Music Friday: Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’ Carries Special Meaning for Reunited Band Member Christine McVie

If you’ve ever attended a Fleetwood Mac concert, you know that the band always leads off with “The Chain,” a song that represents the strength and resilience of their bond despite more than four decades of personal and professional obstacles.

For Christine McVie, who recently rejoined the band after 16 years away, “The Chain” is more than a song. It’s a cherished and symbolic silver chain bracelet given to her by fellow band member Stevie Nicks.

“Stevie gave me this chain,” she recently told The New Yorker. “It used to have a diamond feather on it. It’s a metaphor, you know. That the chain of the band will never be broken. Not by me, anyways. Not again by me.”

Even though Fleetwood Mac enjoyed enormous success, McVie left the band in 1998 after being overwhelmed by a fear of flying. The other band members, including Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Lindsey Buckingham, continued to tour, but the band did not seem complete without Christine McVie.

At 71 years old, McVie came to the realization that she missed the audience. She wanted to tour again and asked each of her former mates, individually, if she could rejoin the band. Each was thrilled to have her back, although Buckingham maintained one caveat: She couldn’t waltz in and waltz back out again. She had to be in it “for the whole nine yards.”

McVie agreed, worked with a psychiatrist to get her past her phobia, and rejoined the band just in time for their 33-city North American tour, which opened in September of 2014.

Every Fleetwood Mac concert starts off with the steady, thumping, rhythmic instrumental lead-in to “The Chain,” the only song on the 1977 Rumours album to be credited to all five band members. The song was literally spliced together from combinations of several previously rejected materials.

The song originally represented the internal fractures — both romantically and professionally — of the band members, but eventually came to symbolize their triumph in staying together.

The Rumours album sold more than 45 million copies and is one of the best selling albums of all time. In total, the band has sold more than 100 million albums worldwide.

Please check out the video Fleetwood Mac performing “The Chain.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along.

"The Chain"
Written by Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie and Lindsey Buckingham. Performed by Fleetwood Mac.

Listen to the wind blow
Watch the sun rise

Run in the shadows
Damn your love, damn your lies

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you sayin'
You would never break the chain
(Never break the chain)

And if you don't love me now
(You don't love me now)
You will never love me again
I can still hear you sayin'
(Still hear you sayin')
You would never break the chain
(Never break the chain)

Listen to the wind blow
Down comes the night

Run in the shadows
Damn your love, damn your lies

Break the silence
Damn the dark, damn the light

And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you sayin'
You would never break the chain
(Never break the chain)

And if you don't love me now
(You don't love me now)
You will never love me again
I can still hear you sayin'
(Still hear you sayin')
You would never break the chain
(Never break the chain)

And if you don't love me now
(You don't love me now)
You will never love me again
I can still hear you sayin'
(Still hear you sayin')
You would never break the chain
(Never break the chain)

(Yea, keep us together)
Run in the shadows
(Yea, keep us together)
Run into the shadows
(Yea, keep us together)
Run into the shadows
(Yea, keep us together)
Run in the shadows
(Yea, keep us together)

Photos: Facebook/Fleetwood Mac; Fleetwood Mac publicity shot

Brazil’s Claim Adds Surprising New Twist to Odyssey of $400M Bahia Emerald

For the past few years, we’ve been tracking the odyssey of the ill-fated Bahia Emerald, an 840-pound grey rock seemingly impaled with nine enormous emerald crystals weighing an estimated 180,000 carats. Once valued at nearly $400 million, the specimen has been the subject of an onerous custody battle that recently added a powerful new player — the government of Brazil, which is arguing that the Bahia Emerald was mined and exported illegally.

"We're trying to get back what belongs to us," Marconi Costa Melo, a lawyer in Brazil's attorney general's office, told the Los Angeles Times. "The emerald belongs to Brazil."

Unearthed in Bahia, Brazil, in 2001, the rock contains what is considered to be largest and heaviest emeralds ever found. One of the nine crystals in the formation is the thickness of a man’s thigh.

Despite its majesty, the Bahia Emerald has been a magnet for trouble starting the day it was pulled from the remote Bahia Mine and carried out of the rain forest by a team of pack mules.

According to a National Geographic documentary titled, “$400 Million Emerald Mystery,” the mules were attacked and killed by a pair of black panthers, so the hefty Bahia Emerald had to be lugged by a crew of men using a handmade stretcher.

After that incident, no fewer than eight parties have claimed to be the rightful owner of the rock, as it changed hands many times and traveled from Brazil to California to New Orleans, then back to California and then to Las Vegas, where it was eventually seized by police.

For now, the Bahia Emerald awaits its fate in a secured vault at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Methodically, the court system has been reviewing the claims and narrowing the field of litigants, some of which agreed to settle their claims with competing parties in return for a cut of possible sale profits, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Just as the case was nearing a conclusion, the country of Brazil added a surprising new twist to the saga when it asked the court to set aside all other claims and consider it the sole and rightful owner of the Bahia Emerald.

Brazil’s argument: the specimen was illegally mined on Brazilian land and exported without the authority of the Brazilian government. Hence, the Bahia Emerald has immense cultural and scientific value, belongs to the people of Brazil, and should be on display for all to see.

"We discovered that there was no authorization for the extraction of the emerald, no state permission to transport it or to export the emerald," Melo told the Los Angeles Times.

A group led by Idaho businessman Kit Morrison is the only other party left in the legal case. Morrison’s attorney, Andrew Spielberger, told the Los Angeles Times that Brazil waited too long to make a claim.

"Five years of litigation, then all of a sudden at the end of all this a governmental entity says that they want to take it and repatriate it," he said. "If the country of Brazil is interested in buying it from [Morrison] and taking it back to put it on display — we see the value in that."

Countered John Nadolenco, Brazil’s Los Angeles-based attorney, “Brazil does not need to buy it from anyone. The Bahia [Emerald] simply needs to be returned to its rightful home."

And so the odyssey of the Bahia Emerald will continue for a bit longer. A hearing on the motion by the nation of Brazil was scheduled for this week, and a Los Angeles Superior Court judge is set to hear more testimony from Morrison’s group on May 11. Stay tuned…

Images: TheBahiaEmerald.com; Facebook/Bahia Emerald

Actress Sofia Vergara Rocks SAG Awards With ‘Planet Sized’ Engagement Diamond

Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello have been engaged for about a month, but getting a good look at her engagement diamond has been a bit of a challenge — until Sunday night in Los Angeles at the SAG Awards.

Walking the red carpet together, the Modern Family starlet and her True Blood fiancé posed for the paparazzi, spoke openly about their upcoming nuptials and even offered a close-up look at the new engagement bling via the E! News Mani Cam.

“Huge,” “massive” and “planet-sized” were some of the words celebrity journalists used to describe the oval center diamond of Vergara’s halo-style engagement ring — a ring estimated to be worth about $500,000.

An anonymous tipster told Glamour columnist Kim Fusaro that Vergara’s diamond was 7 carats in size, the same size as the diamond worn by Manganiello’s mother, but Fusaro reasoned that the diamond must be even larger.

“Sofia is 5'7" so it’s not like she has child-size hands,” Fusaro wrote, “and that center stone is almost as wide as her finger.”

We referenced our millimeter-to-carat conversion chart to validate Fusaro's theory. A close look at the photo shows that the orientation of the ring has the narrower dimension of the oval diamond extending across the width of her finger. Assuming Vergara’s ring finger is approximately 15mm wide at the base, and the oval stone is 14mm x 12mm, the carat weight would be 8.21 carats. If the diamond is 16mm x 14 mm, it would convert to 11.88 carats.

During an interview with Access Hollywood, Vergara — television’s highest-paid actress — joked about the ring’s size. “You know me, it's all about the bling-bling, so he knew what I needed,” she said. “I opened it up and I checked it to see.”

And what if the ring didn’t meet her expectations? “He's so handsome,” she said, “that it would have been OK, you know? I would have said, 'OK, yeah.'"

Vergara was apparently very pleased with Manganiello’s engagement ring selection — so much so that she agreed to show it to the world using the E! News Mani Cam. “This is the love hand,” she exclaimed as she slipped her left hand in a tiny set that looks like a red carpet runway. E! News uses the box to get neat close-ups of celebrity jewelry and manicures.

The couple plans to marry later this year, possibly in the fall, and the Colombian-born beauty revealed that the wedding is going to be “big.”

“We started off with 20 and now there's like pages and pages,” she said.

Manganiello popped the question to Vergara on Christmas Day while they were vacationing in Hawaii. They had been dating for about six months at the time.

Photos: Courtesy of Getty Images; E! News screen grab.

Colombia’s Paulina Vega Earns the Right to Wear the Brand New $300K Miss Universe Crown

Colombia’s Paulina Vega edged out Nia Sanchez of the U.S. to take the title of Miss Universe on Sunday night in Miami, and atop her head was a newly designed crown valued at $300,000.

Reminiscent of the New York City skyline, the bejeweled headpiece comprises diamonds, sapphires, topazes and crystals set in 18-karat white gold.

Thirty-three translucent Bohemian crystals of varying heights represent the buildings of the cityscape, while five light blue topazes (symbolizing strength and loyalty) add a brilliant burst of color. The base of the crown is crafted from 220 grams of 18-karat gold and is rimmed by 311 diamonds weighing 10.37 carats and 198 dark blue sapphires weighing 29.7 carats.

The colorless crystals are backed with a metallic material to enhance the light reflection, according to the crown’s designer and pageant sponsor Diamonds International Corp.

The Miss Universe organization noted that the crown “symbolizes and expresses the beauty, stability, confidence and power of women around the world.” DIC reported that the crown took more than 3,000 hours to create and incorporates themes from the company’s Czech Republic roots and those of the Big Apple, where the Miss Universe organization is based. DIC signed a 10-year contract to be the pageant’s official crown provider.

Overall, the crown weighs in at 411 grams (just under 1 pound). It travels in a case made of Italian leather.

Vega, a 22-year-old student of business administration from the city of Barranquilla, beat out a strong field that included contestants from more than 80 countries.

Donald Trump, the reality TV star and real estate mogul who owns the pageant, had a hunch that Vega would be wearing the crown on Sunday. "From the minute she walked in the building, people said, 'She's a star,'" Trump told the Associated Press.

Vega accepted her new crown with great poise during the culmination of the pageant — unlike her predecessor, who nearly suffered the ultimate humiliation of dropping her bejeweled crown in front of an international television audience of one billion.

Fans of the Miss Universe pageant may remember that Venezuela’s Gabriela Isler fumbled — but didn’t drop — the crown after it was accidentally dislodged from her head during the crowning ceremony.

The new Miss Universe will receive an undisclosed salary, a luxury apartment in New York, a wardrobe, beauty products and a one-year scholarship from the New York Film Academy.

Vega was only the second Colombian to win the title of Miss Universe. The first was Luz Marina Zuluaga in 1958.

Images: Facebook/Miss Universe; YouTube screen grab.

Seahawks' Super Bowl Ring Was Half the Weight of the Patriots’ Colossus From Nine Years Earlier

With Super Bowl XLIX right around the corner, we’d like to point out that not all NFL Championship rings are created equal. Did you know that the ring earned last year by the defending champion Seattle Seahawks was barely half the weight of the one captured by the three-time champion New England Patriots nine years earlier?

In real-world terms, Super Bowl rings range in size from from really large to gargantuan. The latter defined the ring commemorating the Patriots’ Super Bowl XXXIX victory in 2005, when quarterback Tom Brady led his team to its third Super Bowl title in four years.

That ring weighed a stunning 110 grams, one of the largest in NFL history. Its weight was equivalent to a roll of 44 pennies, or a touch under a quarter of a pound. A Patriots lineman told sports-rings.com that the ring was so big and so heavy that it was impossible to wear.

The recent Seattle Seahawks 2013 Championship ring was diminutive by comparison. Weighing in at a modest 56 grams, the ring was one of the smallest in recent Super Bowl history.

Apparently, the NFL maintains an unwritten rule that the size of the ring — and its diamond content — must be in relation to the number of championships won. The more championships, the bigger and more blingy the ring can be.

When the Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002, the commemorative ring weighed approximately 70 grams. When the team won the NFL championship again in 2004, the ring grew to a then-record 100 grams. After taking the title for the third time in 2005, the ring set a new record at 110 grams.

Despite its relatively small size, the Seahawks’ 14-karat white gold ring contained 104 diamonds, 40 blue sapphires and a neon-green tsavorite that represented the Seahawk symbol’s eye.

The super-sized Patriots’ ring commemorating the team’s third Super Bowl title was also designed in 14-karat white gold and featured 124 diamonds with a total weight of 4.94 carats.

It was reported at the time that Corey Dillon and Keith Traylor, both of whom were fitted with a size 17, ordered the largest ring sizes.

The NFL awards 150 rings to the Super Bowl victor and spends approximately $7,000 per ring. Teams that have won multiple Super Bowls, as will be the case with the Seahawks and Patriots, are allotted a higher budget for diamonds. Ring designs typically use larger marquise-shape diamonds to represent footballs, and each football represents a championship.

Winning teams may present Super Bowl rings to whomever they choose, and these could include players, coaches, trainers, executives, personnel and general staff. Some teams have awarded Super Bowl rings to former players and coaches.

Teams often create “B” and “C” level rings — designs with faux diamonds or fewer diamonds — for distribution to the front office staff.

Photos: NFL.com