Fleetwood Mac

There is a story in rock that sounds impossible, and it is real.

Five people who were destroying their love lives —with each other, inside the same band— shut themselves in a studio and, instead of killing each other, made one of the most beautiful and best-selling records in history.

It is called "Rumours", the band is Fleetwood Mac, and it is the purest proof that a broken heart can turn into art.

The classic line-up

Fleetwood Mac had started in London, at the end of the sixties, as a blues band, around the drummer Mick Fleetwood and the bassist John McVie.

But their definitive shape arrived at the end of 1974, when an American duo joined: the guitarist Lindsey Buckingham and the singer Stevie Nicks. Buckingham would only agree to join if Nicks, his girlfriend, joined too.

With Christine McVie on keyboards, John's wife, the classic five-piece line-up was complete.

Their first record together, in 1975, was a huge hit. And then everything fell apart.

Three break-ups and a record

Because by 1976, while they were recording the next record, the band's couples were all breaking up at the same time.

Nicks and Buckingham, who had been together for years, were ending it. Christine and John McVie, married, were getting divorced. And Mick Fleetwood had just found out that his wife, Jenny Boyd, was having an affair with his best friend.

Five people, all broken at once, forced to keep playing together, looking each other in the face every day in the studio.

Add a monumental amount of cocaine —Fleetwood would say later that cocaine was a huge part of it, and that he probably took the lion's share— and you had the recipe for disaster.

Instead, they made "Rumours".

Singing their break-ups to each other's faces

And here is the incredible thing, the thing that has no equal in music: they put their own break-ups, live, inside the songs.

"Dreams", by Stevie Nicks —the band's only number one in the United States— is about the end of her relationship with Buckingham.

"Go Your Own Way", by Buckingham, is his furious reply, aimed at Nicks.

"You Make Lovin' Fun", by Christine, is about her affair with the band's lighting director… with her husband John playing bass on the song.

And "The Chain", the only one the five of them wrote together, is about exactly that: a bond that does not break.

They were singing their break-ups to one another, in the same room, harmonising perfectly on songs about leaving each other.

The wound and the art were, literally, the same thing.

A record that isn't bitter

The most astonishing thing about "Rumours" is that it isn't a bitter record.

It is warm, luminous, catchy, beautiful, sung in perfect harmony by people who were furious with each other.

It sold more than forty million copies, won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1978, and always turns up among the best records ever made.

They took the specific, ugly, private disaster of their own loves collapsing, and made it universal. This is not the only time someone has turned their grief into a song that later served millions, but it has rarely been done five at a time and in real time.

That is why, almost fifty years later, those songs are playing at weddings, at break-ups, on road trips, in the dentist's waiting room: because everybody, at some point, loved and lost and had to carry on.

The chain

There is one in particular that became immortal on its own: "The Chain".

It was the only song on the record written by all five of them —in fact, the only one in their whole discography credited to the five— put together out of pieces of other ideas, and over time it became their emblem: the song about a bond that does not break, made by the five people who could neither separate nor be at peace.

That closing bass line of John McVie's, growing and growing until it explodes, gets stuck in your head, and that is why film and television adore it.

In the United Kingdom it is, above all, the anthem of Formula 1: it was the theme of the BBC's broadcasts between 1978 and 1996, came back between 2009 and 2015, and carried on afterwards on Channel 4. For whole generations of Britons, that bass line means, quite simply, "the race is about to start".

And in the cinema it had its great moment in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2", where the director James Gunn explained that he chose it because, at least in the way they use it in the film, the song is about that group of heroes.

The final blow

Against all the odds, they didn't split up. At least not entirely, and not there.

They carried on for decades, with more break-ups, more reunions, more fights. The relationship between Nicks and Buckingham became one of the most legendary and frozen in rock, and he ended up being thrown out of the band at the beginning of 2018.

But the final blow came on 30 November 2022, when Christine McVie died, the one who had written the group's most luminous songs, aged seventy-nine.

With her went, for many, the possibility that the five of them would ever sing together again.

What they made out of their ruins

Fleetwood Mac are the greatest demonstration that heartbreak can be turned into something beautiful and shared.

Five people who couldn't stay together and couldn't leave each other either, who turned the worst period of their lives into the soundtrack of everybody else's.

If you put on "Dreams", "Go Your Own Way", "The Chain" or "Landslide", you will hear real people breaking their own hearts in real time and, somehow, making it sound like a grace.

Now that Christine McVie is gone, those five will never sing together again.

But the record they made out of their own ruins is immortal, and it has belonged, for a long time now, to anyone who has loved, lost, and had to get up anyway.

Sources

Fleetwood Mac, an Anglo-American band that emerged in London in 1967 as a blues group, around the drummer Mick Fleetwood and the bassist John McVie, with the guitarist Peter Green in its early days. Its most celebrated line-up came together at the end of 1974 with the arrival of the American duo Lindsey Buckingham (guitar, vocals) and Stevie Nicks (vocals) —Buckingham made his joining conditional on Nicks joining too— alongside Christine McVie (keyboards, vocals), John McVie's wife. During the recording of "Rumours" (1977), the band's relationships were breaking down all at once: Nicks and Buckingham were ending their romance, the McVies were divorcing and Mick Fleetwood discovered his wife Jenny Boyd's affair with his best friend (their separation was finalised somewhat later). Cocaine use was notorious; Fleetwood declared in 2011: "Cocaine was a huge part of it and I probably took the lion's share of that". Those break-ups directly inspired the songs: "Dreams" (Nicks; number one on the Hot 100 on 18 June 1977, the band's only one in the US), "Go Your Own Way" (Buckingham), "Don't Stop" and "You Make Lovin' Fun" (Christine McVie, about the lighting director Curry Grant, with John McVie on bass) and "The Chain", the only song in their entire discography credited to all five members. "The Chain", despite never having been a single, became highly recognisable: its closing bass line was the theme of the BBC's Formula 1 broadcasts (1978-1996 and 2009-2015) and later of Channel 4's (2016-2018), and the song appeared in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (2017), a choice James Gunn explained by saying that the song is about the Guardians, at least in the way they use it. "Rumours" won the Grammy for Album of the Year in February 1978, passed 40 million copies and is considered one of the greatest albums in history. The band continued for decades with new break-ups and reunions; Lindsey Buckingham was sacked in January 2018, and it was made public in April. Christine McVie died on 30 November 2022, aged 79. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Readings of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's interpretation. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Rolling Stone, Billboard, Ultimate Classic Rock, Variety, Wikipedia and other press coverage.