Legendary Song: The Chain

This is a Fleetwood Mac piece. Back then (around 1976-77), the lineup was Lindsey Buckingham (vocals, guitar), Mick Fleetwood (drums, percussion), Christine McVie (vocals, keys), John McVie (bass), and Stevie Nicks. And at that exact moment, these people were inside a relationship knot that could make your head spin. They were tied to each other by the same bonds that also pushed them apart. Fleetwood had just learned he’d been cheated on with his closest friend and separated from the mother of his children. Christine and John, still sharing the same last name, had also divorced not long before. Christine was now with someone handling the band’s administrative side. And Nicks and Buckingham were coming out of a long, painful, drawn-out relationship.

If you turn the volume up enough, right at the very start of the song you can hear one of the band members mutter a very quiet “fuck”, followed immediately by a deep breath. Something went wrong at the last second, clearly. Even that alone might have been enough for me to feel close to the song.

They start working on the album in a windowless, wooden studio. The studio owner later describes it like this: the band members don’t see each other outside the studio. They show up close to midnight, do their own thing, talk about almost nothing except the album and the work. After midnight, once they’re tired from whatever they did to unwind, they start recording. And a brutal, incredible album comes out of it: Rumours. That strange bond that kept them together while also forcing distance between them seeped into the songs. Many tracks feel like replies, like people who don’t talk face to face answering each other through music. Still, on that album there is one song often described as the single track shaped by the hands of all of them together: The Chain.

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They don’t talk to each other. They’re resentful. Maybe, in places, they hate each other. You can feel that toxic air in the room, where love and lies are mixed into the same breath. And yet, the fact that they manage to start playing and singing at the same time is already something strange on its own. That weird bond between them, The Chain, is both the source and the result of that strangeness. For the same reason, they push each other away, and for the same reason, they’re trapped inside the very same song. That contradiction hit me hard.

And after all of that, I’ll say just one thing about the sound: listen to this song on a good system. Close your eyes. Picture yourself in that studio. Let yourself fall into the drums, the guitars, the vocals, and especially that bass line running right through the middle. In that moment, you understand better how a bond can be both painful and unavoidable.