"Christina" McVie & cronies

[vivfox]

Friday, December 4, 2009
Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac

Imagine that you’ve just gotten through a messy break-up with your girlfriend or boyfriend. This is a break-up that is full of anger and bitterness, a relationship that has dissolved to the point that you can’t stand being in the same room as the other person. Now imagine that you have to work with this person during long 10-hour days.

Now try to imagine that in your group of five people there is another couple going through the same thing. If you can picture how tense, awkward and painful this situation would be, then you have some idea what it was like for Fleetwood Mac in the 1970s.

Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were breaking up and so were John McVie and Christina McVie. Then there was the fifth member Mick Fleetwood, stuck in the middle of it all. These five people made up the most famous iterations of Fleetwood Mac recording one of the most famous albums in rock history: Rumors.

Within Fleetwood Mac there were three songwriters, Christina McVie whose keyboard based pop music included great hooks and introspective lyrics as well as an optimistic sheen, like in “You Make Loving Fun.”

Stevie Nicks wrote songs that had a more mystical feel, mixed with heartfelt longing. But as sad and dark as her songs were there was always a sense of hope in her music.

Then there was Lindsey Buckingham, the virtuosic guitar player and composer of some of the angriest most bitter songs in rock. Nothing expresses the raw expression that Buckingham often demonstrated like “Go Your Own Way.”

From the opening line “loving you isn’t the right thing to do,” the anger and resentment is palpable. This is a person who feels “maybe I’d give you my world” but is angered by the fact that the other person “won’t take it from me.” The chorus is unforgiving, defensive and at the end of a break up. Singing “you can go your own way” is saying that you don’t care. The truth is that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference which why Rhett saying “I don’t give a damn” in the end of Gone With The Wind is one of the harshest lines in film history.

It’s not the just the words. Most of the notes in the melody of the verse are on off beats making the words come out in angry unpredictable exclamations. In Lindsey’s voice there’s a tense almost scary energy as he sings the verses sounding like a man at the edge of a breakdown.

The guitars lines accent the offbeats while the bass line and drumming doesn’t clearly outline the beat in the verses mirroring the unsteady feeling of the melody line. Then the chorus hits and all the instruments as well as the melody fall into the beat expressing the only thought that Buckingham is sure of: “you can go your own way.” Musically the chorus is a brilliant arrival point set up musically in the instruments, which adds depth to the words as they develop throughout the song.

“Go Your Own Way” is one of the most well known and loved Fleetwood Mac songs. I don’t it’s because people love hearing a hurt and angry man scream about he hates his former love. It’s not so much a celebration of break ups and anger but a statements of saying “We’re not going to take it any more.” Lord know we’ve all had moments in our lives when we’ve wanted to scream that into someone’s face.

Thanks Fleetwood Mac for going through the pain and never giving up on your art to give us "Go Your Own Way." It may have almost killed all of you emotionally to record it but what you have created has connected with generations combining passion, pain and beauty like no other band in rock music.

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