Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac struggling to sing a song? Sounds hard to believe, doesn't it? But word has it that he actually did. The band members reportedly had their issues of various kinds off stage. There were romantic pairings, breakups, and clashes. Yet Fleetwood Mac soldiered on, cranking out the hits and successful albums. It seems that the song "Never Going Back Again" from the legendary 1977 Rumours album was the one that proved to be a thorn in Buckingham's side. Ironically, he wrote it!
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Why Did Lindsey Buckingham Have Such A Hard Time With 'Never Going Back Again'?
Per faroutmagazine.co.uk, Cris Morris, a recording assistant, made this observation about it. "It was Lindsey's pet project, just two guitar tracks but he did it over and over again. In the end, his vocal didn't quite match the guitar tracks so we had to slow them down a little."
He tried to solve the problem with "freshly wound strings on his guitar." But that did not fix everything. Ken Caillat, an engineer, had this recollection of a troubling Lindsey meltdown. "I rewound the tape to the top and hit play and record, and the song started playing from the top. Lindsey tried it again. 'She broke and let me in.' We all stared at him. He shouted, '[Expletive] me, the song's in the wrong key. I can't sing it. We have to re-record everything.'"
Buckingham was resistant to the idea of having his vocal recorded sounding higher. Per the outlet, "After a long day of swallowing pride, the band regrouped and began recording the song again, transposing the key down a few steps."
He Sometimes Lost His Cool
The outlet claims that Buckingham once almost strangled an engineer out of intense pique and anger. Some of those heated emotions seemed to come into play when working on Rumours. Although the process of recording it sounds arduous and full of tense moments for him and most likely for the other band members too, it ended up being a brilliant, even historic tour de force.
The album was selected for induction into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. Rumours won the 1978 Album of the Year from the Grammys and went into the Grammy Hall of Fame as well.
