The Fleetwood Mac album Linsdey Buckingham described as “treading water”
In 1977, Fleetwood Mac transformed heartbreak into hits with their 11th album, Rumours. On the surface, the record featured soft rock strums and gentle harmonies, but beneath that polished exterior lay a web of interpersonal turmoil. The writing and recording process was fueled by infidelity, divorce, and drug abuse, which permeated the bitter lyrics of tracks like ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘You Make Loving Fun’.
The drama behind the scenes of the record only served its success, as Rumours became one of the most fabled records in music history. It also became Fleetwood Mac’s magnum opus – the sound and the story behind Rumours are now almost synonymous with the band’s name. When it came to recording a follow-up, then, Fleetwood Mac had a tough task on their hands.
How could the band possibly match the lore and legacy of Rumours? To put it quite simply, they couldn’t. Instead of looking to gain the same levels of commercial success with their next album, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham led the band in a completely different direction with Tusk. Instead of focusing on the soft rock sound that had become their trademark, he pulled in influences from post-punk and more experimental forms of rock.
Despite Buckingham’s best efforts, this risk wouldn’t quite pay off. Though Tusk had its interesting moments and spawned some modest successes in its titular track and ‘Sara’, it didn’t even come close to the reception of Rumours. It made sense, then, that when Fleetwood Mac returned with Mirage two years later, it marked a return to their roots.
Fleetwood Mac played it safe for their 13th record, returning to the soft rock sound that had won over the masses. Singles like Stevie Nicks’ wistful ‘Gypsy’ would prove that the band still had command over the genre, but Buckingham wasn’t the biggest fan of the release. To him, it felt like the band were merely keeping their heads above water with Mirage.
“Mirage kind of represents a treading-water period for me,” the guitarist stated during an interview with Magnet Magazine, “What happened in the wake of Tusk not selling 16 million albums or whatever, this dictum came down from the whole band that we weren’t going to engage in that kind of experimentalism anymore.”
The commercial failure of Tusk had pushed Fleetwood Mac back into a soft-rock corner, into the sound and stylings that they knew had served them well in the past. But this clearly wasn’t creatively fulfilling for Buckingham, who had been given a small taste at a more experimental sound. Still, Mirage wouldn’t replicate the commercial success of Rumours either – perhaps this was impossible to achieve.
Fleetwood Mac found their feet again after taking a five-year break before returning on Tango In The Night, an album that would spawn their biggest non-Rumours hits. The sparkling ‘Everywhere’ and the witchy ‘Seven Wonders’ expanded on the band’s sound without straying too far from it, winning audiences over once more.
Though Mirage may have felt like “treading water” to Buckingham, it made sense that the band felt compelled to return to their roots after the failure of Tusk. Buckingham wouldn’t have to keep his head above water for too long, either, as he took his leave from the band in 1987 after the release of Tango In The Night, allowing him to focus on his solo endeavours.
