Steve Fairclough on the story behind the mystical image on the cover of a multi-million-selling album by a band in chaos…
The story of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours is one of broken romances, voluminous cocaine usage, inaccurate press gossip surrounding the band and a set of 11 songs that remain etched on the consciousness of millions of rock fans around the world. It was 38 minutes and 55 seconds of pure musical gold dust and, despite being Fleetwood Mac’s 11th studio album, it quickly sold in truckloads, with over 21 million copies sold in the US alone.
During the recording of the album John and Christine McVie were divorcing, Nicks and Buckingham had a tempestuous relationship and Mick Fleetwood had discovered that his then wife, Jenny, was having an affair with his best friend. Soon afterwards Fleetwood and Nicks would embark on a short-lived affair. Nonetheless the ‘romantic’ friction between members of the band produced classic tracks like Go Your Own Way, You Make Loving Fun, Don’t Stop, I Don’t Want To Know and Second Hand News. Indeed, the late Christine McVie revealed, ‘We were all writing songs about each other.’
The original Fleetwood Mac had its roots in the British blues movement of the 1960s but, from 1974 onwards, its then British members – drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie and keyboardist Christine McVie – had been joined by the US couple Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. Buckingham and Nicks had released the album Buckingham Nicks in September 1973, on Polydor, with a black & white photograph of a seemingly nude (topless at least) Buckingham and Nicks shot by Jimmy Wachtel, who also designed that album’s cover.
Whilst not a hit, the album was important because to demonstrate his engineering abilities the house engineer, Keith Olsen, at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles had played Mick Fleetwood the track Frozen Love from the Buckingham Nicks LP and Fleetwood liked it. He met Lindsey Buckingham, who was recording at the studio the same day, and invited him to join Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham only agreed on the condition that his girlfriend, Stevie Nicks, could also join the band, describing the duo as ‘a package deal’. Thus, from New Year’s Eve 1974 the classic line-up of Fleetwood Mac was in place.
FACTFILE: Fleetwood Mac Rumours
- Musicians: Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks
- Released: 4 February 1977 (US release, Warner Bros), 11 February 1977 (UK release)
- Best chart performance: No. 1 in Australia, Canada, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the US
- Sales: Over 40,000,000 certified sales worldwide
- Fascinating fact: The Chain is the only Rumours track that credits every band member as co-writer. Elements of the song from the band members were spliced together by recording engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. From 1978 the BBC used the bass and guitar solo part of The Chain as the theme tune for its coverage of F1 Grand Prix racing. It was dropped by ITV when it took over the F1 broadcast rights in 1997 but reinstated for the subsequent BBC and C4 coverage
American success
In the Classic Albums documentary on Rumours, Mick Fleetwood explained, ‘the reality was, there had been many incarnations of Fleetwood Mac and this Rumours ncarnation was, without any question, a huge mindset deal involving success, a huge amount of music put out and the only resemblance to that was the original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, which was very short-lived. We’d had all the number one hits, screaming girls and stuff like that and come down from it and then come over to America and had a period where we were feeling it out and then, suddenly, again [it went boom].’
The first album Buckingham and Nicks recorded with Fleetwood Mac was 1975’s Fleetwood Mac, which spawned the hit singles Over My Head, Say You Love Me, Landslide and Stevie Nicks’s classic composition Rhiannon. The cover of the Fleetwood Mac album featured a black & white image of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie shot by Herbert W Worthington III – the man who would also shoot the cover of Rumours. McVie was seen juggling with a crystal ball, whilst Fleetwood was carrying a cane and sipping what appeared to be a glass of wine – both men were in front of an ornate door frame. It was a simple, stark, yet striking album cover. Thus, both the musical and artistic foundations for Rumours were firmly in place.
Herbert W Worthington III (he added the III himself) was a largely self-taught photographer who was directly connected with the music business by dint of the fact that he lived with the blues guitarist Buddy Miles. A friend had given Worthington a 35mm film SLR camera and Jimi Hendrix’s personal photographer, Ron Raffaeli, had helped him to develop his photography skills. Worthington became a close friend of Hendrix and travelled with him on a 1969 tour. Having shot the cover of the Fleetwood Mac album, Worthington was perhaps the obvious choice to tackle the Rumours shoot.
Herbet ‘Herbie’ Wheeler Worthington III
Herbert ‘Herbie’ Wheeler Worthington III (1944-2013) was a US photographer known for his iconic portraits of rock and roll musicians and album cover work. He began his photography career in the late 1960s. As well as his work for Fleetwood Mac he shot album covers for Buddy Miles, Paris, Jesse Cutler, 20/20 and Lita Ford. He also ran an antique store, House of Worthington, in Los Angeles and had a website that sold Stevie Nicks posters, prints, calendars, and T-shirts. In November 2013 Worthington died from heart disease, aged 69
All about balls
The Rumours album shoot took place in California in 1976. Some of it was shot during band rehearsals. Worthington took numerous shots of the five members of the band together, but these were reserved for the back cover of the album. In a clear echo of the Fleetwood Mac album cover, Worthington decided to focus on just two members of the band for the front cover of Rumours – in this case Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks.
A crystal ball, like that juggled by John McVie on the cover of Fleetwood Mac, again appeared, alongside the famous dangling balls of Mick Fleetwood. They were a lucky charm for the drummer, who had originally appropriated them from a lavatory chain in a bar during the band’s early days, and always had them hanging from his drumkit at every Fleetwood Mac gig.
In 2009 Mick Fleetwood told Maui Time Weekly, ‘I must admit I had a couple of glasses of English ale – and came out of the toilet with these. I was very destructive – I ripped them off the toilet and had them hanging down between my legs. I started off as a blues player. The whole ethic of a lot of blues music is slightly suggestive. And suitably, I walked out on stage with these two lavatory chains with these wooden balls hanging down, and after that it just stuck.’ Fleetwood’s original set of balls were lost on the road, but he now uses a replica. ‘I won’t say they’re as old as me, but – it starts getting into X-rated commentary here – my balls are quite old.’
Spontaneous hugs
In the Classic Albums documentary Herbert Worthington explained the significance of the images on the back cover of the Rumours album. ‘On the back we have the group shot, which you need, but the magic about the back, and one of the high points of all the images on the inner sleeve and the entire package for me, is this top series of photos that we did at a rehearsal. When John [McVie] walked across to hug Lindsey [Buckingham]. At this particular time nobody was getting along a lot – with the divorces – and, if you notice, you see that Lindsey is a little bit put off because he doesn’t know [what was happening].’
Worthington added, ‘This wasn’t staged – John just spontaneously walked across and hugged him. When John walked across I just kept clicking and talking and, when he hugged him, Christine [McVie] took a hold of Stevie [Nicks] and poor Mick [Fleetwood] was out in the cold. Everybody was hugging everybody and poor Mick got left out in the rain. This [the main back cover image], to me, is just a shot; it’s not a big deal to me. This [the series of hugging shots] is a big deal because it’s an expression of love as this [the front cover] is.’
On the cover of Rumours Stevie Nicks is said to be in character as the Welsh witch Rhiannon from the 1975 song of the same name, which she penned. Nicks took the inspiration for the Rhiannon character from Mary Bartlet Leader’s novel Triad, but didn’t know that Rhiannon originated from a
Welsh goddess until 1978. In other words, whilst she may have been in the character of Rhiannon, she didn’t know the full background of that character at the time of the Rumours shoot.
A small footstool upon which Fleetwood placed one of his feet was brought to the shoot by Worthington, but it’s unclear as to why he did so. It does, however, bring a clear dynamic to the pose of the cover and allowed Nicks to wrap one of her legs around one of Fleetwood’s. Given that Fleetwood is 6 feet 6 inches tall, it was a very useful prop.
Reissues and artwork
Rumours has been reissued in various formats and with various variants of the original artwork and photography. A Deluxe six-disc reissue of Rumours came out on 28 January 2013 – it included a remastered version of the original album with the track Silver Springs added, a dozen live recordings and 16 unreleased tracks from the album sessions. On 8 September 2023 a live album of the Rumours tour, Rumours Live, was released. The cover of the live album used one of the images of the group from Herbert Worthington’s Rumours album shoot.
Herbert Worthington went on to work closely with Stevie Nicks and shot the covers of her first two solo albums – 1981’s Bella Donna and 1982’s The Wild Heart. His other cover photography work included that for his friend Buddy Miles, Neil Diamond, rock trio Paris, pop band 20/20 and the legendary ex-Runaways female guitarist Lita Ford. He died, aged 69, of heart disease in November 2013.
Of Rumours, Mick Fleetwood said, ‘It was the most important album that Fleetwood Mac ever made because it allowed this band to continue for years and years and years after it. I really feel that if we hadn’t made that album, we may have hit the ultimate brick wall and literally stopped.’
With the death of Christine McVie, aged 79, in November 2022 any chance of the classic Fleetwood Mac line-up ever appearing live or on record again was gone. However, both their incredible music and the iconic album cover imagery shot by Herbert W Worthington III continue to live on in the hearts and minds of tens of millions of people around the world.
The Panel On Rumours
The cover features a minimalist, B&W photo of Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks in elegant, theatrical poses. Its simplicity contrasts with the music’s emotional depth, evoking a sense of mystique and timelessness while highlighting the band’s dramatic, almost mythic personas.
I love Fleetwood Mac. I’ve met Mick and he was charming. I love the joke of the hanging balls between his legs and Stevie doing her little dance of the black witch. The concept, using b&w photography in a very simple style on a white background, creates a somewhat defiant rock and roll image.
There’s an organic spontaneity to this photo, though it’s a studio session. Fleetwood’s bold pose and dangling orbs are amusing, whilst a cherubic Nicks embodies the persona of Rhiannon, gazing into a crystal ball. The two aspects of this image reflect the nature of the album.
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