The Fleetwood Mac song that almost reduced Christine McVie to tears
The story of Fleetwood Mac has always been one littered with drama and tragedy. Even before Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham came along as part of the band’s most famous line-up, the group was forever troubled by issues of addiction, affairs and in-fighting. So when hearing of a time when a song moved Christine McVie to tears, the expectation would be that it was attached to some huge blow-up amidst their personal relationships. But in reality, the tale is a beautiful one.
That’s a rare and odd thing to write about the making of Rumours, which was anything but wholesome or serene. After Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band, the majority makeup of the group was based around two couples: the package-deal new additions and Christine and John McVie. The making of their first self-titled album together went smoothly, proving their natural musical chemistry. But by the time Rumours came around, everything had collapsed.
Creating an album is hard enough as a band, with the various compromises necessary to piece it together. However, attempting to make an album while the whole band is going through breakups, divorces, or affairs with another member should have been impossible. There were moments when it felt that way as members stormed off or kicked off about the insulting nature of the songs they were penning about each other, such as Buckingham insulting Nicks with ‘Go Your Own Way’.
“Drama. Dra-ma,” is how Christine McVie described the process, with even that being an understatement. But somehow, they didn’t just manage to make an album; they made one of the most timelessly beloved records of all time.
It was no easy feat for anyone involved, but it especially feels like a triumph for Ken Caillat, the producer at the helm of the album who was tasked with keeping it all together. Making an album in those conditions didn’t just require a good musical producer but someone more like a leader or a therapist, able to read the room and understand what the members needed, both sonically and mentally, to get the best out of them. When it came to Christine McVie’s crowning moment on the album, with her stunning ballad ‘Songbird’, Calliat wanted to make sure it was done right.
From the second he heard the song, he knew it was special. “We were finishing up one of the crazy sessions at Sausalito Record Plant and I was wrapping up some cables,” Calliat recalled at the Grammy Museum. “Christine sat down at the piano and started playing this beautiful song. I stopped what I was doing and I turned around and watched her. I was just amazed at how beautiful this song was.”
He knew he had to keep it sacred and not let the drama from the rest of the album, or the inter-band chaos, taint it. So rather than keep it trapped in the same studio the band had been hauled up in, the producer decided to do something different, creating a moment that moved McVie to no end.
“Before Rumours, I had recorded an album with Joni Mitchell at the Berkeley Community Theatre,” he told Music Radar. “I thought doing a similar kind of concert recital recording was perfect for ‘Songbird.’” But he didn’t just leave it there. Calliat took it even further by setting up a beautiful scene, one fitting the stunning cinematic emotions in the song.
“As a surprise for Christine, I had requested that a bouquet of roses be placed on her piano with three colored spotlights to illuminate them from above. I really wanted to set the mood,” he wrote in his memoir, Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album. “When Christine arrived, we dimmed the house lights so that all she could see were the flowers and the piano with the spotlight shining down from the heavens. She nearly broke into tears. Then she started to play.”
Captured by 15 microphones placed around the auditorium, and recorded live in one take, the atmosphere of the room is part of what makes the ballad so incredibly beautiful. It’s all thanks to Calliat’s thoughtful actions, creating a moment of genuine peace amidst a record of carnage.
