The Fleetwood Mac song too difficult for Lindsey Buckingham to sing: “We all stared at him”
The entire process that went into Fleetwood Mac making Rumours doesn’t sound like it was any fun at all. The band were barely holding it together personally, but professionally, they were still able to deliver whenever they got in the studio.
Many albums in musical history are barely stitched together, but Rumours is perhaps the most famous of all. Amid the constant breakups happening left and right, the sessions were dictated by a need for musical perfection, with songs having to be played with dead-on accuracy from every band member. So when they finally got a track that most of the band were happy with, it became a nightmare when Lindsey Buckingham couldn’t lay down the vocals for the classic track.
Being primarily a folk-rock guitarist, Buckingham’s talents came from what he could do with a six-string. Predominantly playing fingerstyle rather than with a plectrum, he would usually unleash a cascade of different notes throughout a song to tie every piece of the music together. Outside of occasionally strumming, ‘Never Going Back Again’ was the song that was far more intimate than what the rest of his tunes had to offer.
The song was apparently inspired by a woman Buckingham had met on the road, shortly after breaking up with Nicks. Recording assistant Cris Morris revealed the song took a long time to record: “It was Lindsey’s pet project, just two guitar tracks but he did it over and over again. In the end, his vocal didn’t quite match the guitar tracks so we had to slow them down a little.”
Although ‘Go Your Own Way’ had its roots in Buckingham’s bitter breakup with Stevie Nicks, ‘Never Going Back Again’ was a bittersweet eulogy for his crumbling relationship, telling himself that he will never go back to his old flame no matter how much the desire has a hold on him. Partway through the recording, Buckingham suggested using freshly wound strings on his guitar, making the recording sound much brighter once he was ready to lay down the final guitar track.
As engineer Ken Caillat remembered, while making Rumours, Buckingham got to the end of tracking his guitar before going onto the studio floor. As Caillat was about to hit record, he remembered Buckingham losing it, recalling: “I rewound the tape to the top and hit play and record, and the song started playing from the top. Lindsey tried it again. ‘She broke and let me in.’ We all stared at him. He shouted, ‘Fuck me, the song’s in the wrong key. I can’t sing it. We have to re-record everything.'”
Though Caillat had originally suggested pitching the tape of Buckingham’s vocal up a bit higher, the guitarist wasn’t going to entertain the idea, saying that he would sound like Mickey Mouse if he were to sing it that way. After a long day of swallowing pride, the band regrouped and began recording the song again, transposing the key down a few steps.
Even with the key change, the song still features Buckingham singing at the top of his range, reaching some of his highest notes on the chorus. Though the song became a fan favourite amongst guitar players, the tune was originally kept a secret from the rest of the band. Using the working title ‘Brushes’, Buckingham intentionally kept some of the real lyrics hidden from Nicks, knowing she would immediately think the song was about her.
That was far from the last time that Buckingham had a blowup in the studio, including one session in which he nearly strangled the engineer in frustration when he told him to re-record over one of his parts. Though the long hours may have been rigorous, it produced one of the most stunning pop-rock albums of the 1970s, pitting each songwriter against their significant others and creating absolute magic on two sides of vinyl. The confidence may have been shaky during the recording of ‘Never Going Back Again’, but the final version on the record is about as pure as Buckingham’s songwriting ever got.
