Why Tusk is the "Perfect" Album

[michelej1]

Why Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Album Isn't Rumours


By Jason Keil Fri., Dec. 12 2014 Denver Westword

http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2...our.php?page=2

The first two albums Fleetwood Mac (playing tonight, December 12, at the Pepsi Center) released after Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined Christine McVie, bassist John McVie, and drummer Mick Fleetwood provided the pop soundtrack of the late 1970s. The tender nature of singles like "Landslide," the mysticism of "Rhiannon," and the bold confessional nature of "Go Your Own Way" and "The Chain" struck a chord with anyone with a radio and a pair of working ears. Rumours would go on to be one of the top ten selling albums of all time. It continues to resonate today as much as it did when it was first released in 1977, influencing musicians for generations to come, providing the soundtrack for '90s presidential campaigns, and continuing to set itself upon the lofty perch of various "all-time best album" lists.

How did the quintet follow up such unprecedented success? By releasing Tusk, a double-album that in 1979 was one of the most expensive albums ever made. Tusk's 20 experimental tracks felt like the disjointed work of three charismatic solo artists as opposed to five talented musicians. Despite the fact it sold two million copies in the United States, it was considered a costly failure, especially sitting in the long shadow cast by Rumours. Unless they're Michael Jackson, how could any artist expect to come close to repeating the feeling and enormous popularity of an album that feels like lightning captured in a bottle?

Buckingham knew it couldn't be done. It's obvious in his studio work on the album (he took on most of the production duties for Tusk, and nine of the songwriting credits on the album are his) that it was time to move on and take a more contemporary and experimental approach to the music. This explains why 25 years later, history has been kind to the disc. It was an album that was not only a product of its time, with the album's influences coming less from the soft rock era the band was leaving behind and more from the punk and new wave sounds that were emerging, but was also ahead of its time. Songs like "Think About Me" feel like they could come out of the indie rock music of today, chock full of rich layers that need to be peeled back with each listen to be fully appreciated. You can hear that influence -- a desire to keep a song elegant in its simplicity -- in songs like "Ask Me Anything" from The Strokes' album First Impressions of Earth.

There are a lot of details that can be picked up on multiple listens of Tusk, which makes the album a far richer experience than the slick production on Rumours. On the strange, percussion-heavy, tribal title track (which supposedly refers to the euphemism Fleetwood has for his member), you can hear Buckingham give some studio direction, and then the drummer says "real savage like" as the USC Trojan Marching Band trumpets in. The one-off line isn't repeated during any other live recordings of the song. "Here comes the night time looking for a little more/Waiting on the right time somebody outside the door," a line on the raw and angry track "Not the Funny," makes another appearance six spots down during "I Know I'm Not Wrong." Then there's Christine McVie's quiet sultry repeat of the final line of "Never Forget," the album's lovely optimistic finale. It's the perfect finish to an album that put everyone in the band through the emotional wringer.

It was the drama behind each of the songs that made Rumours so relatable to so many listeners. That album is infamous for chronicling the declining relationships and persistent addictions that took place, but on Tusk the music is much more heartbreaking, confessional, and personal. "What Makes You Think You're the One," just one of the many songs Buckingham wrote about Nicks, possibly addresses his former love's cocaine habit by asking her if she is the one "who can live without dying." Christine McVie sings to a lover (possibly McVie), who is cheating on her to "go and do what you want" as she waits for him to return on "Never Make Me Cry." Last September, Nicks confirmed to Billboard that the urban rock legend about the song "Sara" was partially true: the song came from the name of the unborn child Nicks conceived with Eagles' singer Don Henley while the couple were dating. As Nicks recalls:

"Had I married Don and had that baby, and had she been a girl, I would have named her Sara. But there was another woman in my life named Sara, who shortly after that became Mick's wife, Sara Fleetwood."

The most sonically thrilling aspect of the expansive Tusk is the harmonies of singers, thanks to Buckingham's continued fascination with California bands like The Beach Boys. The background vocals on "Walk a Thin Line" mesh so well with the guitar virtuoso's falsetto during the song's chorus that you want to make that journey across the tightrope right along with him. The harmonies also shine on the heartbreaking "That's All For Everyone," as Buckingham "cries out for more" while trying to decide whether the band should continue on together considering all the personal turmoil their collaboration has wrought.

It was after this album that Buckingham, Fleetwood, and Nicks pursued solo albums. Buckingham went on to explore the experiments he started on Tusk with the album Law and Order. Nicks would grow into the role of the mythical diva she is today. The band as a whole went back to the formula they honed on Rumours with 1982's Mirage, having spent their creative capital on an album that many see as an oddity, but holds up as a masterwork today.

[michelej1]

[Excerpt From an article on the NYT Magazine. The FM article should be in Sunday's paper] 2/18/2015 Capital New York

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/articl...mes-magazineem

New franchises include Virginia Heffernan and Colson Whitehead taking turns for an opening "First Words" essay about language; Jenna Wortham on cool quirky web trends ("Search Results"); a "Letter of Recommendation" from a different writer each week raving about random great things (first installment: "Tusk" by Fleetwood Mac; coming soon: La Croix sparkling water);

[secondhandchain]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/ma...tusk.html?_r=0

Here is the article. I love how the guy thinks Stevie is singing the last line in The ledge. Do your research.

[michelej1]

[Thank you SecondHandChain]

New York Times Magazine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/ma...tusk.html?_r=1

Letter of Recommendation: Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’
By SAM ANDERSONFEB. 18, 2015

There is a species of spider that hunts by releasing chemicals that imitate the sex pheromones of moths. When its prey arrives, high on fantasies of romance, the spider hits it with a sticky blob of web, then devours it. Scientists call this “aggressive mimicry.”

This is something like the operating principle behind Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 album “Tusk.” The trap is set with the first track: a lite-rock masterpiece, in roughly the tempo of a summer nap, called “Over & Over.” The singer’s voice is smooth and sad, a melon-flavored wine cooler on a vacant beach at sunset with the one you know will eventually leave you. The keening cheese-ball lyrics (“all you have to do is speak out my name, and I will come running”) are so generic as to be almost meaningless, and these words float on top of a clean acoustic strum, which is punctuated neatly by a clean snare, which is colored in turn by the very clean jangles of an undistorted electric guitar.

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It is, in other words, quintessential Fleetwood Mac: classic FM-radio easy listening — an absolute top-shelf lighter-swaying anthem. Not a note is out of place. (This may be the spot to mention that the birth name of the song’s lead vocalist, Christine McVie, is actually Christine Perfect.) The band’s three-voiced choir is in full-on angel-harmony mode — “Oooooooooooo a-ooo-ooo-OOO-ooo-oooooooooooo” — and as the refrain drones on (“over and over, over and over, over and over”) you can feel your pulse beginning to slow, and you step through the bead curtains into the dim back room of your consciousness, where the lava lamp still blorbles and the ylang-ylang incense burns and you can bathe forever in the radiant black light of the perpetual 1970s.

As Tusk’s opening song, “Over & Over” functions as a thesis statement: No matter how messy life gets — with its affairs and screaming matches and drunken blackouts and cocaine frenzies and ludicrous escapades, like that one time (true story) when a decadent German LSD cult corrupted the lead guitarist — in the end we are all going to be safe, forever, in the Crystal Palace of Soft Rock.

This is, of course, a lie. The Crystal Palace of Soft Rock will save no one. It is a beautiful but fragile structure, unfit to shelter us from even life’s most minor assaults, let alone the really serious dirt clods and cannonballs and stinger missiles associated with marriage, parenthood, age and death. The Crystal Palace of Soft Rock will crumble. It is good for nothing. Do not trust it. What makes “Tusk” a great album — not just a pop relic of the late ’70s but an artwork that continues to speak to contemporary, sentient humans — is how quickly and ruthlessly it exposes this lie.

It happens on the very next song. “Over & Over” fades out on a liquid guitar solo (we can rock, Fleetwood Mac will have you know, but we’re not going to burden you with too much of it), and into the vacancy steps a song called “The Ledge.” As in, a thing to fall off. And this is exactly what the album suddenly does. Fleetwood Mac shoves the glimmering Crystal Palace of Soft Rock — and along with it, the band’s whole multiplatinum, radio-friendly sound — directly off a steep and treacherous cliff, at the bottom of which it crashes into 32,000 jagged pieces. “The Ledge” is a noisy, bouncing fuzz-monster that makes no kind of sense in the universe of mainstream ’70s radio pop. The band’s signature vocals are buried in the mix, roughed up, uglified; there are chants, whispers, moans and shouts. It sounds as if it were recorded live on a whaling ship in heavy seas. You can practically hear the record executives shrieking in the background. It ends not with a gentle fade-out but with a kind of goat-bleat from Stevie Nicks, followed by some gratuitous drum patter.

“Tusk” was Fleetwood Mac’s follow-up to the 1977 megahit “Rumours,” the exquisitely engineered soft-rock juggernaut that went platinum 20 times over, spent 31 weeks at No. 1 and made Fleetwood Mac the world’s biggest band, the very definition of commercial rock. Everyone (including most of the band itself) was expecting the next album to be “Rumours II”: 40 more lucrative minutes of “Go Your Own Way” and “Dreams” and “Don’t Stop” and “You Make Loving Fun.”

nstead, they got “Tusk” — a deliberate act of crazy defiance. Everything about the album is ridiculous, from its length (20 songs, 72 minutes) to its sleeve art (a visual distillation of the precise moment at which the 1970s turned into the 1980s) to its title (the word “tusk,” among the band’s male members, was slang for the male member; when Stevie Nicks heard that this his would be the album’s title, she threatened to quit the band).

The hero (or villain) of “Tusk,” the organizing intelligence behind everything, was Lindsey Buckingham. He was less the band’s guitarist than a one-man band whose instruments happened to include all of his bandmates. Some of the songs were recorded in Buckingham’s home studio, where he had a setup that allowed him to play drums while sitting on the toilet. His obsessiveness during the recording alienated everyone. All of the non-Buckinghams sat around idly, inhaling hillocks of cocaine, losing track of time, while Buckingham futzed around with tape speeds and lay on the ground singing countless takes of backing vocals into a microphone taped to the floor. (He thought this would create a more “aggressive” sound.) Famously, the band rented Dodger Stadium and employed the 120-piece U.S.C. marching band to record the title track — an infectious riff that Buckingham distilled into a three-minute oddity so strange it seemed to actively sabotage any chance the song might have had to become a breakout hit.

“Tusk” cost more than $1 million to make — the most expensive record ever, at the time — and took 13 months to record. The result was a double LP, almost twice as long as “Rumours,” that produced zero No. 1 hits. It was as uncommercial as an essentially commercial enterprise could ever make itself sound. (Despite this, the single versions of “Tusk” and “Sara” did manage to crack the Top 10.)

This is the defiant heroism of “Tusk.” “Rumours” is one of the most immaculate products in the history of American pop — every song a potential hit, every moment airtight. “Tusk,” by contrast, is full of air; the songs are swollen with atmosphere. It contains many of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest nonsingles (“What Makes You Think You’re the One,” “Save Me a Place,” “Storms,” “That’s All for Everyone”), as well as some of the most powerful transmissions ever received from the astral plane occupied by Stevie Nicks. (“Beautiful Child,” in particular, will haunt you all the way to the terminal buttons of your neurons.) The defining tension of “Tusk” is perfection versus destruction, gloss versus mess — the lure of soft rock versus the barb of art rock. It is where obsessive artistic control circles around into raggedness, where chaos and order dance together in a cloud of whirling scarves. The album probably has five too many songs, and a handful of tracks are two minutes too long, but that’s the cost of this kind of genius: excess, bombast, hubris, getting carried away.

A version of this article appears in print on February 22, 2015, on page MM74 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’.

Copies of “Tusk” sold in the U.S.: 2 million

Copies of “Rumours” sold: 20 million

Album’s price in 1979: $15.98; adjusted for inflation: $52.11

Album’s price today on iTunes: $12.99

Cost to build Fleetwood Mac’s custom recording studio for “Tusk”: $1.4 million

Estimated daily cost of the “Tusk” tour: $25,000-$30,000

Minimum number of drug dealers on the band's payroll: 1

[Dr.Brown]

What if Little Lies had appeared on Tusk as a Lindsey/Christine duet?
Perhaps it would have gone something like this:

[vivfox]

Originally Posted by Dr.Brown

What if Little Lies had appeared on Tusk as a Lindsey/Christine duet?

Cute, hot and handsome.

[michelej1]

Nashville Scene Posted By Stephen Trageser on Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 12:57 PM

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashvi...-and-playlists

I respect Fleetwood Mac as a great group of pop songwriters and a rock band who wielded the power of state-of-the-art studios like Zeus throws lightning bolts, but I can't call myself a fan. I passed on a chance to see last week's Bridgestone show. But I started listening to Tusk this week, and it's rapidly becoming a favorite, maybe because the unvarnished, somewhat unhinged double-album is almost the antithesis of the rest of their catalog. If you're anti-Mac, consider starting here — keeping in mind that it's almost nothing like the rest of their work. Camper Van Beethoven digs it.

[Keith]

I just finished listening to my vinyl copy of Tusk from front to back and I'm exhausted. I had to get up 3 times to flip over and change discs.

A truly beautiful record with so many brilliant moments. Perfect, not quite. For me, missing is so many opportunities to incorporate the voices of all 3 singers. This was the era when their voices were magical and how sweet they sounded together. Just listen to the end of Never Forget or Beautiful Child or Honey Hi.

I remember when I first got the album in college and me and my roommate were listening to side 1 - Mike didn't say anything until Sara started playing. He said "Now that's Fleetwood Mac."

[michelej1]

Originally Posted by Keith

I just finished listening to my vinyl copy of Tusk from front to back and I'm exhausted. I had to get up 3 times to flip over and change discs.

I know. I am the same way with DVDs. If I can't stream something, getting up and finding the DVD and having to put it in the player ... Why must I still live like a cave man!

Michele

[michelej1]

VH1 by Mike McPadden, July 2 2015

http://www.vh1.com/news/32806/classi...-baffled-fans/

8 Albums By Classic Rock Artists That Left Fans Baffled

Fleetwood Mac rewrote what was possible in pop-rock with their 1977 watershed Rumours, a multi-multi-platinum hit factory that also made deeply heartfelt and personal impacts on listeners worldwide, thereby setting up the band to be the biggest musical outfit maybe even of all time.

Tusk, the album that followed Rumours, made sure that didn’t happen.

Sprawling, strange, fitfully brilliant, and recorded at a cost of a then-unprecedented $1 million, the double-LP Tusk slammed into fans and critics alike in 1979 like a wrecking ball emblazoned with a giant question mark.

If Rumours sounded nothing like Fleetwood Mac’s original incarnation as a heavy blues ensemble, then Tusk not only sounded nothing like Rumours, it actually sounded like nothing else anyone else had ever attempted since the last biggest rock group on the planet pulled off Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Alas, LSD seems to be a more creatively fertile intoxicant than cocaine and that, among other factors, may well explain why Tusk, triumph that it is in spots, hardly connected with human consciousness as did Sgt. Pepper.

Mac bass player John McVie has correctly stated that Tusk comes off as three separate solo projects jammed together: one by vocalist Stevie Nicks, one by singer and keyboard player Christine McVie, and the biggest one by guitarist Lindsey Buckingham. In fact, Tusk’s three radio hits adhere to that theory: Stevie’s “Sara”, Christine’s “Think About Me,” and Lindsey’s title track.

The song “Tusk,” in fact, encapsulates everything great and insane and frustrating and berserk and enduring about the larger album. Building off a tribal drum beat, “Tusk” features Buckingham, Nicks, and Christine McVie almost mumbling the paranoid opening verses of the song before exploding into the angry, shouted chorus “Don’t say that you love me! Just say that you want me!” after each line of which Lindsey whoops, “Ai-ooh-eee!” The University of Southern California Trojan Marching Band provides booming percussing and blaring horns. At some point somebody who sounds stoned say, “Real savage-like!”

In summation, “Tusk,” the song, is the strangest damn concoction to ever hit #8 on the pop charts. Tusk, the album, took that weirdness all the way to double platinum status.

[michelej1]

Entertainment Focus Playlist: Sunny Ozell Posted on July 14, 2015

http://www.entertainment-focus.com/m...t-sunny-ozell/

Over and Over by Fleetwood Mac off their 1979 record Tusk

I’m a huge Christine McVie fan. (This is a very important distinction to make, in the world’s ongoing and much agonized-over Christine-vs-Stevie debate.) My parents have a stupendous collection of vinyl, and much of my early music exploration was thanks to them. I loved Tusk long before I was old enough to understand how heavy it was, and what it must have cost them as humans to make. “Over and Over” is a testament to the profundity that is Fleetwood Mac’s rhythm section: the steady, lucid pulse of the bass and drums, paired with Christine’s airy and emotive vocal makes this tune feel like its perched on the head of a pin (a deliciously dangerous kind of tension). - See more at: http://www.entertainment-focus.com/m....23vT4aFe.dpuf

[brad975]

My bf has a turntable at his place, so I'd brought over some old albums. I'd played Tusk once before, so it wasn't completely knew to him. But yesterday was the first time we just lounged and really listened (after a big fat J). It was interesting to hear his reaction and comments:

* Over & Over (he pleasantly nodded along, though he mistakenly thought it was Stevie on lead at first; rookie mistake)
* The Ledge (he tapped his fingers on the chair, surprisingly seeming somewhat engaged)
* Think About Me (he jammed along to this one)
* Save Me a Place (he asked "Is this Lindsey 'I've Got To Be On Every Song' Buckingham"? I explained that in this case, Lindsey likely WAS the whole song)
* Sara (his favorite; he got out a blonde Halloween wig and twirled a little)
* What Makes You Think You're the One (I skipped this as to not harsh our mellow)
* Storms (he agreed this was dreamy magic)
* That's All For Everyone (he didn't really react, but I like this one okay, mainly because I can at least imagine that Christine is layered in there vocally, where she is or not)
* Not That Funny (he said, "This is lame"; My assessment is not quite as harsh, but I think this one would only be okay on the reissue's bonus disc of otherwise unused demos)
* Sisters of the Moon (I think we both got lulled into a trance, though he may have been napping)

We'll try Disc 2 later.

My main problem with Tusk is that you can really tell there's a Lindsey solo album running through it that feels almost entirely disconnected from the other members. How much better would "Save Me a Place" sound with all 3 singers harmonizing? A bunch, I bet!

But the upside to all those Lindsey songs (most of which I delete from my 'Tusk' playlist) is that the 2 discs freed up enough space for 5 great Stevie songs and some good Christine ones. Lord knows they both deserved more space. But Stevie never would've gotten 5 songs without the longer running time.

[bobwelchera]

Haha, what an interesting take on Tusk! I've not had the pleasure of sharing it with a partner as of yet, but I did share it with my best friend about nine years ago in high school, which she seemed to dig, but I wasn't in her presence.

I think "What Makes You Think You're The One" may be among the most timeless of the tunes. Like, some twenty-year-old like myself could cover it, and it would fit pretty well in the alternative realm. The same with "Save Me A Place."

[michelej1]

Red Dirt Report

ANDREW W. GRIFFIN | SEPTEMBER 1, 2016

http://www.reddirtreport.com/dust-devil-dreams/tusk-oh

That is dramatic. And that year – 1979 – caught my attention.

That was the year – Oct. 12th, specifically – that the internationally-popular rock band Fleetwood Mac released their album Tusk.

I've felt drawn to that particular Fleetwood Mac album ever since seeing the classic line-up in April 2015 and getting to see a lot of Tusk material performed, including the unforgettable title track and the witchy Stevie Nicks song "Sisters of the Moon."

That album has a vibe unlike Rumours or Fleetwood Mac or Tango in the Night. It stands alone and helped close out the 1970's - a bizarre decade if there ever was one. Just look at the weird photos on and inside the album jacket. Tusk stays with you.

[bwboy]

I Know I'm Not Wrong was a song I never really noticed, somehow it just seemed to fall between the cracks. But when FM played it live for the first time a few years back, it became one of my all-time favorite songs! It's so catchy and upbeat, I really love it. But when people talk about Tusk, this song is rarely mentioned, good or bad.

Maybe it's because it's not divisive like other Tusk songs. I hate Not That Funny, and I hate that Lindsey sang that song live over other, more deserving songs that the audience would have rather heard. A three minute annoying song on record that he stretches to a horrific 7-9 minutes live really irritates me, and I'm so glad it's been off their set since he returned to the band.