Keep Me There / The Chain
 

Does one of you Mac boffins know the full story behind Keep Me There's metamorphisis into The Chain? I know Lindsey said how the music was good but the lyrics were crap so they all rewrote it, but my question is since when would Stevie surrender her lyrics or song for a complete rewrite? Or was Keep Me There also a joint collaboration, ie Stevie on lyrics (which turned out ho hum) , John on the bass riff towards the end, Lindsey on the fingerpicking and distorted outro etc. This makes more sense but dispels the thing about them overhauling Stevie's song and all coming together magically to create a group collaboration spontaneously. Perhaps it was engineered that way from the beginning.

:confused: :wavey:

Is 'Keep Me', like The Chain, but without the lyrics?

The lyrics to "The Chain" are ho-hum?!? :eek:
Crikey! Some people are impossible to please... at least where Stevie is concerned! ;) :)

To me, the lyrics are extremely powerful, and wonderfully moody... given a considerable amount of weight by the minimalistic way in which Stevie approached them.

The instrumentation is an excellent example of the band's collective musicianship, but to me, the true drawing power of "The Chain," has always been its lyrics. And I even felt that way all those years ago, when I only owned 'Rumours' on cassette, and had no idea that Stevie had written the lyrics.
But that's just my humble opinion. :)

Anywaaaay....

On the 'Classic Albums - Rumours' program (which is available on DVD), Richard Dashut says that it began life as a Lindsey song, and Mick seems to agree with that statement.
However, on the interview portion of the 'Rumours' DVD-Audio, Lindsey states that it started out as a song of Christine's.
So unfortunately, there's a little bit of confusion there.

One thing all parties seem to agree on though, is the fact that Lindsey was the one who was most determined to turn the track into something viable.
They had a bassline of John's that they all loved, and they also had Lindsey's screaming guitar parts, that are heard during the coda... so they decided to fashion a song to compliment those parts.

You can read more about it at Neil's (nodmod) site, where he's posted a transcription of the 'Rumours' DVD-Audio interviews.

Hope that helps to answer your questions. :)



Johnny Stew

Thanks Johhny Stew for the explanation and the link. That makes more sense that it was originally a Christine or Lindsey and Christine song. I thought Keep Me There was originally a Stevie song but then couldnt understand or believe that Stevie would permit their reworking!

Good grief you really misunderstood me!! (but that's ok because I was kinda incoherent!)

I LOVE The Chain like any 'normal' Mac fan! lol. And of course the lyrics to The Chain I love and appreciate as really classic lyrics, from Lindsey's "Running in the shadows" to every other single minimalist, as you said, word.

I was saying that perhaps 'Keep Me There' (which at that point I thought had been written by Stevie) had dodgy lyrics that everyone decided needed to be changed.

I LOVE THE CHAIN!!! lol:wavey: :laugh:


"Damn your remark, damn not right!
I can still hear you saying that I never loved The Chain!"
:laugh: :wavey:

When you're wrong, you're wrong... and, boy, was I wrong! :laugh:

Even on my third read-thru of your post, it sounded to me that you were saying the lyrics to "The Chain" were ho-hum, and that absolutely baffled me.
I just re-read it again though... with your most recent comments in mind, of course... and now I see, plain as day, what you were saying.
*smacks self on forehead*

Sorry about that! :)

Of course, even if you *were* saying that the lyrics to "The Chain" were ho-hum, that would be ok, since it's your opinion, and you're entitled to it.
Granted, I'd be prone to thinking that you're utterly daft, but I'd still respect your opinion!
:laugh: ;)



Johnny Stew

As I recall, "The Chain" is actually the product of two songs that were fused together. My memory is sketchy, but weren't the lyrics written by two of them? I thought Stevie wrote the original lyrics, and they didn't work, or the song wasn't coming together in some way.

The important thing is the end result. I don't listent to "The Chain" much anymore because, as with everything else in "Rumours," it has been way overplayed. But I love John's break and the searing guitar at the end.

On the Rumours DVD-A they talk about how the song is made and who wrote the different parts. They even play some of the song Keep Me there that was wriiten by Chris. It's a good little tune.
It was Chris's tune then Linsey I think through away parts of it and used some of Stevie's part from another song, then the Chain was born.
Alison

oops how dare I spell Lindsey wrong LOL.

lol don't worry - it's a 'good' misspelling - not the indictably criminal 'Linds@y'! (This sentence has been censored! lol);) :laugh:

From all the things I've heard, from John's bass solo onwards is the ONLY part of the song that was kept intact...all the stuff BEFORE that was COMPLETELY rewritten.

It seemed like that to me too.

i have an audio tape off the radio that was showcasing the Rumours album and Stevie said something like " I wrote 'listen to the wind blow' and Lindsey wrote everything else..." or vice versa....i'll have to check it out.

what amazes me is how they explain the actual "piecing" together of the songs...they had to use VSO's i think to allign parts of "Keep Me There" with newer recorded parts from "The Chain"....that probably makes no sense and i'm actually a little confused listening to Ken and Richard's explanation on the Classic Albums show.

However it came together, it's a great song. one of my favorites both studio and live. And...one of my favorite FM songs to play on guitar.

It's extremely difficult for the fans to track down just which parts of the final track of "The Chain" came from this, that or the other---in part because the band members themselves have sometimes confused us with their conflicting memories. I think Stevie said on that radio show you referred to that Lindsey wrote the words "Listen to the wind blow," but that essentially she wrote the vast majority of the words to the final song.

If "Keep Me There" is the instrumental on the "Rumours" DVD-Audio, then it's definitely a Christine McVie instrumental; her stamp is all over it. It has that slinky early '70s British blues style of McVie classics like "Prove Your Love" & "Crazy 'Bout You." It's basically a Fender Rhodes riff in E minor (same chord progression, in fact, as "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around"). The chords modulate from E minor to G to A7 for the major riff, & from E minor to D to A in the supporting riff. At that point, it's not really germane to what finally became "The Chain." But then it creeps into a bold bridge on Am7 <---& this part is definitely the groundwork for the chorus on "The Chain." It's exactly the same style & progression (Am7, Em, C, D) as the "Chain" stanza "If you don't love me now/You will never love me again/I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain."

It's really the verses, with their very unusual chords built on three-way vocal harmonics, that were concocted in the studio. According to Buckingham, it was the three singers hammering those harmonies out together in the studio. It might have been Mick's idea to apply a pattern of kicks on every quarter beat---whoever had the idea, it was inspired.

I think Stevie's contribution (aside from her harmony part on the verses) was most (or even just about all) of the lyrics. She has said that the concept of the band members being links in a chain was her concept. And of course that concept really drives the song, as do those unusual three-part harmonies on the verses.

You are exactly right! I got this video for Christmas, and I watched it recently. Stevie wrote the lyrics. The lyrics in the song's final state are Stevie's. She wrote them totally, but the other members of the band put in their own parts for the music like John's bass line, Lindsey's music from the other song mention above, etc. Therefore, the band felt like it was a collective effort on the music itself, so they are all credited for the song.


:wavey: :wavey: :wavey:

I read you completely. I actually heard all that when i first heard "Keep Me There"...I just didn't have the patience to write all that out! As you said, the verses on "The Chain" were something very different concocted in the studio with a different drum approach.

How many famous "bass solos" are there anyway! It had a song written around it, and deservedly so. LB's solo is also kick-ass.:cool:

From the various sources of info. (e.g. Rumours DVD-A, Making of Rumours etc etc) I always assumed that the way it worked was:

John was messing about in the studio and came up with that famous bass riff. Christine liked it and they decided to build a song around it. The first thing that got done was the ending with LB's screaming guitar solo.

Then they did the beginning which is heard as "Keep Me There", but they didn't get anywhere lyrically with it, so the pre-bass part got thrown into the bin (literally, according to Richard Dashut!).

They then took Stevie's lyrics to a song she had written from the Buckingham Nicks era and the three writers tried to come up with a replacement for the part that had got chucked out. Lindsey came up with the supporting chords and fills (while they were putting the verses and choruses together, according to Christine) using a dobro, which he decided would be the instrument of choice for the final recording.

To come up with a tempo for the song Lindsey said something like "we used a metronome and did a reverse countback (or something like that) from John's riff. " I'm not sure exactly how that's done, but the translation I guess is "we built the song around John's bassline"..!

:wavey: :wavey: :wavey:

Thanks Seteca - that paints the clearest picture so far! Even if some of it is guesswork, the way you set it out makes most sense. After all, as John remarks, the bass line really stands out like a (healthy?) thumb towards the end, so I could easily believe the song was concocted around it.:nod:

The Chain!
 

Hi All Chain Lovers!!! Great Tune! John's bass part :)
gives me goosebumps...they wanted a song around
it as it was sooo good! They all had a part in its life!!!
Nodmod's Mac DVD interview of the Rumours songs is
tremendous !!!Go There...most helpfull!!! Bye,Sky:)

The plot thickens...
 

I've been listening to the two recordings and was basically 'looking' in The Chain for reasons why Christine got second top billing for the song when the 'Keep Me There' keyboard part has been removed. Sure she's got the high rock organ notes through it, but..

Then I heard - at the end of The Chin, during Lindsey's outro, you can barely make out Christine playing what I think is pretty much the keyboard part from the verse of Keep Me There (with the little 'skip' from Em (some inversion - don't know much theory sory) to D and back again.