Fleetwood Mac - PBS Special

 My PBS station recently aired a Classic albums doc on Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. The BBC series regularly airs on cable tv and I have caught a few on there.

There’s probably nothing I can write that hasn’t already been said about this album. It is the rock critics ideal dream of art imitating life. There is a certain romance in doom creating art and all the main characters in Rumours are having a bad time. As years go on, I try to steer from this idea, but regardless, it is no doubt that it was an album made from highly inspired creative people.

Rumours is a real dichotomy for me. At once, it is very familiar. Let’s start with Dreams- as popular of a song to ever be played on radio. I heard it so much growing up that I suspect there are very few songs that exist that I have heard more in my life. Besides Dreams, half of the album consists of songs that were radio hits growing up or have since hit consistent radio playlists, that they have no surprises left for me.

At the same time, I must have lived in one of the few houses that didn’t own Rumours, so the album tracks here are truly ‘deep cuts’ for me. It puts me in this weird space where I consider myself a rather big Buckingham/Nicks era Mac fan, but I also don’t ever find myself listening to Rumours.

Anyway, I’m such a rock doc fan that I probably didn’t learn anything new, but if the five members of classic Mac sit down and talk for an hour, count me in.

Watching the doc, I’m not surprised The Chain ended up being the big hit from the 1997 reunion live disc. The Chain is a killer track. It is one of the few tracks in the band’s catalog to be credited to all five members. It is a mix of song fragments which came together for something greater.

The start of the song would have worked well enough alone. It’s got that bitter lover spurned vibe of Lindsay’s Go Your Own Way but it is actually penned by Nicks and McVie. Then when it would otherwise end (after already being a belter in the first half), Fleetwood and McVie step in to ramp up the rock at the end. For all the mellow California Rock label, that bass and drum build up is killer and Lindsey and Stevie (again Stevie’s lyrics reworked by Lindsay) come back in as things veer out of control to the finish.