Turntable Tuesday

Turntable Tuesday! Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors”

February 8, 2022

It’s Turntable Tuesday because life is too short not to listen to great music! This week on Turntable Tuesday I am opening a new vinyl copy of the album that just turned 45 years old and has sold over 45 million copies world-wide. The album feature this week is Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors” album.

I hope you are staying warm in your location as winter is in full swing north of the equator! Crank up your music device, enjoy vinyl, or get out there and support your favorite live band! Stay safe! What are YOU listening to right now?

On the piano stool #2 this week is the number one album of 1977. Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors.” On the cover you can see the two balls that Mick has hanging between his legs. This is an old gag he started when he was in a pub one night having a drink. He went into the bathroom and ripped the balls from the commode and came back out with the “lavatory chains” hanging out of his pants. Mick came from the blues music world and he used this gag frequently on stage. He is also known to have used a dildo named “Harold” on the top of his bass drum in his early days until Harold’s performance life came to a crashing end at an American Southern Baptist college where we were very nearly arrested for his presence!

The back cover of the album.

Photos from the album insert with the lyrics on the inside.

It took two piano stools to hold up the lyrics sheet which has the photos on the back of each page.
The track list as well as the band listing for the album. Most rock fans can name the band members from memory and there are few
songs on this album that have not had extensive airplay.

Summer 1977. I had just recently graduated from high school and was working to try to save some money to go to college in the fall. I remember very vividly driving down a street in Greensboro, North Carolina listening to the new Fleetwood Mac music that was on my Pioneer Supertuner cassette deck mounted under my dash. The “Rumors” album had just released in February of 1977 and within a month the record had sold over 10 million copies world-wide with 8 million of those copies in the United States alone. A few short months later I was listening to the album on my cassette copy I had recorded from vinyl for my car but to tell you the truth FM rock radio was playing all the tracks so frequently I was not listening to the tape very much. I had been a fan of the early Fleetwood Mac albums as well as Buckingham Nicks music so I was well-versed in this band even at that time.

Lindsey on stage with Fleetwood Mac in 2015.
Stevie of course.
Christine is my favorite artist in this band.
Mick
Lindsey and Andrew backstage at a solo performance.
A few of the photos from one of many solo and band performances from all these artists. They can put on a show in most any format.

I was reading my Grimey’s Weekly Newsletter back at the end of 2021 and I could not believe what I was reading. So let me start at the beginning and lay the groundwork by saying Grimey’s is a music shop in Nashville that I do business with from time to time. https://www.grimeys.com/ They send out a newsletter each week via email so you can see what is new, popular, and jsut in general what is happening in their music shop. I always read these emails and sometimes I am prompted to order a couple of things. I will get back to the story by saying they have very good customer service and they pack their shipments very well.

Now that everyone knows who Grimey’s is I will finish the story. On December 31, 2021 I get an email that says:

The Chart We have a new #1 best-seller. It had to happen at some point but it hasn’t happened at Grimey’s until now… We got a big restock on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours LP just in time for the week of Christmas into New Year, after a couple months of not being able to stock it, so Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours is our #1 best-selling title for the final week of 2021. Jason Isbell, Adele, Courtney Barnett and Kacey Musgraves are all close behind, but still…

Imagine that! The album is 45 years old this week and they can’t keep it in stock? Was it the viral Tic Tok video of Nathan Apodaca aka @420doggface208 skateboards while singing along to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” swigging from a container of cran-raspberry juice? I mean over 12 million views is more than a few… Well I don’t know but something is up! I mean you can get this album in a multitude of vinyl formats even now but clearly the Fleetwood Mac buzz is still happening decades later. What do you think?

The video that went viral of “Dreams.”

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Until next time I’ll see you down the road.