The dumbest move Fleetwood Mac ever made, according to Mick Fleetwood: “That was ridiculous”
The beauty of Fleetwood Mac‘s Rumours is, when you sit and listen to it in its entirety, the weight of the drama that laces the storytelling feels immediately apparent. You’re thrust into the centre of this salacious whirlwind, playing the role of therapist for this misfit band of jilted lovers and talented musicians.
The intimacy, pain and slight feeling of hopefulness bleed through the tracks in what is their most succinct and successful outing to date. Without deliberately searching for it, they created something of a concept album in the process. So immersive were the experiences they all found themselves in during recording, that come the point of listening to the final mix, everything felt as though it had a through line.
Despite all of that, every song on the record felt like a clear single. Music fans all over the world grew familiar with individual tracks because all of them played on the radio in the run-up and upon release. While the overarching concept of heartbreak bound the album together, each song existed individually within its own remit, telling the story of whatever member wrote it, while simultaneously providing a window into the wider sonic and narrative theme of the record.
In many ways, it became the perfect record to market. Catchy hits opened the door to poignant deep cuts that all served the wider purpose of the Rumours era. The complete antithesis of their follow-up album, 1979’s Tusk.
Known firmly as Lindsey Buckingham’s creative baby, Tusk took the band into more abstract realms that, truthfully, started the steady decline of their band. While the title track and ‘Sara’ act as standout tracks, with the former showing where Fleetwood Mac could be interestingly innovative and the latter building on Stevie Nicks’ bulletproof ballad writing formula, the remainder of the record felt slightly bloated.
With fewer standout singles to market, the label took it upon itself to try something different. In the spirit of innovation that this record championed, Warner Brothers decided to promote the record by playing the double LP in full one day before its release date via the Westwood One radio network.
“That was ridiculous, and that was Warner Brothers’ fault,” Fleetwood told Discoveries in 2004. “I said, ‘I don’t think you should be doing this,’ and they said, ‘Oh no, it’s all part of a new thing, friendly to radio.’ But there are people with tape machines out there. And they played the whole album! I should have stopped it. But they’d convinced me it was part of a new, cutting-edge marketing thing. Who knows how much damage it did? To me, it was like a milestone of stupidity and rolling the dice unnecessarily. But the album survives.”
Nevertheless, the record still topped the UK charts and landed at number four in the US charts, gaining a rather healthy commercial return despite its marketing and artistic shortcomings. But it still remains the sound of a band slowly falling apart.
If Rumours captured the tension between the five and bottled it into something magic, Tusk felt like the sound of that bottle smashing and spilling out onto the floor.
