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Fleetwood Mac · S4 E1
Two Breakups
John and Christine are done. Lindsey and Stevie are done. Nobody leaves the band. They book studio time instead
Early 1976, a hotel room on the American tour. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham have their final fight as a couple, and by the time they reach the next city, John and Christine McVie's eight-year marriage is finished too.
Fleetwood Mac, Second Hand News (Rumours, 1977). The opening track of Rumours, where Buckingham announces the breakup before the first verse is over. A pop song built on anger and acoustic guitar, disguised as something upbeat.
The Logic
The self-titled album has gone multi-platinum, the tour is selling out arenas, and Warner Bros. expects a follow-up within the year. Walking away from Fleetwood Mac in 1976 would mean walking away from the biggest opportunity any of them has ever had.
“Making that album was like a war. But you'd walk into the studio, the red light would go on, and the music was so good you couldn't stop. That was the trap.”
— Lindsey Buckingham, interview with Musician magazine, 1984
Second Hand News, Fleetwood Mac (1977)
"Second Hand News" opens Rumours with Buckingham's fingerpicking and a deceptively bouncy rhythm that masks lyrics about rejection and betrayal. He wrote it after Nicks ended their relationship, and the line "I know there's nothing to say" captures the resignation of someone who has run out of arguments. Fleetwood's drums add a knee-slapping, almost folk quality that Buckingham specifically requested, while the vocal harmonies are sweet and warm even as the words cut cold.
TAP TO REVEAL: What was the unwritten rule in the studio during the Rumours sessions?
What triggered the creation of Rumours?
Never Going Back Again, Fleetwood Mac
Buckingham alone with an acoustic guitar, playing a fingerpicking pattern so intricate it sounds like two guitars at once. Written about the end of his relationship with Nicks, it is the most stripped-down moment on Rumours and one of the most technically impressive. Where "Second Hand News" disguises pain as pop, this song does not bother to disguise anything at all.
Never Going Back Again, Fleetwood Mac (1977)
Read the lyrics while you listen. Buckingham distilling an entire breakup into words as precise and intricate as the fingerpicking underneath them.
The studio is booked, the wounds are fresh, and five people who can barely look at each other are about to spend six months locked in the same room. Next: Record Plant, Sausalito, where cocaine, heartbreak, and genius collide in the most expensive recording sessions of the decade.
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