Fleetwood Mac released its self-titled tenth album in 1975, and its success was followed by serious turmoil within the band. Christine and John McVie divorced after John's severe alcoholism, and they discussed only music in the studio. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were in an on-off relationship that led to vicious arguments, which stopped only when they worked on songs together. Mick Fleetwood discovered his wife was having an affair with his best friend. Producer Ken Caillat often had to act as a therapist to keep the sessions on track, and the band frequently stayed up until dawn on stimulants. The album took a year to record, and press reports inaccurately claimed that Christine McVie was seriously ill. The emotional tensions became part of the album's songs.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.