Lindsey Buckingham strangled an engineer when making ‘Rumours’
The road to making an album like Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours would never be easy. After the breakups of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks and John and Christine McVie, every group member had to try to hold in their emotions as much as possible in the studio while making songs that reflected their broken hearts onto the tape. The stress levels were already through the roof, but Buckingham was never quite able to keep his temper in check.
Throughout the album’s recording, Buckingham’s mood would often fluctuate based on how the track was coming along and/or how his relationship with Nicks was going. Although engineer Ken Caillat always knew how to handle the technical side of production, he wasn’t prepared for just how cutthroat their performances would be, including one recording session where Nicks and Buckingham had a violent argument in the middle of recording backing vocals for the song ‘You Make Loving Fun’.
Although Buckingham always strived for perfection in the studio, Caillat mentioned one recording session where he almost got strangled by Buckingham after a mishap. Looking to record over and over again, Buckingham was laying down different solo tracks for the song ‘Go Your Own Way’ when he started making outrageous demands, as Caillat recalls in his book Making Rumours, “Things got hot and heavy as he got into his guitar solo. He didn’t want to wait for anything. He said, ‘I can do better. Tape over the last one!’ I asked, ‘Are you sure? That was really great.’ He stared at me through the glass then firmly said, ‘Yes!'”.
After deciding that he liked the original one better, Buckingham became furious that Caillat did exactly what he asked him to do, as Caillat remembers, “I replied, ‘We just went over that one. Remember, you told me to?’. His face turned bright red, and the veins in his neck began to throb. He put his guitar down and placed both of his hands around my neck.”
Although Buckingham came dangerously close to strangling his engineer, the rest of the band calmed him down and made him come to his senses, eventually apologising for the incident. That was only one part of his frustrations, which also included recording the song ‘Never Going Back Again’ in the wrong key and having to re-do the entire song from scratch.
The blood, sweat and tears seemed like they would never end, and the band would eventually turn their turmoil into solid gold, with nearly every song from the record finding its way onto the singles charts. Caillat would also get his fair share of accolades, returning to produce on the band’s double album Tusk and Rumours, being commended for its amazing production value.
Although Caillat may have enjoyed the experience, he did mention not wanting to work with Buckingham in the studio again because of that incident, recalling, “I would really love to use Lindsey as a guitarist on the albums I’m working on today, but he’s just such a difficult, unhappy person so much of the time that it’s too much work to deal with him. [We] never discussed his trying to strangle me, even though I thought about it when he walked into the studio.”
