Note 1: Nicks and Buckingham actually split up as the album was being recorded, not afterwards.
Note 2: Nicks' wrote a song called "Silver Springs" which was left off the album for management reasons. Nicks reportedly went ballistic when she found out and never forgave whoever it was she thought was responsible for the decision, which might have been Fleetwood and McVie.
2000-01-05
Buckingham and Nicks (above): headed for splitsville. Fricker and Tyson, below: think you'll go out to Alberta...
For a few years in the mid-1970's, the album Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was ranked the best-selling album of all time. One listen and it's not hard to see why. Rumours has something for everyone, the romantic, the rocker, the thoughtful sentimentalist. I didn't usually buy pop albums back then-- Tom Petty and Jackson Browne were about as mainstream as I got-- but I bought a copy of Rumours. My favourite song was Lindsey Buckingham's "Go Your Own Way", but the most haunting was a group effort: "The Chain".
There was considerable attention paid to the fact that the members of Fleetwood Mac appeared to be documenting personal experience in their songs. Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were married to each other, as were John and Christine McVie. During the life of the band, both relationships floundered. "Go Your Own Way" is poignant, though you wouldn't know it from the lyrics alone:
You can go your own way
You can call it another lonely day...
I don't know the details, but a few years later, Nicks and Buckingham went their own ways and got divorced, and so did the McVie's.
A couple of years ago, the band reunited for a concert and a new album. As a rule, I am not fond of rock band reunions. The Beach Boys flogged themselves around for years and years and it was downright embarrassing, especially when they tried to drag Brian Wilson along. The Eagles set a record for ticket prices -- and greed-- on their last tour. What are they selling? Nostalgia. It's kind of pathetic. They couldn't stay on top of the charts with new material, so they disbanded. The members all had disastrous solo careers. They all squandered their money on fast cars and loose women. Now they're broke. But all those baby boomers are rich and conspicuous and just looking for something fake and ostentatious to squander their money on and here we are-- still singing "California Girls" and "Hotel California" and reliving our misspent youths. Sponsored by Schlitz.
Yes, "Hotel California"-- that epic diatribe against shallow, grasping materialism-- is now performed by shallow, grasping, aging former rock stars. You may now call them "entertainers".
There are exceptions. Yes, the Rolling Stones continue to tour, and yes, they have corporate sponsors, but at least they continue to put out original music on a regular basis. So does Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Neil Young even has the integrity to refuse corporate sponsors-- one of the very few 60's icons who hasn't sold out.
Anyway, back to Fleetwood Mac and "The Chain". The chorus is
if you don't love me now
you will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
you must never break the chain
This was not my favourite song when the album came out. I couldn't understand it. I didn't think it was very meaningful. And there wasn't much to the lyrics-- about four lines worth.
Now I have a better understanding of what it means. If you have been in a relationship for a long time, you know each other in a way that young lovers never do. There is no mystery, no promise, no exciting possibilities. Instead of seeing someone who represents a whole world of new experiences and ideas and feelings and relationships-- you see someone with whom you have exhausted opportunities together, and whom you realize is not likely to ever change or grow or improve. Your relationship is established in concrete. Your social circle is congealed. Your potential has been realized. Even your income is probably relatively fixed.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. If the relationship is still good, there are other bonds, and familiarity, and understanding, and the thing we refer to vaguely as "home". The world can be a demanding, stressful place-- there should be one place where you are unconditionally accepted and loved. When a relationship works, that's what you get.
But if you fall out of love with that person-- if you lose the daily acts of affection and intimacy and consideration-- it will be, I think, almost impossible to rebuild that relationship later. "If you don't love me now"-- right now, this very moment-- it will be impossible to fall in love with me again. What we have left is the baggage of your life, your children, your mortgage.
You could still go on for forty or fifty years, without ever feeling passion for each other again. Some people think that is magnificent. Family values. You should hang in there and try to work it out.
Or you could dissolve the relationship. But that's pretty depressing too.
You get the feeling, from the content of Rumours, that Lindsey Buckingham wanted out of his relationship with Stevie Nicks, and that Stevie Nicks didn't want him to leave:
It's only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat... drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost...
But these are just songs. People write from the heart, but they also have an ear for rhythm and an eye for strong imagery. Maybe it was the other way around.
Ian and Sylvia, the folk duo who had their best years in the 1960's, ("Four Strong Winds" is probably their best-known song), also did a reunion concert a while ago. Like Buckingham and Nicks, they were a married couple writing and performing music together. Sylvia Fricker ran away from home in Chatham, Ontario, ("River Road") and joined the older Ian Tyson in Toronto, and they had a pretty good career together, mostly covering songs by Dylan, Lightfoot, and others. And like Buckingham/Nicks, they eventually split up. Sylvia left Ian because she felt somewhat stifled by the relationship, and felt a need to develop her own potential away from his dominating influence. In all of their recorded music, Sylvia rarely solos.
At the reunion concert, they sang a lot of love songs, about relationships starting and relationships dying. I had the feeling that Ian was inviting her back, in song, pleading with her, promising that it would be different this time. Sylvia looked more like, hey, it's just a damn song. Let's get the nostalgia thing over with so I can get back to my life. The chain was broken. She works in Toronto for the CBC. He has a ranch out in Alberta.
Why are so many pop singers so physically attractive? At the most superficial level, you would think that what we're really after here is a voice. But of course, that is nonsense. In fact, the music industry will quite often take someone who can't sing at all, but has a great body, and turn her or him into a singer. They never do that with someone who is overweight and has a bad complexion. No, singers have to be beautiful because part of the experience of listening to their music is a powerful sense of identification and fantasy. All around the world, men imagine that Stevie Nicks and Sylvia Fricker and Shania Twain and even Madonna are thinking about them when they sing songs about passion and surrender and desire. And women feel the same way about Donny Osmond. Well...
If you have Rumours in your collection (if you're a baby boomer, the odds are pretty good), give "The Chain" a fresh listen. Then turn up "Go Your Own Way" really loud and dance with the kids.