Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album

• Texas Book Festival

• I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen

  BY MELANIE HAUPT

• Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album

  BY MARGARET MOSER

• Ryan Adams: Losering, a Story of Whiskeytown

  BY JIM CALIGIURI

Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album

Ken Caillat's multiplatinum credential remains co-producing Fleetwood Mac's 1977 tour de force, Rumours. While drummer Mick Fleetwood spilled his guts in 1990 about the soap operatic couplings of bandmates John and Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, the producer paces his own version like a soundtrack. Caillat writes in studio speak, his affable prose including the reader rather than excluding, and that's the real pleasure of Making Rumours: sitting next to him for the recording, drama, and next line of cocaine. Rumours was an album for the ages, the ultimate peace treaty between America and England since the British Invasion, perfect, brilliant, and dangerous from opening to end, the murky transition from rock & roll to just rock. It's uniquely of the moment and timeless as the ages ever since. Writing a book these days appears all too easy. All you need is to have been a participant/witness/victim/instigator for some notable/notorious/profession/art and voilà! It's testament to Caillat's producer instincts that he kept his book as tight and on track as the work of the title.

Ken Caillat takes part in TBF's Lit Crawl. His "And Rock & Roll" panel discussion weighs in Saturday, Oct. 27, 9-9:45pm, at Shangri-La, 1016 E. Sixth.