Island racer mac startup5/7/2023 ![]() ![]() I don’t know how things went on between them, but that relationship must have been hard work all round. Like the lyrics of many of Fleetwood Mac’s most popular songs, “The Chain” was written by one of the band members very pointedly directed their scathing lyrics at the real, or imagined, failings of another band member…generally the one they were sleeping with at the time, or had recently been sleeping with, or wanted to be sleeping with. ![]() Listen to the wind blow, watch the sun rise Run in the shadows, damn your love, damn your lies We’re in no doubt where Stevie Nicks is starting from… It’s a great song which takes you on a journey from deep despair to the guitar equivalent of some free-spirited, cathartic, primal scream therapy. Some clever work in the studio made it seem otherwise…an impression that’s perhaps been amplified by the popularity of “The Chain” as one of the key features of Fleetwood Mac’s live shows.Īnd rightly so. ![]() At the last minute, Stevie Nicks turned up with some lyrics and…hey presto!…one of Fleetwood Mac’s most enduring and popular songs was created.īut this was done largely as a succession of mini-solo projects because by this time the individual band members could hardly stand to be in the same room as one another for any length of time. John McVie had written an interesting bass part, Mick Fleetwood had put some drums to it and the rest of the band chipped in with contributions of their own to create the finished tune. That seems only fair, mind you, as “The Chain” was essentially spliced together in the studio from a number of bits and pieces each of the band members had written separately. Most Fleetwood Mac songs you can hum along with were written by just one or two band members. Unusually, for a Fleetwood Mac song, the songwriting is credited to the entire band. That 1977 album remains one of the best-selling albums in music history, with in excess of 40 million copies sold since its release. “The Chain” opened the second side of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” album. It’s ironic, and tragic, that Fleetwood Mac’s finest, and most commercially successful, creative work came at the time when the band, collectively and individually, were in melt-down. John McVie’s bass line marks the end of the tortured lyrics about personal relationships imploding and launches us into a free-spirited musical exploration of what it might feel like to experience complete relief after someone’s stopped pushing your heart through a shredder. It’s probably more accurate to describe it as the outro…if it was a piece of classical music, you might even describe that section as the Final Movement, because it’s quite a departure from the vocals which have gone before. In case you’re wondering, the BBC’s motor racing coverage used the segment often described as the guitar solo from “The Chain”. Yep, there’s nothing that instantly signals “motor racing” to the average Brit like hearing John McVie play those iconic bass notes from “The Chain”… A mental connection that’s even outlived the use of the tune as the theme for a TV programme about motor racing.Įven on a non-BBC radio station the other day, I heard the DJ use “The Chain” as the bed for a conversation about motor racing. It’s hard to think of an activity which has been so closely identified with one song in quite the way that “The Chain” and Formula 1 have been paired in the average Brit’s mind over the years. There’s nothing wrong with the song itself (written by Alistair Griffin - here if you’d like a listen… ) but it just doesn’t create the instant association with motor racing in most Brit’s minds that “The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac does. Sky use an entirely different theme tune for their Formula 1 coverage, but I don’t think many people could tell you what it was. And even though the BBC lost the broadcast rights to Sky TV some years ago, just about every Brit associates the deep bass notes from John McVie with a programme about motor racing. That’s because “The Chain” was used by the BBC for many years as the theme tune for its Formula 1 coverage. And Formula 1 means only one tune to Brits - Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain”. Motor racing’s Formula 1 season kicks off next weekend. ![]()
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