How Fleetwood Mac Made a Masterpiece That Flopped
 

How Fleetwood Mac Made a Masterpiece That Flopped
By Jeff Giles October 12, 2015 9:47 AM


How do you release a double album that goes multi-platinum, breaks the Top 5, spawns multiple hit singles and spends months in the Top 40 while still being widely regarded as an artistic folly and a flop? Ask Fleetwood Mac. After all, that’s exactly what they did with 1979’s Tusk.

Released Oct. 12, 1979 — just a few months shy of three years after their previous effort, 1977’s Rumours, began its march toward record-breaking success — Tusk made up for the long wait between LPs by packing 20 tracks into its expanded length.

But as the Mac giveth, the Mac taketh away: for fans expecting a set of songs that picked up where Rumours left off, Tusk proved a confounding listen, full of artistic left turns and sonic experimentation. Some found it daring and others accused the band of self-indulgence, but no matter how you felt about the album, it was obvious that Fleetwood Mac was refusing to rest on its laurels.

This is not to say that Tusk is without its radio-friendly moments. Six singles were released in all, starting with the Top 10 title track — one of the more willfully experimental cuts on the album — and including “Sara” (No. 7) and “Think About Me” (No. 20). But it was obvious that rather than trying to recapture or outdo Rumours, the band members were willing to expend the huge amount of commercial capital they’d built up by putting together a sprawling, ambitious work that reflected many, if not all, of their wildest artistic whims.

Leading the charge was guitarist and singer Lindsey Buckingham, whose grip on the Tusk reins would later lead to some derisively referring to the record as “Lindsey’s Folly.” As he later took pains to explain, however, it wasn’t about satisfying his ego.

“I was losing a great deal of myself,” Buckingham later recalled of trying to create new music in the wake of Rumours. His solution was to cover as much musical ground as possible — to consciously avoid a Rumours II. “My thought was, let’s subvert the norm. Let’s slow the tape machine down, or speed it up, or put the mike on the bathroom floor and sing and beat on, uh, a Kleenex box! My mind was racing.”


The end result was a set of songs that replaced the burnished AM glow of its predecessor with a sonic landscape that was broader and more colorful — yet also more arid, and studded with sharper angles. Critics were quick to point to New Wave as an overriding influence, but Tusk wasn’t an attempt to latch onto trendy sounds. As evidenced by the stomping, marching band-backed title track, or the spiky “The Ledge,” or the fuzz-laced “Not That Funny,” or the reverb-soaked “That’s All for Everyone,” it found Buckingham on nothing more than a dizzying quest to capture the sounds in his own mind.

Although Buckingham described the positive aspects of upending expectations, engineer Ken Caillat recalled a fairly turbulent working environment, with Buckingham’s eccentric behavior setting the tone. “He was a maniac,” Caillat countered. “The first day, I set the studio up as usual. Then he said, ‘Turn every knob 180 degrees from where it is now and see what happens.’ He’d tape microphones to the studio floor and get into a sort of push-up position to sing. Early on, he came in and he’d freaked out in the shower and cut off all his hair with nail scissors. He was stressed.”

He wasn’t the only one. Drummer Mick Fleetwood later laughed about Warner Bros. chief Mo Ostin’s apoplectic response to the finished product, paraphrasing his remarks by saying, “You’re insane doing a double album at this time. The business is f—ed, we’re dying the death, we can’t sell records, and this will have to retail at twice the normal price. It’s suicide.” But in 1979, not even the head of Fleetwood Mac’s record company could stop them from doing whatever they wanted. Neither could they stop a troubled narrative from being woven around the album’s eventual success.


Given its length, its ambition, and its much clucked-over million-dollar cost — not to mention the mountains of rock-star excess that sprung up around Fleetwood Mac during an epic Tusk tour that included specially painted hotel rooms for singer Stevie Nicks and no shortage of on-stage tension — the record came to be regarded as a weird, costly tumble from the dizzying heights of Rumours.

Unsurprisingly, the band members took issue with this point of view. “In the context of the whole, Rumours took longer to make than Tusk. One of the reasons why Tusk cost so much is that we happened to be at a studio that was charging a f— of a lot of money,” Buckingham pointed out. “During the making of Tusk, we were in the studio for about 10 months and we got 20 songs out of it. Rumours took the same amount of time. It didn’t cost so much because we were in a cheaper studio. There’s no denying what it cost, but I think it’s been taken out of context.”

Fleetwood also insisted in a Trouser Press interview that change was part of the band’s legacy. “We’ve never stayed one way for very long, and I don’t think we ever will. We’ve always changed a lot whether or not players have changed,” he said. “Doing a double album didn’t make any business sense at all. But it meant a lot to us, artistically — whether we could still feel challenged. We really, really are pleased with it. We’ve also, I think, got enough discretion to know if the songs aren’t up to standard, in which case we’d have just put out a single album.”

Meanwhile, Christine McVie bristled during a 1982 interview with Sounds, pointing out that “Tusk sold nine million copies — so it can’t be too shabby, can it? But a lot of people gave us flak about that album. It’s very different, very different, very Lindsey Buckingham. I’ll have to say that. He was going through some musical experiments at the time.”


Still, the backlash took its toll, and when the sales came in considerably softer than those for Rumours — which was, it’s worth noting, one of the biggest-selling records of all time — Buckingham felt that the other members of the group turned on him, jaundicing his perception of his place in the band as well as its artistic limits.

“I got a lot of support from the band during the making of Tusk; everyone was really excited about it. Then, when it became apparent that it wasn’t going to sell 15 million albums, the attitude started to change — which was sad for me in a way, because it makes me wonder where everyone’s priorities are,” Buckingham later admitted to Record. “They changed their attitude about the music, after they realized it wasn’t going to sell as many copies. That’s not really the point of doing it. The point is to shake people’s preconceptions about pop.”

None of that helped curb Buckingham’s restless artistic appetites, and before the end of the ’80s, he was out of the band, temporarily off to pursue wilder (and less commercially friendly) solo vistas. But like a lot of works of art once deemed too outre, Tusk earned a deeper measure of appreciation over time. Today, it’s widely regarded as one of the more interesting and artistically sounding albums in Fleetwood Mac’s catalog, and all those out-there moments that perplexed Rumours fans have been hailed as influential by a widening circle of younger bands. In time, Buckingham would return to Fleetwood Mac, but the way it was perceived — and the lasting demand for Rumours-style Mac product — left a lasting impression on his career.

“For me, the Tusk album was the most important album we made, but only because it drew a line in the sand that, for me, defined the way I still think today,” Buckingham mused in a 2011 interview. “I was trying to pave some new territory for us, but another way of looking at it is that I was causing trouble. Had we all wanted the same thing for the same reason, I probably never would have made solo albums.”



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Another Tusk anniversary article
36 years ago today... Tusk was released
http://www.glidemagazine.com/video/3...udio-outtakes/

Thanks.
It's interesting to note that John uses the expression "the work of three solo artists" which is usually said about Revolver of The Beatles.

Said more often about The Beatles' 'White Album', which is strangely fitting, as that's THEIR double album, full of disparate styles and more 'solo' tracks than is usual for them.

"That was just saying: 'This is my song, we'll do it this way. That's your song, you do it that way.' It's pretty hard trying to fit three guys' music onto one album - that's why we did a double."
- John Lennon, 1969

[on Why Don't We Do It In The Road] "That's Paul. He even recorded it by himself in another room. That's how it was getting in those days. We came in and he'd made the whole record. Him drumming. Him playing the piano. Him singing. But he couldn't - he couldn't - maybe he couldn't make the break from the Beatles. I don't know what it was, you know. I enjoyed the track. Still, I can't speak for George, but I was always hurt when Paul would knock something off without involving us. But that's just the way it was then."
- John Lennon, 1980

While I have everybody's attention I'd like to point out, the TUSK album was released to radio on the 12th of October and released to the public on the 15th, but many radio stations played the album in its entirety which later was deemed to have hurt album sales because a lot of us taped it off the radio. I taped it but I also bought the album on the 15th.

Every time I see these album anniversaries pop up .It make me feel older.Well thats part of life.LOL.....

I never think that about Tusk being a flop.They took a major risk to pull it out and alot of cash to put it together.Probably used their earnings from the Rumours tour and album sales to finance some of it.

I've heard Mick say that.

I traded Paul McCartney's Pipes Of Peace album
for TUSK. I believe I got the better of that trade.

I've never looked at Tusk as a failure. An experimental
double album that went 4X Platinum (2 million sold).
Not bad, not bad at all.

However, it might be the album that testifies to Lindsey's
genius or his insecurity. Afraid the new album wouldn't
achieve the success of Rumours, maybe in this way
he took the easy way out. Why not make an album that's
guaranteed not to be a commercial success on purpose?
No risk there.

Thanks for sharing this article, I enjoyed it immensely. It feels vindicating that Tusk has finally become appreciated on a larger scale. I think it will probably always be my all time favorite album. :nod:

Oh, I think you're right, I'm not the Beatles specialist in my family. I think I said Revolver just because it's the one I like the most.

Yes, interesting that it was a double album as well!

However the point was, I think I've read somewher that Fleetwood Mac has been compared to the Beatles during their most successful years, but was it something brought up by the band itself or was it propelled by media? Or again maybe is it just some rubbish?

Yes, true.
But I don't think it was the only factor on the relative "failure" of Tusk. Rumours by nature is/was the kind of album with universal appeal that attracts not only the established fanbase but also the casual listeners as well.
Tusk was the kind of album that hardcore fans would buy and maybe music lovers whose tastes leans toward the experimental but not too anti-commercial.
Also When Tusk came out the super-polished pop-rock era was on its last legs, at least here. During the end of the 70s with the spreading of punk and new wave there has been either a return to more basic stripped rock or new more electronic and commercial music.

When I see these anniversaries instead I feel still so naïve...
I also don't think that it is a failure but I guess it's the kind of thing that you see only with the passing of time, at the time it probably did feel like a failure that the successful band of those years stopped selling albums because they tried dong something a bit more substantial.

In 1979 most people determined whether or not they might buy an album based on their like ability of the single from the record played on the radio. Had they released a Stevie or Christine single first, I believe more people would have embraced and bought the record. All of SN's and CM's songs were commercial IMO. It was some of LB's songs that would shock the world although some of his tracks were commercial as well.The Eagles released The Long Road at the same time as Tusk and that album was very well received by the world, without having to compromise their sound that people were familiar with.
Another factor though was the high price sticker for the album that was a major turnoff for most consumers. I think a major backlash happened because of that. It was almost as if the people were thinking, "well we made you big stars with your Rumours album and this is how you pay us back, by charging double the price for your music. A 'who do you think you are' mentality, sort of."

Yeah, the double price certainly was the biggest factor.
But I don't believe this kind of experimentation could really "Shock the world", it was more quirkiness than anything else. It's the kind that looks too extravagant to the average listener but probably would be regarded as too conservative anyway for the more adventurous audience.
The point of Tusk was "to compromise their sound that people were familiar with", so I don't think they would ever have done like the Eagles.

However it is interesting that, since I wasn't familiar with the Eagles album you cited, I searched for it and in fact I found that it is "The Long Run" from 1979 and (quote):

Reviewing the album retrospectively in AllMusic, critic William Ruhlmann wrote of the album "the Eagles' follow-up to the massively successful, critically acclaimed Hotel California was a major disappointment, even though it sold several million copies and threw off three hit singles," adding that "amazingly, The Long Run reportedly was planned as a double album before being truncated to a single disc. If these were the keepers, what could the rejects have sounded like?"

I see some kind of connection.

It makes me laugh to hear TUSK referred to as a "flop".....by today's standards, it has sold over 10 million copies, maybe even closer to 12 now! What other FM album, other than RUMOURS (and maybe FLEETWOOD MAC at this point) can say that???

or both? i know you are usually joking, but you may be onto something there!

Still their best album, in my opinion. It never gets old for me.

:laugh: Pipes of Peace? Not Paul's finest moment!

Afraid Tusk wouldn't perform like Rumours? That was never the point. Lindsey was pushing artistic boundaries beyond expectations. I feel this is one of his shining moments, and one of their most significant albums. Tusk was statement that challenged the establishment. It was a reasonable commercial success, just not at the astronomical level of Rumours. Yet with the benefit of time and perspective, Tusk is now considered an artistic stand-out. It's rightfully lauded for its bold defiance of conformity.

Yeah, I couldn't get rid of Paul's album fast enough.
Luckily one of my best friends was a huge Beatles fan.

I believe Tusk is what you said. And it happens to be
my personal favorite of the 3 big albums they put out.
But I also believe what I said was true, or at the very least
could be true.

I'm not sure it was a conscious decision Lindsey made (as
to what I wrote). But does anyone think that the fear of
failure didn't make it easier to make an "artistic" album
instead of Rumours II?

As I was busy being a country bumpkin in 1979.1980 as I was recording country radio when country music was country music .Not much of pop/rock then for me."I love those old 1979/1980 pop/rock tunes today".

I often heard a beautiful voice of Stevie's through the static as I turn the radio dial as I was DXing at night.Probably when Sara was playing.I still have my 45 of Sara which is so shot .The record just played static.

DXing is a hobby of tuning in distant radio/TV stations from 100s to 1000s of miles around the world.I still do it today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXing

My original 45 of Sara is in perfect condition as are all my other singles and albums. I always took extra special care of them and refused to loan them out to friend's.

"Released Oct. 12, 1979 — just a few months shy of three years after their previous effort, 1977’s Rumours, began its march toward record-breaking success — Tusk made up for the long wait between LPs by packing 20 tracks into its expanded length."

Isn't it funny how just under three years between albums was considered such a LONG wait. Sigh, how times change.

I done that too.The same with my cassettes but my Sara copy was overplayed to the max .Gypsy would be next.

I was waiting for someone to bring up this subject. I can explain this in 2 ways. First off, most of us were in our teens or 20's when Rumours was a smash. At that age even one hour feels like an eternity.:lol:

Secondly, when you have brilliant songs like that of Rumours that are still fresh in your mind, you cannot wait to hear what the band will come up with next.

There was time in the music industry when it was standard for artists to constantly release music to stay marketable. Often they would produce several albums and/or singles in a year. Many groups/artists achieved great success and status despite being short lived.

One of my favorite groups of the sixites is The Mamas and Papas. They only existed for three years, but managed to make four albums between 1966-1968. (a fifth one was made in 1971, but only because they each were sued a million dollar fine for not fulfilling their record contract!)

Neil Young is one of those rare prolific artists who never seems to stop. He releases an at least one (sometimes two) albums a year. I've been attempting to keep up with him. I've acquired about forty of his albums, but I'm still about fifteen short...and he keeps on cranking them out!

I wish Fleetwood Mac, in it's Lindsey/Stevie configuration, could have been more prolific (which is why one last album from them is so significant). But consolation comes from the band's long, rich history and diversity, which served as a hub for solo ventures/careers and some great music.

When Mirage was released, it was portrayed in the media as a reunion, seemingly as if they broke up, since had been a long three years since their last album. It's hard to imagine them having made an album every three years. It's just wasn't their fate, for better or worse.

You are so right. I was a High School Senior when Rumours came out and in College when Tusk finally came out. Felt like for ever. Have to admit I wanted more songs like Rumours and was taken back by Tusk. Especially Lindsey's stuff.:shrug:
But over the years I have learned to appreciate it much more. Especially Lindsey's stuff.:shrug:

I really love Tusk, its probably my favorite LP of there's beating Rumours just because its been over played so much. Tusk is different and that's why I like it plus its longer too. I don't like the Eagles Long Run LP much at all. That was a disappointment after Hotel California. Both groups I think just weren't going to please the public after having there big hit LP's previously. It seems it happens that way most of the time. But Tusk is much better than the Eagles Long Run (or as the band called it the Long One) cause it took them so long to complete it. Some songs are good but most I could live with out (like Disco Strangler--seems like filler to me) I think the song Sad Cafe is probably the best from that LP. I like all of Stevie's songs off Tusk, really I like most everyone's. I really don't skip songs on Tusk. I do wish the LP cover was a photo of the band though. I just don't understand with the MANY photo sessions they had they couldn't put some really nice photos in it.(and the LP--its really a boring looking LP though not much color--at least to me) That I'll not ever understand. Its like whats happened to all these unreleased photos sitting in some drawer NEVER to be seen ??? (Same with Stevie's SOLO LP's) how very sad. So sad --same with song outtakes/alternates etc. Anyway, sorry for the rant. :shrug::D

From what I've read, the album artwork was supposed to be a picture of either the whole band or of Stevie, and then they decided on the dog instead. Stevie was PISSED.

1. Same here.

2. Yep!

3. I agree.

Stevie was upset, saying the cover image looked like a picture of someone kicking a dog.
It's hard to believe they were ever considering having only Stevie on the cover .
The sleeves feature some cool photos.
The picture of the band where Stevie and Lindsey appear to be floating in the air would have made an interesting cover.