Watch A Bluegrass Style Cover Of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain”

“The Chain” is a Fleetwood Mac fan favorite from their highly-acclaimed 1977 album, Rumours. The song was a combination of several rejected ideas and material from all five members, thus being credited to all of them.

The song is said to have originated from Christine McVie’s song “Butter Cookie (Keep Me There)” – which can be had at the expanded version of the album. They removed the blues-style theme but retained the chord progression courtesy of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie’s drum and bass rhythm section. Stevie Nicks wrote the lyrics, while Lindsey Buckingham completed the song by adding the intro from an earlier duet cut with Nicks called “Lola (My Love)”, which was part of the duo’s self-titled debut record.

Splicing played a major role in the song’s creation, where the band and their sound engineers manually spliced the tapes with razor blades and put back together, with only the drums and guitar being recorded simultaneously.

In a detailed account from Mick Fleetwood himself (courtesy of lucky98fm.com), he said: “‘The Chain’ basically came out of a jam. That song was put together as distinct from someone literally sitting down and writing a song. It was very much collectively a band composition. The riff is John McVie’s contribution – a major contribution. Because that bassline is still being played on British TV in the car-racing series to this day. The Grand Prix thing. But it was really something that just came out of us playing in the studio. Originally we had no words to it. And it really only became a song when Stevie wrote some. She walked in one day and said, ‘I’ve written some words that might be good for that thing you were doing in the studio the other day.’ So it was put together. Lindsey arranged and made a song out of all the bits and pieces that we were putting down onto tape. And then once it was arranged and we knew what we were doing, we went in and recorded it. But it ultimately becomes a band thing anyway, because we all have so much of our own individual style, our own stamp that makes the sound of Fleetwood Mac. So it’s not like you feel disconnected from the fact that maybe you haven’t written one of the songs. Because what you do, and what you feel when we’re all making music together, is what Fleetwood Mac ends up being, and that’s the stuff you hear on the albums. Whether one likes it or not, this is, after all, a combined effort from different people playing music together.”

Watch this piece of resilience from one of the most well-loved bands in history being given the bluegrass treatment by Andy Wood – live.