The Fleetwood Mac album cover Lindsey Buckingham hated: “Never forgiven”
No rock band is ever safe from one big word that looms over everything: ego. Whether it’s how the song should be played or the amount of time devoted to one long guitar solo, everyone is going to have their say in what they think the group should really sound like. Although Lindsey Buckingham was more than happy to voice his opinion when he joined Fleetwood Mac, he admitted to still feeling burned about not being included in the photo shoot for Rumours.
Granted, it was going to be hard not to notice Buckingham even if his mile-high afro wasn’t on the front of the album. The entire project was a tale of heartbreak with every member of the group, and despite Stevie Nicks turning in some of the best music of her career, Buckingham may have walked out of the album as the true MVP.
Outside of pieces like ‘Go Your Own Way’ doing impressive numbers on the charts, the deeper cuts like ‘Second Hand News’ and ‘Never Going Back Again’ showcase his incredible fingerpicking technique as well. Even when the entire group got credited for songs like ‘The Chain’, Buckingham made it a priority to turn in one of the best solos of his career on the outro guitar solo, which all but overshadows John McVie’s bassline once it comes in.
But when putting together an actual album photo, they needed something that wasn’t as messy as the lyrics. This had to entice the listener to pick the album up, and once Mick Fleetwood and Nicks struck that magical pose, it felt like they had captured lightning in a bottle.
Across the cover, this feels less like an album about rock and roll melodrama and more like you’re being invited to something more refined. There is still a tinge of humour in the fact that Fleetwood has literal balls hanging from his crotch, but it’s still eye-catching just to see the more mystical side of Nicks’ persona offsetting him.
For all of the beauty in the shot, engineer Ken Callait remembered that Buckingham was always unhappy that he never got to be in the final shot, saying in his book Making Rumours, “Herbie Worthington had done the cover shoot for Rumours in November, which also created controversy within the band… ’Lindsey has never forgiven me for not being on the Rumours cover,’ Herbie told me later. Lindsey came up to me and said, ‘I wish I could have been on my own cover.’”
Given the animosity towards every member at the time, it was probably best to compromise on the next album by having absolutely no one on the cover. Rather than go for the band shot for Tusk, doing something as random as taking a picture of Callait’s dog may have been the only way to compromise.
Fleetwood Mac’s covers got much more elegant, but it must have stung a little bit not to be featured on one of the best-selling albums ever. Although the cover of The Dance might be a more accurate version of what a group shot of Rumours could have looked like, there’s no topping that one piece of magic that happened between Fleetwood and Nicks.
