Background
"Trouble" was the only track on Law and Order on which Buckingham played neither bass nor drums. Buckingham wanted the song to have a "live feel" and recruited George Hawkins and his Fleetwood Mac bandmate Mick Fleetwood to play bass guitar and drums respectively. Hawkins had previously worked with Fleetwood on The Visitor earlier that year. He remembered that they played to a pre-existing backing track that Buckingham had prepared. [2]
Buckingham believed none of Fleetwood's takes were satisfactory from start to finish, so a tape loop of one of Fleetwood's drum tracks (about four seconds long) was used throughout the song: "The irony of that was that the original reason for having Mick play on the song was to approach the track completely live, as opposed to my usual technique." Buckingham later overdubbed some additional drum fills and cymbal crashes to create the illusion of live drums. [3]
Buckingham recorded some half-speed guitars for the choruses along with a Spanish influenced guitar solo, the latter of which he was particularly proud of. [3] Buckingham commented in a 2018 interview with Stereogum that "Trouble" lacked the campiness that the rest of Law and Order possessed, which he believed factored into the record label's decision to release "Trouble" as a single. [4] He also told Entertainment Weekly in 2021 that he wrote "Trouble" with the intention of demonstrating his capabilities of writing lighter and melodic songs.
In Fleetwood Mac, [I was] called upon to do more the rock side of things, but not necessarily the mid-tempo pretty stuff. I had that in me, and 'Trouble' was a good representation of that. I was covering a broader landscape musically.
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