Rumours is the eleventh studio album by British-American
rock band
Fleetwood Mac, released on 4 February 1977 by
Warner Bros. Records. Largely recorded in California in 1976, it was produced by the band with
Ken Caillat and
Richard Dashut. The band wanted to expand on the commercial success of their
eponymous 1975 album, but struggled with relationship breakups before recording started. The
Rumours studio sessions were marked by hedonism and strife among band members that shaped the album's lyrics.
Recorded with the intention of making "a pop album", the album's music featured a pop rock and soft rock sound characterized by accented rhythms and electric keyboards such as the Fender Rhodes or Hammond B3 organ. The members partied and used cocaine for much of the recording sessions, and its completion was delayed by its mixing process, but was finished by the end of 1976. Following the album's release, Fleetwood Mac undertook worldwide promotional tours. Rumours became the band's first number one album on the UK Albums Chart and also topped the US Billboard 200. The songs "Go Your Own Way", "Dreams", "Don't Stop", and "You Make Loving Fun" were released as singles, all of which reached the US top 10.
Featuring a soft rock and pop rock sound, Rumours is built around a mix of acoustic and electric instrumentation. Buckingham's guitar work and Christine McVie's use of Fender Rhodes piano or Hammond B-3 organ are present on all but two tracks. The record often includes stressed drum sounds and distinctive percussion such as congas and maracas.
Side one opens with "Second Hand News", originally an acoustic demo titled "Strummer". After hearing
Bee Gees' "
Jive Talkin'", Buckingham and co-producer Dashut built up the song with four audio tracks of electric guitar and the use of chair percussion to evoke
Celtic rock. "Dreams" includes "ethereal spaces" and a recurring two
note pattern on the bass guitar. Nicks wrote the song in an afternoon and led the vocals, while the band played around her. The third track on
Rumours, "Never Going Back Again", began as "Brushes", a simple acoustic guitar tune played by Buckingham, with snare rolls by Fleetwood using
brushes; the band added vocals and further instrumental audio tracks to make it more layered. Inspired by triple step
dancing patterns, "Don't Stop" includes both
conventional acoustic and
tack piano. In the latter instrument, nails are placed on the points where the hammers hit the strings, producing a more percussive sound. "Go Your Own Way" is more guitar-oriented and has a
four-to-the-floor dance beat influenced by
The Rolling Stones' "
Street Fighting Man". The album's pace slows down with "Songbird", conceived solely by Christine McVie using a nine-foot
Steinway piano.
Side two of
Rumours begins with "The Chain", one of the record's most complicated compositions. A Christine McVie demo, "Keep Me There", and a Nicks song were re-cut in the studio and were heavily edited to form parts of the track. The whole of the band crafted the rest using an approach akin to creating a
film score; John McVie provided a prominent solo using a
fretless bass guitar, which marked a speeding up in tempo and the start of the song's final third. Inspired by
R&B, "You Make Loving Fun" has a simpler composition and features a
clavinet, a special type of keyboard instrument, while the rhythm section plays interlocking notes and beats. The ninth track on
Rumours, "I Don't Want to Know", makes use of a
twelve string guitar and harmonising vocals. Influenced by the music of
Buddy Holly, Buckingham and Nicks created it in 1974 before they were in Fleetwood Mac. "Oh Daddy" was crafted spontaneously and includes improvised bass guitar patterns from John McVie and keyboard blips from Christine McVie. The album ends with "Gold Dust Woman", a song inspired by
free jazz, which has music from a
harpsichord, a
Fender Stratocaster guitar, and a
dobro, an acoustic guitar whose sound is produced by one or more metal cones.
Side A
A1. Second Hand News - 4:43
A2. Dreams - 4:14
A3. Never Going Back Again - 2:02
A4. Don't Stop - 3:11
A5. Go Your Own Way - 3:38
A6. Songbird - 3:20
Side B
B1. The Chain - 4:28
B2. You Make Loving Fun - 3:31
B3. I Don't Want To Know - 3:11
B4. Oh Daddy - 3:54
B5. Gold Dust Woman - 4:51
Notes
Release: 1977
Format: LP
Genre: Pop, Rock
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Catalog# WB 56344
Vinyl: VG
Cover: VG
Prijs: €14,99
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