Fleetwood Mac’s (in)famous Annie Leibovitz photograph (March 24, 1977) appears in the November 2, 2017 issue of Rolling Stone (Tom Petty: 1950-2017/The Photo Issue).
Fleetwood Mac posed for their first ROLLING STONE cover shortly before Rumours took over the world. But the romantic turmoil they laid bare on that album also made Annie Leibovitz’s idea for the shoot — the whole band, together on a bed — tricky. Christine McVie didn’t want to be near her ex, John McVie, and Stevie Nicks didn’t want to be besides Lindsey Buckingham. Nicks ended up in Mick Fleetwood’s arms — a hint of a torrid affair to come. “I don’t know how healthy all this display of our personal life was,” said Buckingham. “But that’s showbiz.”
CAMERON CROWE HAD BEEN COVERING FLEETWOOD Mac since 1973. “I had gotten a ride with a date to see Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles play,” he remembers. “I was wandering around with a tape recorder and interviewed Fleetwood Mac, and one of the road crew stole my date.” Crowe kept writing about Fleetwood Mac as they grew into the biggest rock band in the world. This cover story chronicled the making of Rumours, which would spend thirty-one weeks at Number One and sell 19 million copies. “We knew we were on some kind of roll,” says Lindsey Buckingham, although he says they had no idea how big the record would get. Crowe, at least, had an inkling. One page of his notebook has but a single sentence: “Suddenly everybody everywhere loves Fleetwood Mac.”
In the article, the band members spoke of the stress and conflicts that had led to breakups for the entire group: Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, Christine and John McVie, as well as drummer Mick Fleetwood and his wife, Jenny. Rumours’ songs were steeped in tension and recriminations. “The musical soap opera brought out the voyeur in everyone,” Buckingham says. “And their protective instinct.”
Crowe says that after his Fleetwood Mac story came out, “other musicians would say, ‘Well, I see the level of raw honesty the magazine wants from us.’” Told this, Buckingham snorts, “I wouldn’t necessarily advise that to other people. It was part and parcel of the band for us — all our boundaries got melded and we couldn’t hide our level of pain.”
Annie Leibovitz’s iconic cover of Fleetwood Mac in bed perfectly captured the band’s interpersonal dynamics. On the day of the shoot, Leibovitz says, “I thought I’d be nice and polite, and I brought a bunch of cocaine for everyone. In those days, for photo shoots, you just brought cocaine. I took it out, and they looked a little freaked out at first, but then consumed it in, like, thirty seconds. Then I learned they’d all recently been to rehab. So they were all a little jittery and tense.”
Buckingham’s memory of the session centers on something different: After Leibovitz finished, everyone got off the mattress except himself and Nicks. Wearing only their bedclothes, the two of them staved where they were and just held onto each other.
The wounds of their breakup were still raw. Says Buckingham, “After all that we’d been through, knowing that we loved each other — somehow, we just couldn’t set up.” For five minutes, maybe more, Buckingham and Nicks shared a silent embrace. Leibovitz and the rest of the band milled around until finally Mick Fleetwood returned to the mattress and whispered to the entangled pair: “Guys, you’re freaking everyone out.”
“‘Raw honesty was part and parcel of the band. We couldn’t hide our level of pain,” says Buckingham.
It was a writer-as-shrink era, says Cameron Crowe, who, barely out of his teens, wrote the Rolling Stone cover story on Fleetwood Mac during the recording of Rumours. “They were one of the first bands to understand that you could open up your life to a reporter, and it could serve everyone’s purpose. The writer isn’t trying to steal from you.”
“That album was almost like a play, with all of us singing about our lives,” says Lindsey Buckingham. Adds Mick Fleetwood, “Cameron probably couldn’t believe his luck, stumbling into this broiling cauldron of soap opera. And Annie got the consummate Rumours shot. Partner-swapping was in the ether.”
“I have a feeling the band had all gone through rehab or something,” says Leibovitz, “and I brought out huge amounts of drugs, thinking that’s what they wanted. They were not so happy about it, but everyone consumed everything, so we were all out to lunch. I brought the mattress and sheets.”
“I don’t remember the drugs,” says Stevie Nicks. “I thought it was a case of champagne. There were two ex-couples in the band. When Annie said she wanted us to lie down together on a big bed, it was like, ‘Hmm, hope you have a backup idea.’ But she said, “No, you’re going to look great, this will be fun, have a glass of champagne.’ I said, ‘OK, but I can’t curl up next to Mick for the next three hours while Annie is suspended over us on a platform.”
“Christine really didn’t want to be next to John, because they were just divorced,” Nicks adds. “So he was the odd man out, reading the magazine. Afterwards, Lindsey and I got to talking about how amazing it was that not so long ago I was a waitress and he didn’t have a job, and now we were on the cover of Rolling Stone with this huge record. And we lay there for two hours talking and making out. Finally, Annie had to tell us to leave, because she had rented the room for only so long. But in one afternoon she put Lindsey and me back together and also planted the seed for Mick and me, which happened a year later. You want to know the power of Annie Leibovitz, there you go.”
As for Buckingham, he remembers the photo session a little differently. “For Stevie and me, the wounds and animosities were still very fresh,” he says. “So the idea for the photo wasn’t all that funny. We had to compartmentalize our feelings to keep the band functional, and at the end of the session, we had this moment of not being able to avoid all that had been lost. We embraced for about fifteen minutes, and Mick finally came over and said that people were starting to get uncomfortable. I don’t know how healthy all this display of our personal life was, but that’s showbiz.”
