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Fleetwood Mac · S4 E5
The Chain
The only song all five members wrote together. Assembled from scraps and held together by pure defiance
1976, Record Plant Studios, late at night. Five people who have been fighting all day listen back to a rough mix assembled from four different unfinished songs, and for the first time in weeks, nobody has a single complaint.
Fleetwood Mac, The Chain (Rumours, 1977). The only song on the album written by the entire band. Assembled from scraps, held together by defiance, and crowned by one of the most famous bass lines in rock history.
The Frankenstein
"The Chain" does not exist as a song until it is stitched together from parts. A verse from one abandoned track, a chorus from another, a guitar riff Buckingham had lying around, and a bass line John McVie played in a single take that nobody planned. It is the only track on Rumours credited to all five members.
The Chain, Fleetwood Mac (1977)
The first half is moody and restrained: layered guitars, a minor-key vocal melody, and a sense of something simmering underneath. Then the song breaks to silence, and John McVie's bass enters alone, playing the descending figure that became the BBC Formula 1 theme for decades. Fleetwood's drums crash in behind it, Buckingham's guitar starts screaming, and the whole thing builds to a climax that sounds like five people daring the universe to tear them apart.
“That bass line just came out of nowhere. John played it once, and everyone in the room stopped talking. We knew that was the thing that would hold the whole song together.”
— Mick Fleetwood, Fleetwood: My Life and Adventures in Fleetwood Mac, 1990
TAP TO REVEAL: How did "The Chain" end up as the BBC Formula 1 theme?
What famous use gave "The Chain" a second life with audiences who had never heard of Fleetwood Mac?
Sara, Fleetwood Mac
A six-minute Stevie Nicks epic from Tusk (1979) that shows the five-piece at the peak of their collective power. Where "The Chain" is raw and defiant, "Sara" is vast and layered, with Nicks' vocal swirling over waves of guitar, piano, and harmonies. The arrangement builds and recedes like tides.
Sara, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
Read the lyrics while you listen. "Drowning in the sea of love." Six minutes of Stevie Nicks at her most vast and layered.
Three in the morning, an empty auditorium, a single piano. Christine McVie sits down, plays "Songbird" in one take, and records the most fragile, beautiful moment on the entire album.
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