Big Country’s first hit single in the UK was Fields of Fire. Their first hit in America was In A Big Country. But in the Norselands, it was Chance that struck a note. It was prominently played on the radio and featured on hit compilations at the time. That made it the first Big Country song that I ever heard. This was the song that opened the door for me – and many others in my region – to become a fan.
Chance was released in the UK as the 4th Big Country single on 26 August 1983. It would become their most popular single to date, charting at #9 (one spot ahead of Fields of Fire). It was mostly released across Europe and in some South American countries (and South Africa). In many other territories, including North America and Scandinavia, it was never released as a single. A very strange decision, as In A Big Country was such a big hit in US and in particular Canada. Why not follow it up with a song of undeniable quality and proven chart success elsewhere?
Scandinavia was a lost opportunity as well, as Chance would become a radio hit in any case, thus proving the point. The song’s radio A-listing meant that this was the song from The Crossing that got to represent the band and their debut album. And, for a while, it was played quite often. I am certain the song could have gone all the way to the top on the charts here. Instead, while those radio plays didn’t promote a single here, it no doubt helped promote the album instead. Thanks to the popularity of that song in particular The Crossing sold well.
Chance was one of the last tracks written for the album. Some songs stemmed from the very first sessions Stuart Adamson (vocals, guitars) and Bruce Watson (guitars) did when they started working together in May 1981, including Lost Patrol, Harvest Home, and Inwards. After some fluctuating line-ups, Tony Butler (bass) and Mark Brzezicki (drums) would bring stability when they joined the band the following spring. When they went into the studio to record an album with Chris Thomas producing in June 1982, songs like 1000 Stars, Close Action and Porrohman had also appeared. Those sessions were ultimately aborted, although several recordings from them can be found spread across the 30th Anniversary reissues on CD and LP.
By the time they started working with Steve Lillywhite in Jan/Feb 1983, Fields of Fire proved to be an inspiration and a track that would largely define the overall sound and further direction for the material. Songs like In A Big Country and Chance would emerge shortly after, sometime March 1983. In speaking about Chance on the official Big Country web forum in 2006, Tony Butler said “This song was written during the same time as In A Big Country.” That means Chance also appeared around March 1983, and would be further developed by the band during demoing shortly after.
Most of the actual album recording was done at the Manor recording studios in the heart of the Oxfordshire countryside, with final overdubs later done at RAK studios in London. The Manor had a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere, helped by the fact that the studio complex had residential facilities which gave plenty of space for their families to join them. On the day when journalists from Playboy visited to make a studio report, they could tell “Staying with them are Stuart’s wife Sandra, their toddler son, and Tony’s pregnant girlfriend Jackie.” By all accounts, it was a very happy time.
“I’m beginning to realize that you don’t see much of home life when you’re in a successful band,” said Tony in the same article. “I know if I get carried away by it all my family will suffer, and I don’t want that to happen, so it really helps me keep my feet on the ground.”
Big Country had a lot of barnstormers in their arsenal – anthemic songs with fire and energy, running high on passion and intensity. Chance had no less passion than the other songs, but would come to represent a different type of offering from the band. It has the form of a wistful, somewhat melancholic ballad with several strong hooks.
The intro and vocal melody as the song starts is very pleasant, but the first real hook of the song is the famous guitar-picking melody line that appears between verse one and two, and again ahead of subsequent verses later in the song.
In talking to the Big Country podcast The Great Divide in 2014, Mark Brzezicki recalled the moment when the famous guitar-picking melody line was born: “Stuart and I were sitting by the piano. I can’t remember the studio because we used so many, but we were trying to play the piano together. I’d sit on one end of the stool, he sat on the other, and we just played one-finger stuff, trying to come up with a riff on the piano with just one finger each. I had come up with a counter-melody on the other side, be it higher up or lower down, and I said to him ‘why don’t we do something where we don’t hit any white notes?’ Just list down all the black notes, because it always sounds a bit – umm, Chinese, chopsticks-type song! That basic. And that’s where the guitar melody in Chance comes from. We already had the bones of Chance, written by Bruce and Stuart, and so that was played against the piano part, and then I came up with the intro section, which was all on my black notes. Most people have no idea I was involved in that. It’s little things like that, but you know, I never made any noise about that, but I’m always involved in contributing to the whole thing, and vocally as well, I have always enjoyed that, rather than sitting and playing the drums.”
Another huge hook in the song is the chorus itself, which arrives with glorious momentum as the full band comes in just in time to support the strong choir of voices singing the “Oh Lord” part. The melody is particularly strong and quite lovely – it is catchy, hummable, beautiful, and obviously deeply emotional. The fact that the song clearly carries deep substance just strengthens that aspect. Even if you weren’t sure what they sung about, you could feel that it meant something. You knew this wasn’t a throwaway pop song.
Tony Butler knew right away that the song would be very special. “When we recorded it, I had an idea I had only ever dreamed about before: the likelihood of having hits singles,” he told fans on the Big Country web board in 2006. “I never knew how much power it had until I first heard you guys singing it back to us. […] What a simple yet anthemic chorus.”
The song has a potential third hook in its use of e-bow. When I first heard the song I had never heard a sound like that before, used in that way. It was just incredible how beautiful, yet mournful, that sounded to me. It may have been the core element that drew me to find out what song this was, who played it, and try to hear more. The use of e-bow was a big part of the early Big Country sound, and I was very pleased to find a lot more of that on The Crossing when I got my hands on the album.
This was especially clear on the single version of the song. It had a few significant changes compared to the album version, including an extended intro featuring acoustic guitar with e-bow over it. It also features an extended outro (a non-fade out) which features the echo-y guitar part of the choruses playing away on its own as the rest of the song ends, eventually ending it all on its own.
Lyrically, the song deals with broken dreams, abandonment, and hardships. Stuart Adamson did a pop quiz for a glossy pop magazine at the time, and in between harmless questions like ‘favourite colour?’ and ‘have you got any pets?,’ they also asked what Chance was about. They were probably not prepared for the hefty dose of non-glamorous everyday realism that was bluntly served up: “It’s the story of a girl who has a hard time at home and marries the first guy who comes along. She has loads of kids and he beats it. It’s happened to a few people I know and I think it’s absolutely disgusting.”
He came like a hero from the factory floor
With the sun and moon as gifts
But the only son you ever saw
Were the two he left you with
Oh Lord where did the feeling go
Oh Lord I never felt so low
The song becomes part social commentary, part anger at those who let their lack of accountability hurt the people in their lives, and part sharing in the despair that the single mom feels at the situation she finds herself in as she struggles to cope.
While the song carries a strong, beautiful melody, the bittersweet quality and melancholic heft of the song is also apparent. This may be why this song resonated so strongly in the Nordics – a lot of music from our part of the world seem to embrace the beauty of melancholy which this song also do so well.
“I like the wee subtle things, the acoustic numbers,” said Stuart in an interview in Melody Maker in 1990. “I like that ring of sincerity and sentimentality. Is Chance our classic tearjerker? I think so. In a way, Chance has worked perfectly because it’s become other people’s song more than ours. […] Chance has been one of the peaks of the live show for a long time.”
The song would become a huge communal moment at every show with its engaging singalong section. Stuart initially counted in the audience with a 1-2-3-4, which the audience would eventually pick up on. They started singing the count-in on their own as part of the singalong section, and this has become so synonymous with seeing the song live that it happens to this day. The band would often extend the end chorus as well, adding a lot of room for the singalong.
The chorus is huge and anthemic, lending itself especially well to audience participation. If you look at the lyrics, however, you will quickly see that they are about as far from your typical “beer-soaked feelgood shout-along” moment as you can get. “Where did the feeling go / I never felt so low” express a deep sadness, describing how people in hard life situations struggle to go on. From a lyrical perspective, this certainly is a very peculiar subject matter for a jolly good crowd singalong, especially in combination with the 1-2-3-4 “football chants” which never sat well with me on that particular song for that reason.
Ultimately, though, this would become an early example of the duality of Big Country. Over the years, we would get used to the band serving us wonderful, upbeat musical moments with downbeat lyrical content. The key has always been the genuine and real substance that you could always rely on finding there, and being able to share that in a communal setting by singing it with others is pretty unique. Somehow, that quality made this “our” band more than any other. They sang about real, human things that meant something. Just like real life, what happened in the songs wasn’t always perfect and did not always end well, but it was real and had substance.
Listen to The Great Divide – the Big Country Podcast talk about Chance in episode 81 of the podcast here.
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