Is the Tusk 33 1/3 book out yet?

[Dodfather]

Hey guys,

I seem to recall discussion of a book about the making of Tusk that was due to come out sometime soon. There as at least 1 thread devoted to this but I can't find it. I think the book was in the 33 1/3 series? Does anyone know if it has been released already or if there is a publication date?

[michelej1]

It was scheduled to be released last month, but I don't think it's out. Here's the thread:

http://www.ledge.fleetwoodmac.net/showthread.php?t=44588&highlight=tusk

[LittleCharmer]

I pre-ordered it when the last thread was active, aeons ago.. The release date keeps being pushed back. :shrug:

[vivfox]

I pre-ordered it when the last thread was active, aeons ago.. The release date keeps being pushed back. :shrug:

What a suprise.:p

[jellyman10]

Amazon advised last week that it's now expected mid-February. They didn't specify a year.

[LittleCharmer]

I just got an email telling me this book has been dispatched.. It best have been worth the wait!

[Villavic]

Amazon is selling it, even one used:
7 new from $10.89, 1 used from $31.50

It seems Lindsey was the only mac member interviewed for this book:
Rob Trucks talks to Lindsey Buckingham, as well as members of Animal Collective, Camper Van Beethoven, the New Pornographers, Wolf Parade, the Fleetwood Mac tribute band Tusk and the USC Trojan marching band

[Peestie]

Ooooh, interviews with Lindsey and Animal Collective in the same book and that book is a book about Tusk? Count me in!

I can't wait to see what AC said about Tusk. They've gone on record as saying they're big fans of it before.

[michelej1]

From the blog about Continuum's 33 1/3 series, February 11, 2011

http://33third.blogspot.com/2011/02/fleetwood-macs-tusk.html

Fleetwood Mac's Tusk
We're very pleased to announce that the volume in the series about Tusk is now widely available.

Here's what it says on the back of the book:

After Rumours became the best-selling single album of all-time, Fleetwood Mac asked Warner Brothers Records to buy them a studio (the label refused, costing both Warner Brothers and the band significant cash in the long run) and then handed the reins to their guitarist and resident perfectionist Lindsey Buckingham. “You know,” Buckingham told me, “we had this ridiculous success with Rumours. We were poised to do another album, and I guess because the axiom ‘If it works, run it into the ground’ was prevalent then, we were probably poised to do Rumours II. I don’t know how you do that, but somehow my light bulb that went off was, ‘Let’s just not do that. Let’s very pointedly not do that.’ ”

Here, Rob Trucks talks to Lindsey Buckingham, as well as members of Animal Collective, Camper Van Beethoven, the New Pornographers, Wolf Parade, and the USC Trojan marching band in order to chart both the story and the impact of an album born of personal obsession and a stubborn unwillingness to compromise.

Rob Trucks lives and obsesses in Long Island City, New York.


And here's a taste of what's inside the book:

Perhaps artists were merely gearing up for the Reagan years, but something about the late ’70s made successful creative-types spring headlong from triumph into the pool of excess.

Following the critical and commercial achievement of The Godfather: Part II, Francis Ford Coppola overextended cast, crew, and budget in the jungles of the Philippines to make Apocalypse Now. The cost of production, including a not insubstantial infusion from Coppola himself, ran to nearly $40 million, the most expensive movie ever made (at the time).

After Rumours becomes a generational touchstone, Fleetwood Mac custom-built a studio and handed the reins to Lindsey Buckingham, a fusion of factors that led Tusk to become the first record in history to cross the million-dollar threshold in production costs.


When I take a song into Fleetwood Mac . . . I mean, it certainly wasn’t like that on Tusk, but most of the time it was a fairly conventional thing. You’d have to pretty much have it worked out for the group to respond to. The changes that get made and the way band involves themselves in it are all fairly conscious. It’s like Point A to Point B. It’s like making a movie probably. You talk about it. No, let’s shoot it this way and then you shoot it and you run the tape and you play.

—Lindsey Buckingham, October 11, 2006


Like Godfather II, Michael Cimino’s Deer Hunter succeeds by all measures. Both films finish among the top ten in gross for their respective years. Both win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Cimino moves on to Heaven’s Gate, which eclipses Apocalypse Now as the most expensive film ever produced, and single- handedly bankrupts the United Artists studio.

You could do a similar comparison/contrast with Tusk and Heaven’s Gate, with Buckingham and Cimino, but Tusk, though expensive, didn’t bankrupt Warner Brothers.

In fact, Tusk, a now legendary commercial failure, made money...

...Actually, Tusk lies somewhere in between.

Apocalypse Now, while branded for ever and all time as egoistically excessive, is, nevertheless, a success. Both commercially and critically, against any and all measures save for outsized expectations and comparisons with Coppola’s previous work.

Heaven’s Gate is a disappointment by almost every yardstick and stands today as an example of how not to make a movie.

And though Tusk is ultimately profitable, no album in music history falls so precipitously from commercial grace.

Consensus sales figures total 4 million for Tusk (it most recently certified as double platinum all the way back in 1984). Consensus sales figures cluster at 23 million for Rumours (it had sold 12 million copies by 1984 and picks up another million in sales every three to five years).

Regardless of the set of numbers used, Rumours to Tusk represents the largest drop from one album to the next. Ever.

Even Hootie and the Blowfish sold 3 million copies of their sequel to Cracked Rear View (#16 all time). So did Alanis Morrissette’s follow-up to Jagged Little Pill (#20 all time).

And neither Cracked nor Jagged came close to the sales of Rumours.

The music business has changed. No record in the future, at least in any currently known format, will ever sell 20 million copies, which makes a competing collapse impossible.

The Rumours to Tusk nosedive is a fall that will stand forever.

The music business has changed. The 4 million copies of Tusk which represent the groundside of the drop from dizzying heights would now qualify as the best-selling album of the year.


You make a decision to work outside. Here’s where everyone else is and you want to be over here. That’s your decision. If you see it and you feel it and it’s a vision you have, you have the choice to move towards it or not, and at that point it’s not really so much about everybody else, only in the sense that you don’t have a support system. You have to be your own support system. You have to keep patting yourself on the back and having the balls to keep, you know, sort of believing.

—Lindsey Buckingham, October 11, 2006

[louielouie2000]

If you follow the links from that blog posting, you can actually read the first 21 pages of the book:

http://cipg.codemantra.us/UI_TRANSACTIONS/Marketing/UI_Marketing.aspx?ID=WP9780826429025&ISBN=9780826429025&sts=b

I have to say... it sounds like my kind of literature! It kind of reads like a Fleetwood Mac version of the show Pushing Daisies. I love how it overlaps all of these seemingly random and unrelated bits of information to snarkily weave together a most unlikely tale... that of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album. I'm going to have to track this one down... it looks like LOTS of fun! :lol:

[Dodfather]

Thanks guys! I'll be getting this!

[vivfox]

If you follow the links from that blog posting, you can actually read the first 21 pages of the book:

http://cipg.codemantra.us/UI_TRANSACTIONS/Marketing/UI_Marketing.aspx?ID=WP9780826429025&ISBN=9780826429025&sts=b


The page you requested cannot be displayed.
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[louielouie2000]

The page you requested cannot be displayed.
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Please report this issue using the Support System link on the page.

My apologies! Go to this page:

http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=131532&SearchType=Basic

Then click the 'Preview' link below the picture of the book cover :).

[soul_drifter333]

Wow, this is one of the worst books that I have never read!! :lol: The preview is horrible. The writing is all over the place, and I have gotten more accurate information from Google. I guess he felt he wasted so much time on it that he would release it any if he didn't have anything to say. I say, save your time and money and just read the liner notes from the CD. Amazon should remove the preview quickly so that that maybe someone will buy it without knowing the content. The comments about Lindsey are inappropriate also. Why would Lindsey give this guy information for his book unless Lindsey was going to benefit from it too. Besides, we all know that Lindsey has given the same interview for the last 30 years anyway. :shocked:

[vivfox]

Wow, this is one of the worst books that I have never read!! :lol: The preview is horrible. The writing is all over the place, and I have gotten more accurate information from Google. I guess he felt he wasted so much time on it that he would release it any if he didn't have anything to say. I say, save your time and money and just read the liner notes from the CD. Amazon should remove the preview quickly so that that maybe someone will buy it without knowing the content.


I read the fisrt 10 pages and was bored stiff. In the words of Lindsey Buckingham: That's Enough For Me.

[Betsy]

Yes, I am a guppie...I pre-ordered it and it came on Thursday. It is really small... about the size of a cd case. and not many pages...about the width of a cd case, come to think of it.

Are all the books in this series the same size?

I haven't had a chance to read it, but it looks like a lot of quotes.

Souldrifter333...you might get it as a graduation present....

I also pre-ordered Ken's book...I hope it is more promising.

[soul_drifter333]

Betsy,
I guess with the new CD coming out, I have been in a Stevie mood lately and have pulled out the wonderful DVDs that you made for me. Lots of wonderful stuff on them. Even though, I am looking forward to the new disc, I am mostly nostalgic for the old Stevie and the discs and other stuff you made for me cover the full range of classic Stevie. Thanks again, and let me know if I can do anything for you sometime. :angel:

[jellyman10]

I just finished reading it and it really seems like such a missed opportunity.

A little under half of it is interview quotes with people who really like Tusk, but often don't even speak about the album. Walter Egan, for example, speaks mostly about what it was like being produced by LB.

Then there's a whole strand that's a sort of fragmented autobiography, which the author predicts is going to disappoint a lot of people because they don't know who he is and don't care and thought they were going to get a book about Tusk. (He's right.)

This would be fine, if he was a good writer - but he really isn't all that sharp.

Possibly the most irritating thing is that he actually gives space to reiterating again the story of how LB and SN came to join FM, etc etc. So lazy.

He also gets some facts wrong and yet has the temerity to criticise Wikipedia for the same reason.....

In the intro, he makes a big thing about of not getting the interviews he was promised with LB. This, presumably, was a big part of why the book was delayed.

But what annoys me is that it should be possible to write a book of this modest length about Tusk entirely from the 'outside'. You don't need access to LB to analyse the album. I mean, it probably helps, but .... My God, people can still write whole PhDs about bloody 'Middlemarch' without speaking to George freakin Eliot!!

Rant over.

[michelej1]

But what annoys me is that it should be possible to write a book of this modest length about Tusk entirely from the 'outside'. You don't need access to LB to analyse the album. I mean, it probably helps, but .... My God, people can still write whole PhDs about bloody 'Middlemarch' without speaking to George freakin Eliot!!

Rant over.

Superb rant. I wrote a paper on Middlemarch (although it was only undergraduate level). It was called compared Dorothea to Rosamond and was titled, "What Can I Do, Tertius?"

Michele

[emmaline]

Hi, not sure whether this would help. I'm from Australia so I thought I would have real trouble finding this book. I found it on eBay Australia, a store on there had it, it got delivered the other day. Not sure whether they send to other countries but you can ask them. I was going to get it from amazon but there release date has changed so often as people have already said.

The Nile online bookstore
thenile.com.au

Hope this helps.
Emmaline

[holidayroad]

I looked at the preview. This is specifically why someone shouldn't write a book when they are angry at one of the main 'characters' (Lindsey Buckingham)!

[michelej1]

I looked at the preview. This is specifically why someone shouldn't write a book when they are angry at one of the main 'characters' (Lindsey Buckingham)!

Oh, Lindsey has ruined something else for us. Why wouldn't you just meet with that man, buddy?

Michele

[Conga]

I'm super glad amazon has previews, because I was looking forward to this and wanted to buy it for close to a year I'd guess, and now... not so much. Can't stand the guy's writing style.

I was weary after reading the Van Dyke Park's Song Cycle one though. It was all just the guy's personal experience like 'coming home after my job, put the record on'; who cares?

[jellyman10]

I wrote a paper on Middlemarch (although it was only undergraduate level). It was called compared Dorothea to Rosamond and was titled, "What Can I Do, Tertius?"

Titles were always my favourite part of essays.:thumbsup:

By the way, I don't think LB's failure to contribute what he apparently promised is the reason this book is as lame as it is. I think the blame rests with the author and publisher: the author for not making the effort to actually analyse or respond to the work; and the publisher for not grasping that if you're going to pitch a series at geeks, then you've got to sacrifice sales to the casual fan.

It's just so frustrating. :mad:

[kenzo]

I'm super glad amazon has previews, because I was looking forward to this and wanted to buy it for close to a year I'd guess, and now... not so much. Can't stand the guy's writing style.
...

^ This. +1.