Music Friday Tribute: Why 'The Chain' Was So Special to Christine McVie

Welcome to Music Friday when we bring you fabulous songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, we feature Fleetwood Mac's iconic 1977 hit, "The Chain," a song that represents the band's strength, love and resilience despite five decades of personal and professional obstacles.

For Christine McVie, who passed away this week at the age of 79, “The Chain” was more than a song. It was a very special silver chain bracelet given to her by fellow band member Stevie Nicks.

“Stevie gave me this chain,” she told The New Yorker in 2015. “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 had 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.

Finally, at the age of 71, 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 elements.

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 120 million albums worldwide.

Born in Lancashire, England, in 1943, McVie developed her love for music at the age of 11 and continued her classical training until she was 15. She originally studied sculpture at the Moseley School of Art in Birmingham and had aspirations of becoming a teacher.

But her professional interests started to change when she was asked by two friends to join a band called Sounds of Blue. After college, she played keyboards and sang background vocals for the blues band Chicken Shack under the name Christine Perfect.

Christine married Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie in 1968 and joined his band in 1970 as a singer and keyboardist. Despite divorcing in 1976, the couple continued to maintain a close friendship and professional partnership.

Her Fleetwood Mac bandmates were collectively heartbroken after learning that McVie died on November 30 after a brief illness.

Mick Fleetwood wrote on Instagram, "Part of my heart has flown away today. I will miss everything about you Christine McVie. Memories abound… they fly to me."

Please check out the video of Christine McVie and 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)

Credit: Photo by Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sarasota Suitor Takes Headlong Plunge, Becomes an Overnight Sensation

The video of Scott Clyne's comical headlong dive into Sarasota Bay to retrieve a fumbled engagement ring box earned the Florida resident an appearance on the Today show, 1.6 million Likes on TikTok and viral online coverage by numerous outlets, including the Daily Mail, People and Brides.

On his Facebook page, Clyne used this caption to summarize the video of his marriage-proposal-gone-awry: "This is 100% real. 100% my luck. 100% will never forget…"

On Saturday, November 12, everything was in place for Clyne to deliver an epic proposal to his girlfriend of eight years, Suzie Tucker. The sunset was stunning, the bay was picturesque and rose petals littered the bow of the boat, where Clyne and his girlfriend posed with their arms spread wide as if they were reenacting the iconic scene from Titanic.

But, seconds later, the perfect moment turned into an implausible disaster when Clyne reached into his back pocket and fumbled the box containing Tucker's engagement ring. The box bounced off the deck and into the bay.

Instantly, Clyne followed the box into the water with a dive that was so comical that he later captured a frame of the exact moment his head and torso disappeared into the water, leaving his legs sticking straight up. That pic is his new Facebook profile picture.

Fortunately, the ring box had some buoyancy, so Clyne was able to grab it before it sunk. You can see the full video here…

Clyne's friend helped him get back into the boat, where the soaking wet suitor continued with his bended knee proposal and, despite the mishap, Tucker said, "Yes."

Clyne told the Daily Mail that the corner of the ring box got caught up on top of his pocket, causing it to slip out of his hands.

"Everything was a blur after that," he told the outlet. "I panicked and reacted by lunging for the ring box before it could sink, not caring if I fell into the water. Luckily, I was able to recover the ring!"

Even though it's always risky to pop the question on a body of water, Clyne was determined to go ahead with the boating proposal.

"We absolutely love boating and I couldn't imagine proposing any other way," he said.

Clyne told the Today show that he originally intended to propose to Tucker in September while the couple was on vacation in the Florida Keys. Hurricane Ian put the kibosh on that plan, so Clyne moved the proposal to November.

After the successful Sarasota proposal, Clyne decided to stick with his plans to take Tucker out for a celebratory dinner.

"I didn’t bring an extra pair of clothes," he told the Today show audience, "so I attended dinner soaking wet.”

Credit: Illustrative image by Bigstockphoto.com.

Coin Analysis Confirms Existence of Obscure Third-Century Roman Emperor

An obscure third-century Roman emperor, once written out of the history books as a fictional character, was likely the real deal, according to researchers at University College London.

By using microscopes, ultraviolet imaging and infrared spectroscopy, researchers led by Professor Paul Pearson determined that the fine scratch marks on the surface of coins bearing Emperor Sponsian's likeness proved that they were in circulation 2,000 years ago and couldn't be modern forgeries. The findings were recently published in the journal PLOS 1.

The only historical reference to Emperor Sponsian is a portrait of him that appeared on a small cache of gold coins discovered in Transylvania 309 years ago. At first, the coins were believed to be genuine, but by the mid-1800s that opinion had flipped 180 degrees.

Henry Cohen, a scholar at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, declared in 1863 that the Sponsian coins were "very poor quality modern forgeries." Cohen described the obverse of the coin as "barbaric and strange" and pointed out that the coins were cast instead of struck. (Casting was a method used by forgers.) The Sponsian coins were also unusually heavy compared to similar Roman coins of that period.

At the time, historians surmised that if the coins were fake, Sponsian was likely a fake character, as well.

The Sponsian coins discovered in 1713 eventually found their way to the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University, where they remained locked away in a cupboard.

That's until Professor Pearson decided to revisit the mystery of Emperor Sponsian and the crudely designed coins.

Pearson and his team discovered that the Sponsian coins all bore similar patterns of microscopic wear apparent on authentic coins of the third century. A chemical analysis of the dirt caked on the coins confirmed they had been buried for a prolonged period of time.

The wear marks confirmed that the coins were handled in countless transactions over an extended time period and that they were used as a part of a monetary economy, Pearson reported.

"What we have found is an emperor," Pearson told the BBC. "He was a figure thought to have been a fake and written off by the experts. But we think he was real and that he had a role in history."

So, if Sponsian really existed, why don't we know more about him?

Researchers believe that Sponsian was a Roman army officer who was in charge of a remote province called Dacia, in what is now Romania. It was the year 260 AD, and Dacia was physically cut off from Rome during a period of chaos, civil war and a pandemic.

It is believed that Sponsian was "on an island" and had no way of communicating with the supreme command, so he did what he had to do in order to protect the civilian and military populations. One of those things was to declare himself emperor and another was to mint coins so the province could have a functioning economy.

This would theoretically explain why the Sponsian coins were so unlike other coins minted by the Romans at that time.

Credit: Image © 2022 Pearson et al. Sponsianus, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.