Non-Hit Hits Top Ten: The Chain (#8)

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Happy first day of the week! Weather folks say fall temperatures will arrive with the first day of fall, but that’s a few days away. For now, it’s warm, sunny, and time for another song that you know really well if you listen to FM rock…so well, in fact, that you may be surprised to discover it was NOT officially a “hit” (defined as a US Billboard top 40 song). Thanks to @PhredWreck for the topic. Hope he likes this one. #8: The Chain - Fleetwood Mac Every now and then I laugh at these band members who can’t get along. Look at Fleetwood Mac: these guys were thoroughly pissed at one another by the time they made this album. Rumours is one of the great albums of its generation (or any generation, for that matter), detailing the trials and tribulations of what happens when a band is comprised of two couples (Christine and John McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham), and then those couples split up. There’s a meme on Facebook that says something along the lines of how Stevie Nicks is so bada-ss that she sings a song about what a jerk Lindsey Buckingham is while Lindsey plays guitar on it (I’m assuming that’s a reference to “Dreams,” the megahit from this album). Bah, Lindsey made Stevie stand there in the middle of the stage with NOTHING to do while he sang about what a tramp she was (“Go Your Own Way”). THAT is bada-ss! This song was sort of group primal scream therapy, where they got to yell at each other in a song (“damn your love, damn your lies”) and have everybody go, “Wow, what a great song.” Maybe Stevie got the last laugh by kicking Lindsey out of the band. Or maybe Buckingham is laughing his butt off, collecting royalties on the songs he wrote, knowing that it took TWO guitarists (the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell and Crowded House’s Neil Finn) to replace him, and happy that he doesn’t have to stand there and listen to Nicks sing “Edge of Seventeen” anymore. Breakups are a bee-eye-itch, aren’t they? But they do produce incredible songs. The Chain Written by Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie, and Stevie Nicks Recorded by Fleetwood Mac From Rumours, 1977 Billboard peak chart position: not released as a single Running in the shadows: