Why another album like ‘Rumours’ will never be made: “One of the great moments”

Posted On September 12, 2025September 12, 2025

If nothing else, the recording of Rumours was a true tale of musical opulence. Yes, forget all of the other, more notable references to this album and instead for this article, focus on how this album represents a time certainly lost in music.

A time when budgets were pretty much limitless, when every artistic demand was waited on without any hesitation and when musicians were actually rockstars. Of course, those all came with their problems, most notably drug addiction and entrenched behavioural problems, but it ultimately gave musicians the space to pursue their art. Unlike now, where musicians scrape together whatever pennies they made at the merch stand to finance a slice of studio time.

In 1977, during the recording of Rumours and the peak of widespread opulence, there was no such thing as a deadline. I’m sure this largely contributed to the sort of toxicity associated with the album, where relationship trauma continued to unfold into the music and lengthy recording sessions were fuelled by incessant drug use.

A song from the record that entirely epitomises that idea is the album closer ‘Gold Dust Woman’. Writing by Nicks as a means of grappling with her own substance abuse, she sings “Take your silver spoon, dig your grave” over a suitably bewitching melody that sonically unfolded Nicks’s pain with each verse. 

But not only was it a deeply personal and painful track to write, it proved physically laborious to record. Nicks’s perfectionism, combined with a general deterioration at the hands of drug use and painstaking recording, meant that she had to eke every ounce of energy out of herself to record the now iconic vocal. 

Mick Fleetwood remembered Nicks as “hunched over in a chair, alternately choosing from her supply of tissues, a Vicks inhaler, a box of lozenges for her sore throat and a bottle of mineral water.”

But the recording assistant Cris Morris saw the beauty in the pain, recalling, “Recording ‘Gold Dust Woman’ was one of the great moments because Stevie was very passionate about getting that vocal right. It seemed like it was directed straight at Lindsey, and she was letting it all out. She worked right through the night on it, and finally did it after loads of takes.”

Adding, “The wailing, the animal sounds and the breaking glass were all added later. Five or six months into it, once John had got his parts down, Lindsey spent weeks in the studio adding guitar parts, and that’s what really gave the album its texture.”

It’s a moment in musical time that simply wouldn’t be replicated in the modern day for a number of reasons. The first relates directly to my opening point. The cost of studio time was simply no way near as crippling for musicians the size of Fleetwood Mac and were therefore given free reign to labour over specific ideas.

But the second and perhaps more crucial reason, is that general welfare is taken far more seriously than it ever was before. The painstaking suffering Nicks experienced for her own art is simply not a part of modern life and ultimately, we’re better for it.

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