Tag Archives: Rumours

Back with Second Hand News: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours

The Oxford Student Online
By Oliver Hancock

I remember reading an issue of Rolling Stone a few years ago about the ‘100 Greatest Albums of All Time’, and thinking about how these countdowns might differ in different magazines – NME’s top 10 will almost certainly not be the same as Kerrang’s.article-0-0B078D75000005DC-182_306x327

Getting down to the top 10, all the usual candidates I would expect in modern music magazines were there (The Beatles, Stones, Dylan etc.), but the number 4 on the list was an album I’d never really heard of: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. I wondered how an album considered canonical by one of the world’s biggest music magazines could have passed me by; why all the ‘Top 100…’ articles I’d read in British magazines could have ignored Rumours in the top bracket. The album itself was popular and critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, unsurprising given the Anglo-American core of the band, and yet an avid reader of British music magazines in the 21st-century might never consider Fleetwood Mac’s seminal LP in the same bracket as many of the well-trodden ‘classic’ albums. Continue reading Back with Second Hand News: Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours: Why the under-30s still love it

Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours: Why the under-30s still love it

Telegraph.co.uk

Ahead of the release of a special boxset edition of the Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, James Lachno argues that the 1977 album has survived better than its punk rivals.

 

Rumours is beloved by twentysomething partygoers, and the hippest bands around all want to sound like Fleetwood Mac

This Monday, a three-disc, 35th anniversary boxset of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 masterpiece Rumours will be released. There’s never been a better time to celebrate the band and their gorgeous 11th album, both of which are more
popular and fashionable than ever. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours: Why the under-30s still love it

35 years of Rumours: Will a reissue add to Fleetwood Mac’s classic album?

Scotmans.com
Sunday 27 January 2013
STUART BATHGATE

It’s 35 years since the release of Rumours, but will yet another version add anything to the classic, asks Stuart Bathgate, or are reissues just a cynical ploy by record companies to capitalise on our memories?

Photo by Sam Emerson
Photo by Sam Emerson

YOU bought the record. You’ve got the CD. Perhaps, in the early days of the Walkman, you also had it on tape. All in all, you might well reckon you’ve done your bit by Rumours, Fleetwood Mac’s classic 1977 album. Bought it, bought it again, bought it a third time and given at least two versions to the charity shop.

Ah, but you don’t have the expanded or the deluxe 35th anniversary edition, do you? And you want them, don’t you? Or at least, that’s what the band and their record company hope.

More than 40 million copies of Rumours, in its various guises, have been sold to date, and now the aim is to shift a few more when those two new versions are released on Monday. Which, incidentally, as you may have noticed, is almost a month after the 35th anniversary ended. They always did take their time getting projects finished, Fleetwood Mac, and this one has been no different. Continue reading 35 years of Rumours: Will a reissue add to Fleetwood Mac’s classic album?

Album review: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours: Super Deluxe Remastered Version (Rhino)

Album review: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours: Super Deluxe Remastered Version (Rhino)

ANDY GILL
FRIDAY 25 JANUARY 2013
THE INDEPENDENT UK
star number 1star number 2star number 3star number 4star number 5
Pitch-perfect pop before they went their own way
radar-fleetwood-getty]

It speaks volumes about the enduring quality of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours – here repackaged in an expanded heritage edition comprising, in its most lavish format, four CDs, one DVD and audiophile vinyl album – that not even the twin taints of appropriation as Top Gear theme and political anthem have managed to diminish its appeal. It remains one of pop’s most impervious generational touchstones.

Rumours represents, along with The Eagles Greatest Hits, the high-water mark of America’s Seventies rock-culture expansion, the quintessence of a counter-cultural mindset lured into coke-fuelled hedonism. Its very sound, with those winsome melodies, those West Coast harmonies, and that rhythm section lagging fractionally, imperceptibly behind the beat conjures a fantasy world of luxurious, liberal excess and Californication, captured with sleek perfection.

The album’s story is well-known now, rock’s premier case of strife bringing forth sweetness, as Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham batted the tattered remnants of their relationship back and forth in song. She had only to refer to “thunder” in “Dreams”, for him to snipe back “You can roll like thunder” in “Go Your Own Way” – but both songs are equally sublime, as too are Christine McVie’s attempts to cheer the troops up in songs like “Don’t Stop” and “You Make Loving Fun”.

Heaven only knows how they managed to remain focused (and civil) enough to bring the project to such glorious fruition, a process here sketched out across two CDs of revealing demos and outtakes, the best of which may be Buckingham’s exquisite “Brushes” – the original demo for “Never Going Back Again” – on which his delicate, lace-like threads of multi-tracked guitar intertwine with the crystalline sparkle of dulcimer or harp.

Hearing the band develop its definitive voice in these performances, one’s interest is sharply piqued for the imminent reformation tour: it may not be as intriguing as Bowie’s comeback, but there’s a peculiar magic in operation here that deserves treasuring.

Fleetwood Mac: Rumours | The Times

Fleetwood Mac: Rumours

Will Hodgkinson
January 25 2013

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Thirty-five years after its release, we can revel in the most accomplished slice of adult contemporary rock ever made

Rumours is unique in being a 20th-century masterpiece that did more damage to rock’n’roll than any other album in the history of music. It’s impossible not to revel in the songcraft of Christine McVie’s Songbird. Lindsey Buckingham’s Go Your Own Way is the ultimate drivetime anthem. The Chain is the last word in soft rock excitement and the slick studio sophistication of Don’t Stop is too tasty to resist. But Rumours is also the 30 million-selling monster that, by making it OK to be a moaning, self-obsessed rock star peddling commoditised emotion to the record-buying public, set in motion a terrible chain of events. We can blame Rumours for the vast majority of horrific middle-of-the-road rock that blighted the 1980s, not to mention any number of bland singer-songwriters aiming to sound intimate while also wishing to appeal to the widest demographic possible, and we can thank it for helping make punk happen as a reaction to it.

Now, 35 years after its release, on a three-CD special edition or, better still, a 45rpm vinyl double album that expands the clarity of this exercise in sonic science, we can revel in the simple pleasure of listening to the most accomplished slice of adult contemporary rock ever made. Continue reading Fleetwood Mac: Rumours | The Times

It’s still MACnificent! 35 years on, classic Fleetwood Mac album Rumours is back with a twist

Daily Mail Online
By ADRIAN THRILLS
24 January 2013

FLEETWOOD MAC: Rumours (Rhino, Expanded and Deluxe editions)
Verdict: Rock’s greatest soap opera revisited    Rating: 5 Star Rating

article-0-0B078D75000005DC-182_306x327Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours wasn’t so much a rock record as a fully fledged soap opera.

Fuelled by drugs and  tangled romances, it chronicled the five members’ raw emotions with classic songs like Don’t Stop, Go Your Own Way and Dreams.

Keyboardist Christine McVie described the sessions as a ‘nightly cocktail party’ while drummer Mick Fleetwood said they were ‘crucifyingly difficult’.

But the Anglo-Americans pressed on to finish ‘the most important album we ever made’.

On Monday — 35 years after its original release — Rumours is back.  The landmark album is being re-issued in two packages with bonus material, out-takes and live recordings to mark the band’s reunion tour (UK dates are expected to be in late September).

A three-CD version, selling at around £12, contains the original album, bonus tracks and the live material. For Mac maniacs, a ‘deluxe’ edition, close to £50, is  bolstered by further outtakes, a DVD and copy of Rumours on vinyl. Continue reading It’s still MACnificent! 35 years on, classic Fleetwood Mac album Rumours is back with a twist

THE RUMOURS ARE TRUE! FLEETWOOD MAC TO REISSUE LANDMARK ALBUM

PRESS RELEASE
from Rhino Records

Expanded And Deluxe Versions Of Fleetwood Mac’s Pop Masterpiece Include Unreleased Session Recordings And Live Performances

Current Band Lineup To Embark On 34-City U.S. Tour In April With Tickets On Sale Today

Rumours Available January 29 From Rhino

Fleetwood Mac - Rumours 5CD 1LP

Fleetwood Mac, one of rock’s most enduring, beloved and successful bands, will circulate a fresh round of Rumours next year with expanded and deluxe versions of the album in celebration of it’s 35th anniversary. Rumours made the band one of the most iconic bands of the 1970s and garnered wide critical praise, earned the Grammy® for Album of the Year, and has now sold more than 40 million copies worldwide since its 1977 debut.

In celebration of the release, the current lineup of the band, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, both original members since 1967, and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who joined the band in 1975, will kick off and their first U.S. tour since 2009 in April. The 34-date jaunt features stops in Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Chicago and a special appearance at the historic Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Tickets for the first run of shows are on sale now at LiveNation.com.

The expanded edition’s three CDs includes the original album and the b-side “Silver Springs,” a dozen unreleased live recordings from the group’s ’77 world tour, and an entire disc filled with unreleased takes from the album’s recording sessions. The deluxe edition includes all of the music from expanded version, plus an additional disc of outtakes a DVD that features “The Rosebud Film,” a 1977 documentary about the album, and the album on vinyl. RUMOURS will be available January 29 from Rhino as the expanded edition and the deluxe edition. Digital versions will also be available.

Fleetwood Mac Rumours 3CD

Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks recorded Rumours against a backdrop personal turmoil, chronicling their raw emotions in songs like “Go Your Own Way,” “Gold Dust Woman” and “Dreams,” the latter becoming the band’s first number one smash.

The disc of 12 unreleased live recordings from the band’s 1977 Rumours tour features performances from concerts in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Nashville and Columbia, S.C. The songs include album tracks like “The Chain,” “Oh Daddy” and “Songbird” as well as “World Turning” and “Rhiannon,” two tracks from the group’s 1975 eponymous release.

Producers also have compiled a selection of 16 unreleased recordings from the album’s sessions including early takes of “Go Your Own Way,” “I Don’t Want To Know” and the popular b-side “Silver Springs.” There are also several demo recordings, including one for the outtake “Planets of the Universe,” plus an instrumental version of “Never Going Back Again.”

The deluxe edition of Rumours features three additional pieces. First is an 18-track compilation of session outtakes originally released in the 2004 reissue of the album. Next is the original album on 140-gram vinyl. Finally, there is a DVD with “The Rosebud Film.” This 1977 documentary by Michael Collins includes interviews, rehearsal footage and live performances of: “World Turning,” “Rhiannon,” “Say You Love Me,” “Go Your Own Way,” “You Make Loving Fun” and “I’m So Afraid.”

RUMOURS: DELUXE EDITION
Track Listing Continue reading THE RUMOURS ARE TRUE! FLEETWOOD MAC TO REISSUE LANDMARK ALBUM

Ringing in the New Year With Fleetwood Mac

Huffington Post
Jane Heller
Posted: 3rd Jan 2013

I’ve never been a big fan of New Year’s Eve. There’s so much pressure to do something out-of-this-world fabulous, not to mention have someone out-of-this-world fabulous to do it with. I remember prix fixed restaurant dinners that weren’t worth the money and too-big parties whose forced gaiety made everyone feel tense and champagne hangovers that wrecked me for days. And I remember occasions when my husband was suffering from flare-ups from Crohn’s disease and was too ill to celebrate at all.

My favorite memories are of quiet evenings with him and a few close friends, and this past New Year’s Eve was a case in point. He was in better-than-usual health and good spirits, so out we went.

Our hosts were Martha and Michael Collins, who had lost their house in the 2008 wildfire that destroyed over 200 homes in the Santa Barbara area. After living in a trailer for four years, Martha and Michael rose from the ashes, literally, and moved last month into the spectacular new house they built on the same site — a meticulously-crafted beacon of resilience. Some people would have been thrown by the very notion of losing everything (short of the clothes on their backs and their laptops), but Martha and Michael thrived, their marriage and partnership more solid than ever.

We were in the midst of their scrumptious meal when Michael, a filmmaker whose specialty has been chronicling the lives and music of our most accomplished rock ‘n’ roll artists, mentioned that among the very few material possessions he’d been able to grab before a wall of flames drove him and Martha out of their house was the documentary footage he’d shot 35 years ago of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 Japanese tour to promote their “Rumours” album.

“I’m finishing up the documentary now,” he told us.

“The public has never seen Fleetwood Mac like this before,” Martha chimed in. “They were so young and it was such an innocent time, and the music is beyond great since they were in their prime.”

I put down my knife and fork (not easy when your hosts have prepared a feast that would rival any restaurant), and said, “Can we see this documentary? Like, tonight?”

Michael hesitated. “It’s still raw — a work in progress. But I guess I could show you clips.”

I was not taking “I guess” for an answer. Fleetwood Mac has always been one of my favorite bands and on this particular New Year’s Eve, when I’d felt barraged by news of Kanye West, the Gangnam Style guy and Rihanna’s latest Twitpic, I was so in the mood for a little boomer music. Continue reading Ringing in the New Year With Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac: There will never be a final tour until we drop dead says Stevie Nicks

New tour coincides with 35th anniversary of band’s breakthrough album, ‘Rumours’

Is one ever too old to rock and roll? Never, the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones has declared to the world. The same holds true for Fleetwood Mac, who burst into popular musical consciousness with their album “Rumours,” 35 long years ago. Mac’s iconic lead singer Stevie Nicks, set to take to the world’s stages once again has declared, “It’s never going to be a final tour until we drop dead. There’s no reason for this to end as long as everyone is in good shape and takes care of themselves.”

2012124804stevie‘Personally, I think we feel better than before,’ Stevie Nicks said. ‘We’re not doing drugs and stuff like that … You don’t know what you’ll do when you’re not doing this.’

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Fleetwood Mac has been performing extant for four decades. The band will hit the road again next year, after their last world tour in 2010. The 34-city tour with dates in the United States and Canada will begin on April 4 in Columbus, Ohio, and finish up on June 12 in Detroit.Mac’s 1977 album, “Rumours,” landed the band four hit singles and sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. The album will be reissued with unreleased studio and live recordings just in time for the tour.There have been frequent changes in the band lineup since they first began in 1967. The 2013 tour will feature Nicks, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, and founding members Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass.The 64-year-old Nicks, known for her floor-length blonde hair and frilly outfits, says that touring is a big part of their continued success.

“I don’t want a Fleetwood Mac tour every year or year and a half. That’s why people get so excited. … All of a sudden the world is on edge and that’s what gets you out there.”

Nicks finished a two-year solo tour promoting her 2011 album “In Your Dreams,” making music and being on the road is in her blood.

“If you never stop, you don’t lose your energy,” the “Landslide” the singer say. “Even when we stop, everybody is still doing a lot of stuff.”

Fleetwood and McVie are both founding members of the band, and Buckingham and Nicks joined the group in 1974.

Singer and songwriter Christine McVie, who wrote the big hit “Don’t Stop” that was on “Rumours,” joined the band in the early 1970s after marrying John McVie, but retired from touring after the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. She still contributes on occasion to studio efforts.

Of the 22 songs Fleetwood Mac will play during a concert, 11 will be hits, such as “Dreams,” “Don’t Stop” and “Hold Me,” Nicks said.

Fleetwood Mac’s last studio album, “Say You Will,” was released 10 years ago. Nicks says that she and Buckingham had spent time writing songs together recently.

“Personally, I think we feel better than before,” Nicks said. “We’re not doing drugs and stuff like that … You don’t know what you’ll do when you’re not doing this.”

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM

The Diamond: Fleetwood Mac – Rumours

By: Patrick McKay
Published on: 2007-08-14

The Diamond is an apt name for albums certified for 10 million + sales by the Recording Industry Association of America. The hardest substance on earth: insoluble, impervious to penetration, secure in itself. “The formation of natural diamond requires very specific conditions,” Wikipedia says. The aim of this feature is to define what made Cracked Rear View, Come On Over, Boston and The Lion King soundtrack not just sales benchmarks of their respective artists’ careers, but inexplicable loci at which shrewd marketing and the inscrutability of mass market taste met to produce high-quality entertainment no one breathing could escape. This column will also study why artistic peaks like Rumours, Born in the U.S.A., Thriller, Can’t Slow Down, and Hysteria deserved their sales. Each entry in this series will pose the question: why should we separate art from commerce?

By 1977 all the longhairs who’d lived through the Summer of Love were over thirty. They’d traded their painted vans for station wagons, left their communes for a split-level in the suburbs, and watched their free-love idyll end in divorce. The hippies had matured into yuppies. They had money to spend and hi-fi stereos to show off. They’d grown up during the golden age of rock, but it was the height of punk, and they weren’t going to listen to “God Save the Queen.” So instead, they listened to Fleetwood Mac.

Since its release in February 1977, Rumours has sold 19 million copies in the United States. Since the U.S. population has just passed 300 million, it’s not an exaggeration to say that nearly seven percent of America has probably owned a copy of Rumours at some point in their life. Not counting compilations or double albums, this makes it the fifth bestselling long player of all time. And unlike many of its fellow diamond-certified records that earned their status after decades of steady catalogue sales (Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits, Volume I and II, Legend), this one was a blockbuster from the first, topping the charts for an astounding 32 weeks. Though it spun off four top ten singles “(Dreams,” “Don’t Stop,” “Go Your Own Way,” and “You Make Loving Fun”), every track earned airplay on AOR radio, making standards out of album cuts like “Gold Dust Woman” and “The Chain.” By 1979, it’d sold thirteen million copies. This was much more than a hit record—this was a phenomenon.

Rumours’ success is all the more surprising considering that in the early-‘70s, Fleetwood Mac barely functioned as a band at all. Original frontman Peter Green left the group in 1971, leaving only the rhythm section of John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, who were forced to bring in McVie’s wife Christine, among others. Only later did they persuade folk-rock duo Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks to join, the result being the Mac Mach II. Their first record, 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, had been a smash in its own right, but the commercial triumph of Rumours launched them into superstardom, a feat they never managed to top, even if its immediate follow-up, the messy, idiosyncratic Tusk, is the more accomplished artistic statement.

Thirty years later, it’s important to remember the atmosphere Rumours was borne into: 1977 was the year punk rock broke on both sides of the Atlantic. Johnny Rotten said “fuck” on the BBC while Patti Smith performed songs like “Piss Factory” at CBGB’s. The sun-baked optimism of groups like the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had long since soured, and a coke-fueled disco inferno was right around the corner (1977’s other smash hit? The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack).

To pop music fans, Fleetwood Mac must have seemed like a safe middle ground between Richard Hell and Barry Gibb. Even critics bought into the act: in The Village Voice’s year-end Pazz & Jop poll, Robert Christgau wrote that “rock and roll is supposed to be about pleasure as well as all the heavy stuff, and I’m glad that in this year of the punk Fleetwood Mac [is] here to remind us of that.”

Christgau makes a crucial distinction: appearances to the contrary, this is not soft pop, but rock and roll. By 1987’s Tango in the Night, Fleetwood Mac had morphed into VH1-friendly easy listening, but Rumours still leans heavily on the blues-rock foundation built by Peter Green. McVie’s “You Make Loving Fun” and Nicks’ “I Don’t Want To Know” impress with their pop melodies, but are driven by a rhythm section as insistent as Watts and Wyman. “Dreams” and “The Chain,” ostensibly ballads, are built around thick drum patterns and churning bass lines.

The up-tempo material—Buckingham’s “Second Hand News” and McVie’s “Don’t Stop”—moves as fast as anything Dylan put to vinyl in the “Tombstone Blues” era. The cocaine-bright, oh-so-‘70s production finds room for Moog washes, rattling tambourines, rich Brian Wilson-esque vocal arrangements, and even the odd guitar flourish—see the tasteful solo announcing the fade-out to “Second Hand News,” or the gorgeous guitar break at the heart of “The Chain,” which could fit in fine on a Zeppelin record.

All good rock albums rely on rhythm sections, deep production, and fretwork. What distinguishes Rumours—what makes it art—is the contradiction between its cheerful surface and its anguished heart. Here is a radio-friendly record about anger, recrimination, and loss. Much has been made of the intra-band relationship problems that produced these songs—the McVies were divorcing, and Buckingham and Nicks had suffered a bitter split—but this is not a typical breakup album, like Blood on the Tracks or Sea Change, which find their respective authors looking back on heartbreak from a safe distance.

Rumours is the sound of a breakup in progress. Nine of the album’s eleven songs employ the not-so-ambiguous pronouns “I” and “you,” and usually prefer direct address to rumination: “I’m never going back again,” “I never meant any harm to you,” “You know you make me cry,” “You can go your own way.” This puts Fleetwood Mac in a grand tradition, stretching from Gershwin to the Supremes, of sad songs that sound happy. In this way, Rumours was as much a return to earlier forms as punk rock: the Ramones wanted to be the Beach Boys but twice as fast; Fleetwood Mac wanted to be a girl group, only slower.

It’s also worthwhile to note the record’s sheer consistency. Unlike Tusk, which spreads the work of Mac’s three songwriters over twenty songs in eighty-five minutes, Rumours’ eleven songs in forty minutes leave little room for self-indulgence. To these ears, the record’s only dud is McVie’s somnolent “Songbird,” which closes out the otherwise-flawless side one with a whimper instead of a bang. Some of the strongest tracks are seeming throwaways like Buckingham’s lovely “Never Going Back Again” or Nicks’ bouncy “I Don’t Want to Know,” and the major statements—“Dreams,” “Go Your Own Way”—retain their power even after decades of constant rotation on classic rock radio.

Unlike, say, the Beatles, where the work of each songwriter is strikingly distinct, the songs on Rumours sound like the work of one shared voice—an ironic effect, considering that the band came together out of circumstance. Heard in sequence, “Don’t Stop,” McVie’s attempt to cheer up an ex who can’t move on, and “Dreams,” Nicks’ kiss-off to a restless lover, almost sound like two different phases of the same relationship. The druggy egotist torn to shreds in Nicks’ “Gold Dust Woman” (a self-portrait?) could be the same woman to whom Buckingham became “Second Hand News” when she discovered a new lover. This is a portrait of a make-love-not-war generation that hit its thirties only to learn the hard way that sex kills, that love isn’t all you need.

While the Clash and the Sex Pistols renewed rock with a shot of youthful danger, Rumours allowed for the possibility that rock could age gracefully, and take on subjects of an emotional complexity unavailable to a teenager. This may have begat adult contemporary, VH1, and Phil Collins, but at least with Rumours, Fleetwood Mac wasn’t trying to soften rock, but to blunt its edge, to create something more expansive in effect and broader in appeal. The consequence was a career spent in the shadow of that peak; the reward was a receptive audience—of 19 million and counting.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/diamond/fleetwood-mac-rumours.htm