Rhiannon (1976)

Performer: Fleetwood Mac                                   Writer: Stevie Nicks
Highest US Chart Position: #11                            Label: Reprise
Musicians: Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood

The group Fleetwood Mac, having been around since the late sixties in London, had fallen on hard times by 1974. Throughout the early seventies they were going through lead guitarists regularly, the only solid members being namesakes Mick Fleetwood on drums and John McVie on bass, with his wife Christine McVie on piano and vocals and Bob Welch on rhythm guitar. But the departure of Welch in 1974 left them in a lurch, with a recording contract and no real songwriter. Then, at a recording studio in L.A., Mick Fleetwood was introduced to Lindsey Buckingham and hired him based on the strength of tracks he had heard from an album he had recently recorded with his girlfriend, Stevie Nicks. When Buckingham said he would only join if Nicks could join the group too, Fleetwood agreed. It turned out to be the defining moment in the group’s history, taking them from being a moderately successful blues band to seventies pop superstars. “Rhiannon” is a Stevie Nicks tune from their first album together and became one of the great hits of 1976, entering the charts in March and going to number eleven three months later in June.

The song begins with Lindsey Buckingham alone, doubling himself on guitar. The second time around the rhythm pattern he is joined by John McVie on bass, Mick Fleetwood on drums, and Christine McVie on the electric piano. Nicks’ ethereal vocals emerges the next time around on the verse. Ostensibly singing about a witch, the lyrics tell more of a surrealistic love story, with the elusive Rhiannon making promises she can’t keep and flying into the sky like a bird. The end of the first verse goes right into the beginning of the second. John McVie’s bass provides a solid foundation for the undulating chord progression comprised of Christine McVie’s piano and Buckingham’s punctuating rhythm guitar. At the end of the second verse, however, Buckingham’s solo guitar leads into the spectacular harmonization of the title, stated three times in succession but held out for two measures each with the guitar weaving in between each. And that’s all there is to the chorus. While the magical blending of the voices of Nicks and Buckingham on their solo album was startling, the addition of Christine McVie’s third part on the bottom is electrifying. Mick Fleetwood claimed it was on the rehearsals for this song that he knew he had made the right decision.

After the chorus the band stops for Buckingham’s dual guitars and then continues into the third verse and another phenomenal chorus. The last section of the song, which I hesitate to call a bridge because it merely leads to the solo and the final fadeout, is simply a couple of repeated lines by Nicks with lead guitar working in around them. The overall effect of the song, with its minor chords and transcendent harmonies, is what really catapulted the group onto the charts and into the national consciousness. The first single off of Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie’s “Over My Head,” is solid, and even though it was only able to reach number twenty it was still the only song by the group to ever reach the top forty. In that respect it was also a harbinger of things to come as the group’s follow up album, Rumours, would go on to become one of the biggest selling albums of the entire decade. For me, though, the song that really started it all was “Rhiannon.” The B-side is a straight ahead rhythm and organ tune by Christine McVie called “Sugar Daddy,” but it’s the A-side of the single that will always remain one of my most vivid aural memories of that tremendous musical summer of 1976.