Watch Lindsey Buckingham deliver an acoustic version of ‘The Chain’
Lindsey Buckingham’s fingerstyle guitar playing is the stuff of legend. Blending the hybrid picking style of blues players like Robert Johnson and Sister Rosetta Tharpe with the intricacy of folkies like Bert Jansch, the former Fleetwood Mac member is capable of turning the acoustic guitar into something capable of conjuring rhythm, melody and harmony all in one fell swoop. This acoustic performance of ‘The Chain’ sees him at the very top of his game.
‘The Chain’ perfectly encapsulates Fleetwood Mac’s working relationship. A Buckingham notes in the introduction to this solo rendition: “Everyone is credited on [‘The Chain’]. John, because he’s got a very thematic bass part at the end – which is like a complete section of the song unto itself – and I think I had one of the sections, and Stevie wrote a part of it, Christine wrote part of it.”
According to Buckingham, ‘The Chain’ grew out of his main guitar riff. However, the song had originally belonged to Christine McVie, at which point it was known as ‘Butter Cookie (Keep Me There)’. The group felt the track’s opening wasn’t working, but everyone loved Mick Fleetwood and John McVie’s ending passage, which they’d had the good sense to record. They decided to mount back from the bassline, using the kick drum as a metronome. Nicks penned some lyrics for the verses while Buckingham and Christine McVie re-wrote the music for the intro and choruses. Lindsey then added a new guitar line over the ending, and with that, ‘The Chain’ was born.
Speaking on Lucky 98 FM, Fleetwood once recalled how the song came together: “‘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.'”
“Lindsey arranged and made a song out of all the bits and pieces that we were putting down onto tape,” Mick continued, “And then once it was arranged and we knew what we were doing. Whether one likes it or not, this is, after all, a combined effort from different people playing music together.”
See the performance below.
