John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, and Lindsey Buckingham. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Fleetwood Mac fans are familiar with the lore surrounding the band’s hit album Rumours, but a new biography attempts to clear up some of the secondhand news.

“Another Fleetwood Mac misconception is that Rumours was constructed as a chronicle of the breakdowns between the band’s three couples: Mick [Fleetwood] and his wife Jenny, Christine and John [McVie], and Stevie [Nicks] and Lindsey [Buckingham],” writes Lesley-Ann Jones in her new book, Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie, which was released Tuesday, November 19. “Although that’s what the songs were mostly about, there was no pre-planned structure.”

According to Jones, “But so disruptive was the disintegration that discolored their chemistry and threatened the band’s future that the drama bled inevitably into their songwriting.”

The McVies were married when the album was being produced, but John’s drinking was driving a wedge between the couple, who eventually divorced in 1976. Fleetwood’s own marriage was on the rocks at the time. He split from wife Jenny in 1976, only to remarry the next year. They broke up once again in 1978.

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Nicks and Buckingham, meanwhile, were a package deal when they joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974 but broke up shortly after Rumours was released. (Nicks had a brief affair with Fleetwood while promoting the album, later confessing in 2013 that she was “horrified” by her actions.)

“Without confiding in each other about their personal tragedies, dashed ideals and wrecked romances, Fleetwood Mac’s trio of writers opened their hearts and allowed raw emotion to drive the narrative,” Jones writes in Songbird. “Drugs, booze, illicit Sєx and imprudent affairs played their part. The result, sometimes referred to as a ‘journey’ or even a ‘concept album,’ was anything but.”

Christine McVie. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

One of Christine’s standout tracks from the album, “You Make Loving Fun,” was inspired by her “flirtation” with the band’s lighting director Curry Grant. In order to keep John’s reaction at bay, Christine told her soon-to-be ex that she wrote the song as a tribute to her dog.

In Jones’ eyes, the McVies had the “most fascinating” relationship of all within Fleetwood Mac. “It seemed obvious to anyone who was half-paying attention that John McVie still ‘loved’ his wife. Although he had a funny way of showing it, he would have jumped at the chance to repair their marriage,” she writes. “But John was maintaining the most dangerous kind of mistress. A heartless sort who had the most sinister hold on him. She lived inside the bottle, and was impossible to relinquish.”

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Eventually, Christine felt “resigned” about the end of her marriage. “She was able to rise above her feelings to put the band first,” Songbird continues. “She was more than willing to work with John provided he controlled himself and behaved like a mature adult.”

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Though their romantic relationship didn’t last — Christine was later married to Eddy Quintela from 1986 to 2003 and was made “fairy godmother” to John’s daughter — Fleetwood Mac remained “bound together against odds.”

Referencing another Rumours hit, “The Chain,” Jones’ book points out, “Breaking the chain would spell the end for the band.”

Songbird: An Intimate Biography of Christine McVie is available now.