Dreams and go your Own Way twins songs because they kind of chronicle the struggle to untangle uh, their toxic relationship, their toxic partnership from each other. And she would later say and and uh in the liner notes to the Rumors Deluxe reissue in even though Go Your Own Way was a little angry, it was also honest. So then I wrote Dreams, and because I'm the schifani chick who believes in fairies and angels and Lindsay is a hardcore guy, it comes out differently. Lindsay saying go ahead and day other men, and go and live your crappy life, and I'm singing about the rain washing you clean. We're coming at it from opposite angles, but really saying the exact same thing. It's true both songs about moving on. One of them is bitter and resentful and mud slinging, and the other is a little more zen about it one way I'm putting it. But but sessions at the record Plan and Saclito, we're usually pretty tedious. I mean, it's a famous story about the engineers taking like five days they get a good drum sound, And that really wasn't Stevie's thing at all. I mean, she wasn't really into the technical side of things, and so there wasn't a lot for her to do. She's, like, you know, foremost a singer songwriter. So when all the studio technical stuff was going on, uh, she was pretty bored. And to keep the boredom at bay, she went into a room nearby. It was an unused studio that had been built for Sly Stone, who was a you know northern California guy. Um, you know, in addition to sly and the family Stone who's a big, big time producer as well, Um sent the stage set the stage for what they called Slies Pit. Yes it was. It was a sort of It was a black and red room with a sunken pit in the middle, and there was a big black velvet bed with Victorian drapes, and I guess there was like a Fender Rhodes in there too. And so she was just sitting there, bring her her knitting, I think she would say, and then crotchet and writing her journals and sketch out song lyrics and sketch pictures and stuff. And she would just kind of hanging there and and it was kind of her little hotaway when um, you know, when they were doing all the technical stuff in in the studio room. Uh, and it was in there that she she wrote Dreams. She would later say on an interview with Blender, I sat down on the bed with my keyboard in front of me, I found the drum pattern, switched my little cassette player on and wrote Dreams in about ten minutes. And it's got this really simple like when she first presented it to the band, it was this three chord riff that you know, it was kind of like, kind of hypnotic in a way. Um. Stevie would later say that the band weren't all that crazy about it when she first heard it because it was it was almost boring. It was really just three chords, and um, I think Christine mcbeel later said that she did think it was boring, but Lindsay right. Lindsay worked with Stevie on it, which you mean again, there is something to be said about how much they worked on each other's songs, even when they were, you know, about each other. Stevie would later say in an interview with with The Daily Mail that she played him the cassette demo of Dreams, and even though Lindsay was mad at me at the time, he played it and looked up at me and smiled. What was going on between us was sad. We were couples who couldn't make it through, but as musicians we still respected each other, and I think that that is the main point. Lindsay fashioned these three separate sections out of identical chords, but he made every section sound different, and like I was saying earlier, it's really kind of a boring song on like a skeletal level, because it's just a couple of chords in there that repeat over and over. He made it so that each section sounded sonically very different and kept your attention and kept it interesting. To me. It's interesting that the band's nickname for it was Spinners because they when she first played it for them, it reminded them of a song by the R and B group soul group the Spinners, and I guess people have sort of over the years tried to figure out which Spinners song that it is, and I was just on a message board and people think it's I'll be around because the chord progressions are not They're not entirely the same, but the tempos are a little bit closer and the melodies are both kind of moved around the pentatonic scale, so apparently if you're interested, maybe uh, you can make a judgment on it. In the same way that the rest of Fleetwood Mac did about whether or not Dreams is I'll be around by the Spinners. I didn't realize that the drum sound on Dreams was like an eight bar loop that they just had, so it almost sounds like a proto like techno kind of thing. That's why it sounds so like hypnotic is. It's just the same thing over and over again. I didn't realize that until researching for this, and it's six part vocals. It's I mean, it is really I think more than go your own way. This is like the Stevie's revenge against Lindsay was ultimately having better songs um which is again a hot take, but like I think it probably kills Lindsay him a little bit that Dreams is what people think of when they think of rumors and not go your own way, especially after this song blew up on TikTok, you know, and like it was just memed to death. I mean, I'm sure Lindsay, yeah, I don't know. I would venture guess that part of that bites at him. That her song became like iconic, not to Go your Own Way, He's an iconic, but hers popped back into the psychgeist more recently. I don't know, maybe I'm projecting well also at the time, I mean Dreams was I think Mac's only number one song and Go your Own Way and hit number ten, but I'm sure that must have ten. Ain't one baby, that was the god This is a NASCAR if you ate first your Last, that's hilarious, that's a bit. I want to see Stevie Nicks parading or number one for Dreams in front of Lindsey Bucking. I'm going if you ain't first your Last? Whoa dude donuts on his front lawn? Oh man, We're gonna a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. Well, while we're on on Stevie's greatest song, Oh yeah, did you know that gold Dust Woman features the sound of Mick Fleetwood's shattering glass like on his own or just no one told him to do it. He just that's just kind of no people, they did tell him to do it. So this is the genesis of the song. It's you know, Stevie's other big, you know, standout moment on rumors. The song title comes from gold Dust Lane in the town of Wickenburg, Arizona, where Stevie spent time as a child. Yeah. Well, I don't know any place with a road called gold dust Land can't be that depressing. The other thing about this song that will not surprise you is, uh, the rather paper thin metaphor behind the title. Yeah. I mean you were used the word dust around Fleetwood Mac and the assumption would be that cocaine if somehow involved um. And in an interview that Stevie gave, I guess she was doing an interview with Courtney Love for Spin and she confirmed that gold dust was a metaphor for cocaine. She said, everybody was doing a little bit, you know. We never bought it or anything. It was just around And I think I had a real serious flash of what the stuff could be or what it could do to you. And I really imagine that it could overtake everything, never thinking a million a million years that it would overtake me. I must have met a couple of people that I thought did too much coke, and I must have been impressed by that because it made it into the whole story. She met them at work, So according to Stevie, this is basically about cocaine abusers before she really got heavily into it herself. Um. The take that was chosen for release on Rumors was apparently recorded at four in the morning after just a long night of attempting it in the studio, and in the final takes, Stevie, I guess wrapped a black scarf around her head to kind of like really veil her senses to the you know, the world around her and really inhabit this character and get inside this song. And to acentuate Stevie's lyrics, Uh, Mick Fleetwood broke panes of glass, Um, I guess. Uh. Ken call A later said that Mick was wearing goggles and coveralls and he just he said, he was just went nuts. It was just bashing glass with like a big hammer. And he tried to do it on QE like on rhythm and the song, but I guess he was just getting a little too over zealous and wasn't quite hitting it. So finally Kim was like, you know what, just just just break the damn glass. We'll fit it in the song. We'll do it in post we'll do it in post. Here's another fun fact for you. The sheet of glass that Mick Fleetwood broke in the master take of this song actually went on to be the same sheet of glass that gets broken as the intro for Stone called Steve Austin's Walking music and then wub you have. I really hope you're not kidding right now now, of course I'm making that up. It's the same sheet of glass, like I was on this message board and this glass message board that would know that's that's on the Steve Hoffman forums for sure. You know, I think the man, there's so much. Every time you start learning about the making this album, it just becomes like they were just it's like inter enhanced interrogation techniques, like being in a place where you don't know whether it's day or night, being flipped to like a completely nocturnal schedule. I mean, it's like there, it's like they were in Vegas. How deranged are you after months of being like completely nocturnal under like emotion. I mean, I'm surprised they weren't like confessing to kidnapping the Lindbird baby. Just make it stop. I'll sign whatever, I'll do whatever. Let me go back to the light. Well, the whole Vegas thing about you know, no windows, no clocks, now anything. I mean that was kind of a selling point in the seventies of like, you know, all musicians kind of kept those hours anyway, and it was kind of you know, it made it easier. It would be depressing to see the sun coming up and knowing that, you know, you still had hours to go to get the take or whatever and you still needed to do it. I mean, I kind of understand it in the way. Um. I mean, I I tell you you mentioned earlier that they spent five days getting drum sounds, which sounds about accurate. But if we do an episode on Tusk, we'll get into this. But also, as legends of Lindsay being a whacka do on during the making of Tusk, the seeds were sowned during the making of this record. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about what Lindsay put the good people of the Record Plant through. Yes, apparently the band required four days, nine pianos, and three tuners to find a suitable instrument for Christine McVie. And we mentioned the the five days on drum sounds, But I think my favorite story about Lindsay's maddening pursuit of sonic perfection was for the song never Going Back Again. That song began under the working title Brushes and it was just really simple acoustic guitar tune that he played with snare roles by Mick Fleetwood, which is kind of where it got its working title. He's using brushes on the snare and the band added vocals and further instrumentation and it got more layered and got more developed, and um, I guess it was one of the last songs that Lindsey wrote for the album. The first song that he wrote was Going Your Own Way about breaking up with Stevie. This was the last one he wrote, which is kind of more about a rebound relationship and moving on. Said later it was a you know, a suite if naive song. But Ken Kelly, the same guy who spent five days getting a drum sound and it was also strangled by Lindsey Buckingham for a guitar solo. Man deserved a purple heart for making this album. He was asked to change Lindsey Buckingham's guitar strings every twenty minutes. When he asked, he asked them to do it because what he supposedly says and never And you understand this because like, if you listen to that song, it's so bright the sound of the guitar, and that's like fresh string sounds, but you know it's all fingerpicking, so you're getting more like oil and and uh, every string is getting touched more by Lindsey Buckingham's disgusting hands, so you lose brightness really quickly from that. So apparently he started saying Buckingham's darkness infects the brightness of That's the main takeaway here. So Kela says, you know, I noticed that anytime he played there was a big difference in how bright the strings sounded after like twenty minutes. So he said, can we start just restringing your guitar every twenty minutes? And he put he drafted the studio text into doing this and says, I'm sure the roadies wanted to kill me. Restringing the guitar three times every hour was a bit, but Lindsay had lots of parts on the song and each one sounded magnificent. But then there was a oh, the coda to this when Lindsay goes to sing because the song is capod uh. And so when Lindsay goes to sing, he realized he played all of his guitar parts in the wrong key. So after a whole day of tracking three guitar parts per song with string changes three times on the hour, they wiped all of it to do the whole thing the next day over again in the right key. What a cost three studio tags a day? Whatever the day rate for is it? I mean you could buy a car for that much money. It's like Steely Dan being like, we bought this studio for a week to audition guitarists to play one solo, and none of them got it right. So we're starting over next week. You know, Like I love this phase of the music industry because man, these people were just burning money. Yeah. But now let's talk about one of the well, the more more low budget Oh yeah, okay, yeah, well crank the studio budget dial to the absolute other end to talk about secondhand News. Yes, second hand News one of my all time favorite tracks on the album. Did you know that the percussion sound on that song is a leather chair or a pleather chair, I should say, in the studio. That's what that sound is. Secondhand news. I mean, man, what a classic opener. I mean, you know, the the opening lines, I know there's nothing to say, someone has taken my place. What a perfect way to just set the mood for the entire album, and such a great song rom the perspective of everyone involved. Yeah, it was inspired by another of Lindsay's sort of rebound relationships after attempting to move on from Stevie Nicks. He will never move on from Stevie Nicks, who were kidding not after Silver Springs Baby, But actually those words were not there at the start of the sessions for this, I guess he kept the songs instrumental at this early stage, probably not wanting to antagonize Stevie, so in the early phase he kept the lyrics to himself and started as this like kind of almost like a Celtic March kind of thing. And they were thinking that the song sounded a little too folky, and they wanted to add kind of a dancy R and B groove to it, and they were inspired by the Bigs jive talking that, which actually was inspired by the Bigs driving over a bridge in Miami on the way to the studio. You know, when the tires kind of go. It was like metal. You can kind of hear that, and that's what inspired jive talking. That's what inspired the kind of like rolling percussive effect, almost like a proto disco groove. So, if you're keeping track on your beautiful mind style collage of rumors at home, we have now pulled the b GS and the city of Miami into this web. Continue as you were. So to get this kind of percussive groove, they pounded the seat of a Nauga Hide chair. Nauga Hide is like cheap faked leather and uh ken kel A later said Lindsay was the accent king, which is very generous considering this man once try to strangle him. He could accent with guitars, he could accent with Tom Tom drums, and he could accent with Nauga Hide chairs. So it just goes to show you, I mean, how far the band would go to get the ound that Lindsay hurt in his head, from change guitar strings every twenty minutes, to playing on a chair that happened to be nearby, and sometimes they would even venture outside of the studio, isn't that right, Higel? Yeah, absolutely, When we progress onto Songbird, they actually at some point decided they wanted to see the Daylight, which seems like it came out of nowhere. But when it comes to Songbird, Kelly says, I'm gonna try something different with this one, and he had actually recorded an now with Joni Mitchell at the Berkeley Community Theater. He explained this to Music Radar in an interview at one point, and he says, I thought about doing something similar to a kind of concert recital recording, and perhaps maybe they just exhausted by this point, but the band said, Okay, let's try that. But the Berkeley Community Theater was unavailable. So Colle goes to the university and says, I'd like to book the auditorium, complete with an orchestra shell and a nine foot Steinway, and he really, you know, set and setting for this, he really goes the extra mile. Um when she shows up to record, he requested that a bouquet roses be placed on her piano and three colored spotlights shining down on them from above. Which, Yeah, after you're trapped in this cocaine hell with all of your exes and their exes, to come into like an auditorium, that's like lit in this beautiful tableau, and he says when she first saw it that she nearly broke into tears, and I can easily understand that. Then, of course things went insane, and they spent eighteen hours to record this song in this auditorium. They stayed until seven o'clock the next morning, because they can do nothing easily. That's the thing. They can take Fleetwood Mac and take something as relaxed and beautiful as a solo piano recording and turned it into a death march. And she's but she did it in one take. That's that's the really incredible thing about this song is that that's the take. Well, I think that's why it took so many hours. She was like, I was like, it was supposed to be a complete take. And I guess Lindsey Buckingham was playing acoustic guitar, I think, on the same stage, and maybe it was just a combination getting them both to do it, you know, to get the same take at once. Apparently, the live performance was captured by fifteen microphones placed around the empty auditorium, which nearly one for every hour. I don't know much about audio engineering, but that sounds excessive to me. Is that it's like a lot. I mean, I'm sure they had like two or three on the piano, two or three on the guitar, but that's still a lot of damn microphones for for what is three elements of a song? Anyway, But we haven't even gotten to the weirdest weird is weird the word I want to use. I don't know. Just having it called oh Daddy's makes it feel weird to me. But yeah, Oh Daddy's maybe my least favorite song on the album. But one little talk about this, Yeah, I enjoyed this. Apparently at the very end of the song, you can hear Christine McBee pounding the keyboard in frustration if you listen closely. But first, the really pressing question is mc Fleetwood the big Daddy? Let's get into this there There are mixed stories about who inspired Oh Daddy, and it's widely believed to be about Mick Fleetwood, who at the time was the only father in the band. And he's just sort of the big daddy of Fleetwood Mac. You know, he's he's the Fleetwood of Fleetwood back. He's like nine ft tall. He's just like he was kind of the de facto manager. He was just you know, he's he's the big Daddy Fleetwood Mac. It makes sense. But apparently both Lindsey Buckingham's former girlfriend Carol Anne Harris and Stevie Nix's biographer have written that the song was originally written about Christine mcvie's new boyfriend, Curry Grant, the band's lighting designer, who spent all of the sessions trying not to be killed by John McVie, um just putting on different hats and like coming in and disguises Peter Seller's routines. So that that's the two different theories about who is the big Daddy of Oh Daddy. But apparently when they were recording the song, poor Ken kel a uh, there was a problem with the tape machine and the tape snapped and right when she was singing oh Daddy on the tape, so all you heard was oh Addy. So for months they called the song oh Addy just as kind of an in joke to rib poor Ken. And then they go back in and I think they did just do puncheons for that part when they dropped the d um, and then she later tried to strangle him, but anyway, went on the on the track that made it on the album. Near the end of the song, Christine, I guess thought that she made a mistake and they get the band to stop. Just to get their attention, she started hitting just random notes on her keyboard and you can hear it around I think the three minute and second mark on the song, she's just like kind of hitting, you know, elbowing the keyboard. Um, but I guess nobody noticed and they kept right on playing, and uh, ken Kela would say, you know that we finished the take and that one had the magic that we were looking for, so we went with it. But you can hear Christine McVeigh patting her keyboard and frustration, which is probably something I imagined she would like to have done more often during these sessions. Yeah, now we're getting into my favorite bit of rumors minutia, which is Silver Springs. And you know, again, this goes back to the Russian novel thing because you kind of have to know about Fleetwood Maclure to explain this, and apparently it's sort of an open joke in Fleetwood Mac that Stevie can kind of run at the mouth that her stories are a little long winded. And if this even has continued because there's an event, the Music Cares event where she's kind of going on and talking a lot, and at one point Lindsay rolls his eyes and that was like the straw that broke the Camels back during this particular decade, and so he got kicked out of the band subsequently. But you know, as opposed to writing these very can you see it with dreams like as opposed to writing these can say speech boys style pop songs like Stevie, and this is going to sound very cliche cast spells. You know, these songs are more meditative and they kind of their dreaming, and Ken file A later says, Stevie is so prolific. All of her songs were initially about fourteen minutes long, you know, so she would just go on and on and there were stories about her mother and her grandmother and stories about her dog. And so he says it was my job to sit with her and cut them down to three or four minutes, which would drive her to tears. But so she has this song that is explicitly about Lindsay called Silver Springs. They were in Maryland and they were driving in her freeway sign that says silver Spring Maryland, and she loves that name, and she says she would later say, it sounded like a pretty fabulous place to me. You know, you could be my Silver Springs. That's just a whole symbolic thing of what you could have been with me. But one of the things that she wanted to do with this song was signed away her publishing for it to her mom as like a present. She was like, you know, I'm kind of getting more money, and I'm like, set, I want the publishing for this song to go directly to my mom, as like her gift to her mother. So by the time they get to sequencing rumors and they have all of these songs, Rhino Records still only hold twenty two minutes aside. So Kela says, you know, we were concerned that we might have too slow of a record. We didn't want to put the needle down on side one and have all slow songs. So they started sequencing test runs and found that they couldn't make a sequence that worked that didn't feel too slow that included Silver Springs. So they act Silver Springs and they bungle, they fumble the touchdown like it's bad enough. They cut this song, but then the way that they go about telling her is so much worse. Take it away, Joy, It's pretty brutal. So they think, oh jeez, Stevie is gonna be really bummed that she's not getting her allotment of songs on this album. So they decide maybe she'll be it'll soften the blow if we do another one of her songs, maybe a quicker song, maybe a shorter song. So the band minus Stevie recorded the instrumental backing too I Don't want to know, which was a song from the Buckingham Knicks era that was just kind of left over and they'd had it for a long time. And so they break the news to Stevie. I think Mick Fleetwood takes her out into the studio parking lot and says, you know, he's taking her out to shoot her, like like, we gotta go out behind the building for this one, Stevie, Like, God, these people so mix us. You know, we can't have this song. I'm sorry that the records too long. It doesn't fit. I'm sorry, Stevie later said, Needless to say, I didn't react well to that. Eventually, I said, well, what song you're gonna put on the album instead? And they said, well, re recorded. I don't want to know, And she said, I think Lindsay thought it would be okay with me because I wrote it, but I wasn't okay with it. She's just classic man, like, we're taking your song off the album, and we also decided which of your songs we're gonna put on. Yeah, so she she went in and recorded that song seriously under dress. Silver Springs was relegated to the B side of Go Your Own Way, which was especially galling considering, you know, the song that meant the world to her is now the B side to drags her through the mound, you know, shacking ups all you want to do, So that really just kind of added insult to injury, and it really it remained a deep cut until fleetwood Ma live album The Dance, which I'm getting goose bumps even thinking about. Everyone, do yourself a favor and google the performance of Silver Springs from The Dance to watch a blood bath non parol, like good lord. It is one of the most harrowing performances I've ever seen in my life. The eye contact. Yeah, oh my god, yeah, it's it's it's beautiful. It's a one of the kind thing. And the capit to that it is that she used to check into hotels on the road under the alias Miss Silver Spring, so she truly never let go of it until one day she murdered him. Moving on, this brings us to I think this is my favorite track on the Album's probably everybody's fad the track on the album, The Chain. Um. The Chain so called because it's really a combination of sort of unrelated songs that the band had worked on that they all linked together, kind of like the Beatles did of the Day in the life. Um. The Chain has its basis and an unreleased Christine mcviee song and then old Buckingham Knicks track Yeah, and it's core is a Christine McVie song called keep Me There, which and the Pantheon of all time draft names was called butter Cookie back in the day. Is it so funny? I love when songs are like that. You know, you get something like the jam that turns into like tiny Dancer or something, and Elton John was calling it like, you know, the Minister's tea Kettle or something dumb like that. Anyway, it's a keyboard driven song because obviously Christine McVie wrote it, but they never really got around to finishing it, and so Buckingham says, what happened, He tells Rolling Stone In He says, we decided that this song needed a bridge, so he cut a bridge and edited it into the rest of the song. So you get to the two halves of keep Me There, which are built then around probably one of the coolest basslines in maybe of all twentieth century pop music. It's so good, and it's John mcvige, you know, it's his shining moment. So they just made that the middle of the song and I guess it just stayed in partial form for a while. Buckingham says, it almost went off the album. Then we went back and decided we liked the bridge, but we didn't like the rest of the song. So it really came together kind of catches catch can. But the interesting thing about the guitar part is that their self pledgiarization recycling continues. Buckingham basically steals a good hard figure from himself from this song called Lola My Love, which is recorded from the Buckingham Nick days, and he recycles that for the chain and then so the ending of the song is actually the only thing that is left from Christine mcveige's original track, which, as you will recall, was called butter Cookie. It comes up with a bunch of much better name the chain because it was a bunch of pieces. And then Jordan's what would you describe as the final link in the chain? Well, I'm glad you asked Highchool. I think that the final link in the chain were the lyrics. Originally the song had no words, because again it's just a bunch of instrumental parts from unrelated demos that were all linked up, and Stevie wrote the words. And uh, I don't even think she necessarily wrote it initially with this song in mine. I think she wrote the lyrics independently, and then she came in and said, you know, I've wrote some lyrics and they might fit for this thing you would doing the other day. So it got all linked up, and uh, it really, I mean, it's just a centerpiece of the band, not only their live set, but just their whole cannon. It really is such an an apt metaphor for this group of people that are just bound together for decades despite all this turmoil. I mean, the chain will keep us together. It's a symbol of strength and togetherness, but it's also imprisonment, you know. I mean, the words to that song are are so brilliant. And The Chain, I believe, is the only track that all five members of the classic Fleetwood Mac era all of a writing credit on. I think that's the only one. So, I mean, it's it's funny that song that's called the Chain, that's sort of about the love hate relationship of everybody kind of being bound together, is something that they all kind of had a hand in creating, which is pretty fitting. And it's got a bass solo, and it's got a great bass solo. Hell yeah, John McVie, at the end of the day, John mcvigh comes out on top, Yes he does. John mcvigh was actually the one who hit upon the title Rumors for this record. They were initially gonna call it Yesterday Days Gone from Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, but John and v suggested rumors because he thought the band were, you know, their songs were basically journals and diaries and they were talking about each other through their music. And that brings us to the album cover. Herbert Worthington's absolutely iconic cover feature Stevie in her which she ran and guys dancing. I think she's dancing with mc fleetwood. Whatever that we want to call that pose. It called some drama. The cover caused some drama because why not every other element of this production drama? As if something would go smooth. No. According to the photographer Herbert Worthington's, Lindsey Buckingham has quote never forgiven me for not being on the Rumors cover. And this is in Ken Kelly's book. I guess Kenny interviewed him. Lindsay came up to me and said, I wish I could have been on my own damn cover. He didn't say damn I hadn't that, but but emphasis mine um and Herbie, I guess tried to explain to Lindsay, you know, the cover idea was about creating a piece of art. It wasn't supposed to just the straight headshots of the group. H Lindsay was not happy about that. I mean, yeah, I I I'm not on his side for this. I'm sorry. Like you've got the guy in the band who's eight feet tall, you've got the woman in the band who looks like an actual fairy, and like the guy who wears kimonos and has like an enormous mount of goofy curly hair. Is like piste off. He didn't get to be on the cover. Like it looks like an oil painting, like it minus the balls thing, but like it's so beautifully arranged, just like imagining like Lindsey bucking I'm standing there like hands on his hips in his kimono, like just dead center just throws it off so much. He look this image of Lindsey Buckingham and his kimono is very strong with you. I want to know more about There's a there's a there's a performance of them doing dreams at one point and it's I think he's playing Less Paul. It's before he's playing the returner guitars. But he is truly wearing a kimono belted at the waist, not unlike Rush in a certain era from them. But I don't know, he's just he's just a he's a striver. He's just a hilarious person to me, someone who takes himself so so seriously. Um anyway, sorry, but you mentioned Mick Fleetwood's balls earlier, as you well should have. There is a story about the pair of wooden balls that are dangling from mc fleetwood's pants. It's definitely a weird detail. I mean, it's something I've kind of always wondered about. And those balls almost miss it, Like it almost seems you almost missed them because there's so much poison like staging, and his limbs are so long, and then and then you look down and you're just distracted by this bit of grotiery. You would think that it was just this kind of like spur of the moment, boyish prank, and it's not. These balls actually have kind of a long history with Nick Fleetwood as kind of a good luck talisman. There were known as lavatory chains. There are the things you pulled the flush the toilet and they date back to early Fleetwood Matt gigs, like in the Peter Green days in the sixties. And he said he gave an interview with the Maui Times in two thousand nine and he said that, well, I had a couple of glasses of English jail and I came out of the toilet with these. I guess he just ripped him off the toilet and he just tied them to his pants down between his legs when he was playing, just to be funny, and uh, you know, he was like to say, in truth, they started off as a blues player. The whole ethic of a lot of blues music is slightly suggestive, I might say, and suitably, I walked out on stage with these two laboratory chains, with these two wooden balls hanging down, and it just stuck. And this wasn't his only tribute to uh virility, I suppose you could say, Uh. He also went through performative. Yeah, he went through a long period of placing a dildo on top of his bass drum that he called Harold, and I guess it was like a mascot, almost on par with like the penguins, uh in the pre Buckingham Next days of the band. And I guess uh Harold's career came to a an abrupt end when Fleetwood Mac were touring the American South, and I guess they were really arrested for having a dildo on the trump kit. Um. So so that was that. But the balls, Meanwhile, Mick Fleet would continue to to to wear them as sort of like a good luck charm really, and they made an appearance at pretty much every Fleetwood Mac show and apparently the original set were lost on the road, which I mean would be an amazing you know rock and roll Indiana Jones adventure to try to track down Mick Fleetwood's rumors balls. Um but he makes do these days with with a replica, and he says, I think this is speaking to the MAUI times. I won't say there as old as me, but and it starts getting an X rated commentary here my balls are quite old, weirdow. Sorry, we all we all have our good luck charms. Hey, if you happen to know the whereabouts of the original set of Mick Fleetwood's balls, please tweet at us using the hashtag meet Fleetwood's Balls. I promise you Jordan will enjoy the at This is like unsolved mysteries, like Robert's Stack being like update update, Mick Fleetwood's balls have been found. I wish I had a Bobby Stacks impression on deck where he's like, I don't know if I can pull this out. Three hours after we three hours after we broadcast the episode on Mick Fleetwood's balls, a housewife in Des Moines, Iowa was watching our show and called in. Three hours later, Mick Fleetwood's balls were found and returned to him. Tearful reunion. Fleetwood reduced the tears by balls. Speaking of Mick Fleetwood's balls, Hey uh, any Leebovitz is rolling Stone cover shoot, and Mick Fleetwood's balls actually played a large part in God I'm So sorry. Um so the band when they were going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. Cameron Crow's doing the story, Annie Leevi, it's shooting the art, and you know it's an open secret in ll A that this band is a catastrophe of interper relationships. So the pitch for the art is to have them in bed with each other, and Fleetwood says in play on, he says, the intention was a spoof on the rumors about our private lives, and yet symbolically the picture showed us exactly as we were all married to each other. Generous read on that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know she knows her audience. I'll say this. And so the band arrives at her studio and she had left cocaine out for them as a treat. As a treat, yeah exactly, here's the little charcouterie plate, here's some cocaine. Um. But then she says they looked a little freaked out. At first, but then consumed it in like thirty seconds. Then I learned they'd all recently been to rehab, so they were all a little jittery, intense, So great setting for a photo shoot. Band fresh out of rehab is offered cocaine and put in bed together. The original concept for the art called for the two ex couples to embrace each other, but they wisely walked that back a little, and Buckingham says, you know, for Stevie and me, the wounds and timosities were still very fresh, so the idea for the photo wasn't all that funny? Was the Fleetwood Night song on tuss That's like not that funny, is it? Anyway, Nicks put her foot down and she said, Okay, I'll be in bed with all of them, but I can't be in bed next to Lindsay, So I curl up next to Mick for the next three hours while Annie has suspended over us on a platform, and Christine didn't want to be next to John because they had just divorced, so John sits by himself reading Playboy. Now this obviously strange bedfellows make for strange bedfellows because this session, Nix and Buckingham backslides. This is something that I found really hard to believe, but Stevie has quoted us saying that she and Lindsay actually hooked up while in bed for this photo shoot. To read the quote, and I'm not totally sure where it's from. But afterwards, Lindsay and I got to talking about how amazing it was that not so long ago I was a waitress and he didn't have a job, and now we were on the cover of Rolling Stone with this huge record, and we lay there for about two hours talking and making out. Finally Annie had to tell us to leave because she'd rented the room for only so long. Family was just like, get a room. But perhaps even more surprising, you know, Nicks is also in bed with good old Mick Fleetwood, and you know it, uh it sparks something in them. Fleetwood later writes that the shoot caused him to realize that he and Nicks had definitely known each other in previous lives, which is that's some nineteen seventies pick up line if I've ever heard it, Like, oh hey, babe, I think like we might have known each other, but it wasn't a one way thing. Nix. It later admits herself that that particular photo session planted the seed for mix making me, which happened a year later. So they, you know, earnestly embarked on an affair during a late summer break during the band's tour schedule later that year, just before they headed to the South Pacific. So maybe it's a little pre pre South Pacific romance vibes um. Stevie and I used to slip away and go on adventures after gigs, which was an easy way to get away, Mick recalls. They would go to Maui, they go to New Zealand. They would just go driving through the Hollywood Hills, which doesn't sound make Fleetwood at the wheel of an automn automobile does not sound relaxing to me. But they parted eventually, But you know, Mike Fleetwood still looks back on this with pretty admirably rose colored glasses. He says, we just love each other in the true sense of the word, which transcends passion. I will take my love for her as a person to my grave, because Stevie Nicks is the kind of woman who inspires that devotion. I have no regrets and near to she, but we do giggle sometimes and wonder what might have transpired if we'd given that passion the space and time to blossom into something more, Which is like, that's a really that's a really nice quote from Mick Fleetwood that I think that is actually a great note to end of for all of the bile and spite and resentment and just torture us in a per some relationships that went into the making of this album, you have that, you have that beautiful quote, A really nice moment shared between two people didn't work out, but they both appreciate each other and what they had for a brief moment of time for what it was. I think that is beautiful. I think that should be you know, they say, you know, people don't change. I think that is the Hero's journey. They changed, they took, they took something from all this. I think that is. Yeah. If there's two things I want you to take away from this podcast, I want you to take away that Rumors is really Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey and hashtag Fleetwood's balls. Uh, this has been too much information about Fleetwood Max Rumors. I'm Alex Hegel, I'm Jordan Runtuck. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you in a few days with more fun and adventure. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.