Choosing my favourite band turned out to be much harder than choosing my favourite song, since my favourite band is actually a Top 5 Favourite Bands In No Particular Order list. But in the end I settled on one of those 5 for today’s 30 Day Song Challenge, mostly since I haven’t spoken about this band here yet. Now, this band is really two bands, since they changed their lineup and sound in the 70s, moving from psychedelic pop to folksy rock & roll. It’s the second of these stages that constitutes my favourite band (not that there’s anything wrong with the 1960s pop band they were, I just prefer the hard rockin’ 70s lineup), and the song I chose is the one I think is the most rousing, from their most popular and musically tight album. I’m talking of course about Fleetwood Mac, with their shattering opus The Chain.
Rumours is an album fraught with gossip, backstabbing and suspicion, written at a time when the two couples in the band were going through acrimonious breakups, and each song is their way of exorcising some of their demons. The album is full of backhanded compliments and “see-if-I-care” bitterness, but The Chain is the song that brings them all together.
It begins with a haunting acoustic guitar riff and a low-key lyrical section full of heartbreak and misery, lines like “damn your love and damn your lies” spat through the guitars at each other. The chorus moves from anger to sadness and regret, the image of that broken chain pervading the lyrics, fantasies of possible futures lying in pieces on the floor.
But what lifts this song above the others on Rumours is the second half, when it shifts gear into a big, raucous coda. These last few minutes of The Chain are pure rock & roll: emotive guitars, vocals bellowed from the belly of heartache, whirling drums and an iconic bassline. The end of The Chain shows a note of hope, that maybe all is not lost here, that the chain will still keep them together. It could be an idle dream, or it could be a reconciliation. Either way, it’s a happy ending, a reversal of the resentment and hostility that previously damned their lost love.
I used to think that's what the song meant, but now I think that maybe there’s sarcasm involved here. It could be that the happy ending is one last “fuck you”, that the chain that keeps them together isn’t their old chain of love rebuilt, but rather one that chains them to their memories, despair that they’ll never be able to forget and will always be haunted by their past, have to live with this grief as though it were fresh everyday. Maybe it’s less a sincere “thanks for the good times” and more a sardonic “thanks for leaving me in inconceivable pain”.
Just like the song turns itself around at the end, so my interpretation of it has been turned around. I don’t know exactly what they mean by this song, whether it’s bitter or nostalgic, whether it represents a change of heart or a grudge taken to the next level. Either way, I still enjoy the song. Whether it’s ecstatic or angry doesn’t matter to me, because whatever they say in this song, it all ends up becoming nothing more than rumours.
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