Stereophonic, the Broadway production that has garnered a record number of Tony nominations, transfers to the West End later this month. For those who haven’t heard about it: it’s the tale of an Anglo-American rock band, a five-piece with two couples who are both mid-break up when they’re trying to record an album in mid 1970s California.
Ring any bells? Thought so.
But Stereophonic isn’t the story of Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. Oh no no no. The play’s writer David Adjmi has described Stereophonic as a “fantasia”. In an interview with Variety last year, he said: “I keep getting the question ‘Is this Fleetwood Mac? Is it this and that?’ Why do people want to know that? There is no real story. The whole thing is invented.”
One figure that was central to the making of Rumours has his doubts. Ken Caillat produced the album, and in 2012, published a book about his experience: Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album.
“I feel kind of a numnuts… I feel ripped off,” Caillat said in a New Yorker article last year. And indeed, last October, he and his co-writer Steven Stiefel launched legal action against Adjmi, alleging that Stereophonic “copies the heart and soul of Making Rumours”.
That action was settled out of court in January “on mutually agreeable terms,” Caillat recently told The Telegraph.
“Recording Rumours was the highlight of my young adult life,” says Caillat in the same interview. “I loved working with Fleetwood Mac, making them sound even better than they do in real life, putting my magic into the sound. You never know when you’re going to be part of history, so always strive to do your best.”
Discussing the writing of the book, he says: “I sat down, gathered all my historical track sheets about everything we did each day during the production of the album. These notes were rich with information about what instrument we used and what song we worked on each day. Armed with this information, I wrote the story of my year of making this album. While I was writing, I was thoroughly convinced that I was that 29-year-old boy again."
Meanwhile Adjmi has continued to insist that Stereophonic’s inspiration comes from a number of sources - Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Arcade Fire (that band’s Will Butler supplied the music) as well as female-centred bands like The Mamas & the Papas and Heart. He told Variety that he alighted on the initial idea after listening to Zeppelin’s Babe I’m Gonna Leave You on a flight a decade previously.
The big question is what do Fleetwood Mac themselves make of it? Well, Stevie Nicks said she hadn’t seen it in an interview last year and it’s not known whether the other surviving members have chanced across it yet.
After its success on Broadway, there’s already talk of a Stereophonic movie. In addition to this, Caillat has suggested that an adaptation of Making Rumours has attracted interest, with a draft feature script already completed. Meanwhile, the real Fleetwood Mac are currently working on an authorised documentary of the band with Apple.
And by the time all of those come out, we’ll surely be sick of hearing the story for the umpteenth time.
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