The cover of Rumours is not the most visually exciting album cover we've looked at on this blog. There's no pulsar data, no screaming woman emerging from the earth, no raw meat. It's two people standing against a light background looking theatrical. I came to this album later in life and when I finally added a copy to my collection, I remember thinking the cover was a bit meh.

And then I started reading about it.

Because what looks like a straightforward promotional photograph is actually a document of one of the most chaotic, drug-fuelled, romantically catastrophic recording sessions in music history. And once you know that, the cover looks completely different.

Forty Five Minutes With A Band Falling Apart

When photographer Herbert Worthington III arrived at the studio in early 1977 to shoot the cover, every romantic relationship within the band had recently ended or was actively disintegrating. Mick Fleetwood and his wife Jenny had separated. John and Christine McVie had divorced. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had split acrimoniously.

Worthington had forty five minutes with a band that was in the process of tearing itself apart. His job was to make five people who could barely stand to be in the same room look like a unified band.

He chose to put just two of them on the front cover; Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks. The concept came from the band's desire for something theatrical and slightly mystical, a counterpoint to the emotionally naked music within. Worthington photographed them in a dance pose inspired by the English dance tradition.

The rest of the band, John McVie, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham were relegated to the back cover. Five people, two on the front, three on the back. A quiet visual statement about the fractures running through the band.

About Those Balls

Let's address the obvious. Those balls. Those smooth, round balls.

Hanging between Mick Fleetwood's legs on the cover are two wooden balls on chains. And yes, the internet has had a lot of fun with this over the years. But the story behind them is better than any joke you could make.

Those balls are actually lavatory chains that Fleetwood ripped from a toilet earlier in his career. As Fleetwood himself explained: "I must admit I had a couple of glasses of English ale and came out of the toilet with these. I was very destructive. I ripped them off the toilet and had them hanging down between my legs."

He went on to say: "In truth, I started off as a blues player. The whole ethic of a lot of blues music is slightly suggestive, might I say. And suitably, I walked out on stage with these two lavatory chains with these wooden balls hanging down, and after that, it just stuck."

They became his lucky charm. They hung from his drumkit at every Fleetwood Mac gig. And when it came time to shoot the cover of Rumours, they came along too.

So yes, they are toilet chains. Stolen from a pub. By a slightly drunk drummer. Now stick out like....well, balls, one of the best selling albums in history.

The back of Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

What The Cover Actually Says

The cover did not win any design awards and has never been considered a masterpiece of graphic art. Yet it has become one of the most recognisable album images in popular music through sheer commercial exposure. Rumours has sold over forty million copies worldwide.

Two people. A light background. A crystal ball. And a pair of stolen toilet chains.

It shouldn't work.