In February 1976, Fleetwood Mac entered the Record Planet studio in Sausalito, California to begin work upon their 11th studio album, with engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut.
The band's self-titled tenth album, the first to feature vocalist Stevie Nicks and guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, had been a huge success in the US, reaching number one on the Billboard 200 chart, and spawning three top 20 singles, but if the group were in great shape commercially, emotionally, things were fraught. Before the Fleetwood Mac touring cycle was complete, keyboardist/vocalist Christine McVie announced that she was leaving her husband John, the band's bassist, and started seeing the group's lighting director, Curry Grant. Boyfriend and girlfriend when they joined the band, Buckingham and Nicks were having relationship problems too, as was bandleader Mick Fleetwood, who had recently learned that his wife Jenny was having an affair with his best friend. Understandably, such tensions spilled over into the studio, making the atmosphere highly-charged from week one.
“I thought I was going to be making a regular album,” Ken Caillat told Mojo magazine's Mark Blake when discussing the making of Rumours in 2013. “Then I heard this yelling, and saw Chris throw a glass of champagne in John's face. Then Stevie and Lindsey started having an argument over the microphone. Then Mick walked in with tears in his eyes as he'd just got off the phone to his wife. I started to think it was contagious.”
