On This Day in 1977, the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ was Eclipsed by Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ on the Top of the Chart

Released on December 8, 1976, the Eagles‘ Hotel California steadily made its way up the Billboard 200 chart and topped it by January 15, 1977. Several months after the release of Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac released Rumours on February 4, 1977, and by May of that year, the album had replaced the Eagles’ classic at the top of the chart.

Rumours officially hit No. 1 on May 21, 1977, where it remained for 31 consecutive weeks and also topped the charts in reached number one in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Produced by Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut. Rumours catapulted the band into another stratosphere with consecutive No. 1 hit “Dreams” and four more singles tapping into the Top 10—”Don’t Stop,” “Go Your Own Way,” and “You Make Loving Fun,” along with ‘The Chain,” McVie’s “Songbird,” ‘Never Going Back Again,” and the remaining tracks that constructed a classic.

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The album also earned Fleetwood Mac a Grammy for Album of the Year for Rumours, and though it pushed Hotel California out of the top spot for good, the Eagles’ album still picked up a Grammy for Record of the Year for “Hotel California.”

It was also the band’s second album to hit No. 1 since Fleetwood Mac in 1975, the first to feature then-new band members Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.

“We had no idea what we had,” said Caillat in 2017. “We were so tired. Most weeks, we worked seven days a week. You never know when you’re going to do something great.”

[RELATED: 5 Songs Stevie Nicks Cut From Her 1981 Solo Debut ‘Bella Donna’ ]

It was a miraculous feat for the band, who were, at the time, in the middle of their own personal struggles and fissures with the breakup of Christine and John McVie, Mick Fleetwood’s marriage dissolving, along with Nicks’ and Buckingham’s split.

“I think we were damned lucky that our music never went down the drain because we went down the drain,” said Fleetwood in 2019, “and I think in truth there are moments where you could have said we got pretty close, you know.

Fleetwood continued, “There’s a picture of the five of us back in the day taken by [rock photographer] Neil Preston, and I always look at it and we’re laughing away, and we didn’t have any idea what was going to happen. No one could have imagined the success and the hardship and the torment.”

Photo: British musician Mick Fleetwood, of the group Fleetwood Mac, performs onstage at the Rosemont Horizon, Rosemont, Illinois, May 14, 1980. (Paul Natkin/Getty Images)