Keep Me There / The Chain

[seteca]

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.

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"..!

[DownOnRodeo]

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.

[Skylark]

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

[DownOnRodeo]

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.