Lindsey Buckingham Strangled Producer Ken Caillat During Rumours

The creation of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours remains one of rock history’s most famously fractured sessions. While the band’s self-titled tenth LP had just climbed to the top of the Billboard chart—marking their first US number one and introducing vocalist Stevie Nicks and guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham—the subsequent recording process at Sausalito’s Record Planet in February 1976 was immediately plagued by personal turmoil.

Engineers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut stepped into an intense pressure cooker from day one. Caillat previously recalled walking in on a chaotic scene where Chris McVie threw a glass of champagne in John McVie’s face, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham clashed over a microphone, and Mick Fleetwood learned of his wife’s affair.

The Breaking Point Over ‘Go Your Own Way’

Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham performing onstage in 2014 — Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham performing onstage in 2014

Caillat, who was promoted from engineer to co-producer during the sessions, documented the staggering chaos in his book Making Rumours: The Inside Story of how Fleetwood Mac Made a Masterpiece. Among the many disputes, one particularly volatile incident involved the tracking of the track “Go Your Own Way.”

Frustrated by his attempts at the song’s guitar solo, Buckingham instructed Caillat and Dashut to tape over his first take. When a second take failed to satisfy him, Buckingham asked to hear the original attempt again. Upon learning that Caillat had actually followed instructions and recorded over it, Buckingham stormed into the control room and started strangling the producer.

“‘You’re an idiot!’ Lindsey screamed at me, his hands tightening around my throat,” Caillat writes in the book. He later noted in an interview with The Times that Buckingham’s veins were popping out of his neck, and Christine McVie reminded Buckingham that he had told him to erase it. Caillat also mentioned that Buckingham used to roll joints all the time as a very nervous man.

Scheduled Arguments in the Studio

To cope with the unrelenting friction, the band eventually resorted to scheduling their interpersonal disputes. Caillat recalled asking the group who felt like working and who felt like fighting on any given day, allowing certain members to yell outside while others recorded keyboards or vocals inside.

“When everything was insane, I had to be sane,” Caillat reflected in a 2012 interview with Music Radar. Making Rumours: The Inside Story of how Fleetwood Mac Made a Masterpiece by Ken Caillat and Steve Stiefel is available now via Monoray.