25 Years: The Chain (1992)


 
Disc One 1. Warm Ways 2. Say You Love Me 3. Don't Stop 4. Rhiannon 5. Walk a Thin Line 6. Storms 7. Go Your Own Way 8. Sisters of the Moon 9. Monday Morning 10.Landslide 11.Hypnotized 12.Lay it All Down 13.Angel 14.Beautful Child 15.Brown Eyes 16.Save Me a Place 17.Tusk 18.Never Going Back Again 19.Songbird Disc Two 1. Save Me 2. Goodbye Angel 3. Silver Springs 4. What Makes You Think You're the One 5. Think About Me 6. Gypsy 7. You Make Loving Fun 8. Second Hand News 9. Love in Store 10.The Chain 11.Teen Beat 12.Dreams 13.Only Over You 14.I'm So Afraid 15.Love is Dangerous 16.Gold Dust Woman 17.Not That Funny Disc Three 1. I Believe My Time Ain't Long 2. Need Your Love So Bad 3. Rattlesnake Shake 4. Oh Well, Part 1 5. Stop Messin' Round 6. The Green Mnalishi 7. Albatross 8. Man of the World 9. Love That Burns 10.Black Magic Woman 11.Watch Out 12.String-a-Long 13.Station Man 14.Did You Ever Love Me 15.Sentimental Lady 16.Come a Little Bit Closer 17.Heroes are Hard to Find 18.Trinity 19.Why Disc Four 1. Paper Doll 2. Love Shines 3. Stand Back 4. Crystal 5. Isn't it Midnight 6. Big Love 7. Everywhere 8. Affairs of the Heart 9. Heart of Stone 10.Sara 11.That's All for Everyone 12.Over My Head 13.Little Lies 14.Eyes of the World 15.Oh Diane 16.In the Back of My Mind 17.Make Me a Mask

 

If you ever want to see an example of a botched box set, look no further. Fleetwood Mac is one of those bands that probably should have never put out a box set representing their entire career, because during their career, they were essentially three different bands. The only thing that was consistent throughout their entire history was the rhythm section of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie.

This might have worked had they approached this with a bit more thought. Had they made the first disc the early Peter Green Blues period, then made the second disc the Bob Welch period and then concluded with everything from 1975 to the present on the last two discs, this could have worked. Plus, if anything, it may have introduced the majority of the fans (that had only been in tune since 1975) to some great, older music.

They do devote one of the discs (which was disc 3 - don't ask me why) to the "older" stuff, but it comes across as uneven since it has most of the stuff pre-1975 packed on this one disc. Even though it only represented about seven years of the band's early history, there was still too much diversity within that time to make a clear, linear representation of the variety of the music.

There's a lot of unreleased stuff and/or rarities, and to be fair, most of it is welcome, especially the newer songs on disc four, but it just adds to the already muddled picture of what this package is supposed to represent. I'm not sure how or why many of the songs on the package were even chosen to be included. It almost seems as though they put every song they ever recorded in a hat and then randomly picked what songs to include.

Their history deserved much better than this.

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