The Rumours: The most successful band of the 1960s that you’ve never heard
The Rumours were, in fact, not a botched attempt at a Fleetwood Mac album title, but a band who, despite earning critical success in the swinging sixties, no one has ever heard of.
A quick scour on Google shows a smattering of newer outfits of the same name, plus a defunct pub rock band that performed on the London scene, primarily in the 1970s and ‘80s. It displays exactly the problem – does anyone realise that the original version of The Rumours featured the one and only Gram Parsons?
The name of that musical legend may have carried enough weight to fly on its own, but as it turns out, one of his first-ever sonic ventures never seemed to have enough gravitas to make it to the history books. To be fair, at the time, the efforts of the band were highly limited to their local scene, but they would individually go on to seismic heights, and very few would realise the connection.
The main master brains behind the project was not, in fact, Parsons, but a musician known at the time as Roland Kent LaVoie – you might recognise him a little better under his future adopted moniker of Lobo. He, alongside fellow singer Jim Stafford, formed a band that went by the title of The Rumours.
In many ways, that name was actually quite fitting in terms of evoking a feeling of elusiveness and mystery. The band has come to be a source of intrigue to many who only realised its massive significance long after the fact, and may be kicking themselves that it didn’t dawn on them sooner. To be fair, it probably didn’t dawn on the actual members, either.
As much as The Rumours may have been built on the foundations of naive teenage dreams, and barely lasted a few years as a result, the one thing that did emerge clearly was the impact that the experience had on each of the members. The trajectory of Parsons’ tragically short career speaks for itself, but LaVoie in particular created a pretty bright path for himself, too.
Under his Spanish wolf alias, the singer released a string of successful hits in the early ‘70s, a number of which not just garnered attention but also captured a massive chart rocket climb at the time. Lobo’s first song, ‘Me and You and a Dog Named Boo’, managed to hit number five in the US charts and number four in the UK.
But the good fortunes didn’t just stop there. 1972’s ‘I’d Love You to Want Me’ soared to number two in America, as well as getting to the top of the charts in countries like Germany, while his follow-up, ‘Don’t Expect Me to be Your Friend’, climbed its way to eighth place the following year. It was a definitive streak of glory.
Even though the success eventually dried up for the most part, and the legacy of Parsons was undeniably the greatest one to live on, there’s no ignoring the fact that a rudimentary band like The Rumours were still incredibly seismic in terms of the paths they set out on. It gives hope to any kid starting out, but more than anything, it also proves that some of the greatest hidden gems are groups no one will ever know about.
