Tusk dismantled and spread through Mirage and Tango
 

Purely for fun, while listening to Tusk on my DVD player for the first time, I again can't help but think if FM had made Tusk a single album, it not only would have made it a bigger hit commercially and artistically, it would have also helped them fill in the weaker songs on Mirage and Tango. Imagine:

Tusk album:
Over and Over
What Makes You Think You're the One
Sara
Think About Me
Save Me a Place
Sisters of the Moon
Brown Eyes
Angel
I Know I'm Not Wrong
Tusk
SILVER SPRINGS
Never Forget

Mirage album:
Eyes of the World
Love in Store
Can't Go Back
That's Alright
Book of Love
Gypsy
NEVER MAKE ME CRY
Empire State
STORMS
Hold Me
THAT'S ALL FOR EVERYONE
Wish You Were Here

Tango album:
Big Love
Seven Wonders
Everywhere
Caroline
Tango in the Night
Mystified
Little Lies
STRAIGHT BACK
OH DIANE
Isn't It Midnight
BEAUTIFUL CHILD
You and I

Putting Silver Springs on Tusk would have allowed Stevie to push 2 of her better songs onto Mirage and Tango, of which Tango is pretty universally considered her weakest contributions. I did the same thing with Christine and Lindsey, although honestly, Christine's songs are the strongest on Tango. I hate Not That Funny, the Ledge, Honey Hi, When I See You Again, Welcome to the Room Sara, and Family Man so I left them off completely.

All in good fun, of course, obviously the songs I said I hate have plenty of fans who would be horrified if those songs were left off the albums. But if you could divvy up songs from Tusk to make their next 2 albums even better, how would you do it?

Very cool
I know its just for fun but during the vinyl days and before digital, they stuck to only 10 songs.....5 per side which makes this challenge even more complicated.

I agree Tusk may have been a bigger success not being a double album but that was the point of Tusk....to show a creative side without being so corporate. The 2 out of the 3 songs that charted from Tusk were anything but radio friendly pop songs.

As much as I like Tusk, Tusk had an overall negative effect on the band. The band was NEVER the same again. After the negative press of Tusk, the band was always chasing commercial success which was what Tusk was not about. After Tusk came Mirage, a light pop album purposely created to make music box radio friendly songs. Then Tango, the synth prop album that was anything but daring. It makes you wonder if Tusk actually was similar to the white album and Rumours, what would have happened to the band post Tusk. Like I said, as much as I like and appreciate Tusk, I am not so much saying it was worth it to get the bubble gum, light pop albums which what Tusk was supposed to not be about. Its irony but the quirky Tusk turned the band into the band Lindsey never wanted them to be. That NEVER gets discussed which is why I need my own column at Rolling Stone ;)

This is a cool analysis. Most definitely Tusk would've been bigger as a single album, but without the "experimentation" that left so many scratching their heads way back in the dark ages of 1979. It desperately would've needed the superb song writing and production of its two predecessors. Like Mac Man, I did like Tusk at the time and it has aged reasonably well, but it did destroy the post Tusk band, which in reality besides a few points during Mirage was never a band again in the same way they were. Both Lindsey and Stevie became too self absorbed to realize the sum of the two was much greater than the parts and thus didn't have the same impact on Christine that they did from 75-79 say.

Both Mirage and Tango would need a total rework to have been wonderful with a re-vamped Tusk- ie the band contributing to the all of the music.

Tusk would have been more popular without the Lindsey songs.

Yes, and so would Behind the Mask.

When you throw your darts at his picture in your house, how many times can you hit him, out of ten throws?

Releasing Tusk as the first single was another error. Linds and his ego ruined the album and its chances of great success. So if we are to deconstruct Tusk, removing his songs is the first step.

"Bitter and disgruntled fan, party of one..."

If it was not released first, it would have never charted. The limelight from Rumours and the excitement of new material made it crack the top 10. If you notice, you never hear the song played on the radio. Classic rock radio stations play so much of the Mac but never the song Tusk. I never hear it on the 70s or 80s channels either. Unless you are a rabid Mac member, no one can really sing along with the song. I've heard it a million times and I still am not sure when to yell Tusk. Stevie probably keeps better timing than me when trying to sing along :eek:

But it was a statement just like everything else was with Tusk. The album songs, the lead single, the double album, the album cover, etc. It was making a statement, this is not Rumours 2.

I agree with you though. I would have loved Think About Me as the lead off single. Its the most "traditional" Mac song on the album and no doubt would have cracked the top 10 and probably even sold more copies of the album.

Why? The single was a hit. Sara was a hit. Think About Me did fine too. Charted way higher than Show Them the Way or Edge of Midnight.

[QUOTE=Macfan4life;1262147]

But it was a statement just like everything else was with Tusk. The album songs, the lead single, the double album, the album cover, etc. It was making a statement, this is not Rumours 2.

Yes, I remember when TUSK was released and thought how it separated the true fans of the band from the rest of the pack . To this day Tusk is my favorite Fleetwood Mac song and I thought it was brilliant to release it as the first single.

Nothing wrong with the singles or the opening songs on Tusk. I have problems with the album as a whole, but those aren’t among them. I am more troubled about the singles and opening songs on SYW.

I agree with Macfan4life that if Tusk hadn't been the first single, it wouldn't have performed so well. I think it might have charted, but probably not very high. Radio was really anticipating new music from FM, so ANY song released as the first single was bound to be a hit because it would receive significant airplay. I'm not saying I don't like Tusk or that it's not a good song- after all, there are plenty of incredible songs that haven't charted highly.

My problem with Tusk is that I LOVE half of Lindsey's songs but HATE the other half. Not just, "ooh, sometimes I skip this song or that song," it's "quick, hit FF because I can't even stand to hear one note!"

Could you imagine how much better Tango would have been if Beautiful Child and Straight Back were on that album? That would have put the album right up there with Rumours in terms of critical success. Since Mirage and Tango are often criticized for being too pop or commercial, it would have been great if FM had been able to bring some of their more experimental Tusk songs onto those 2 albums.

Great thread. I really like this. I always think of the album and tour (that never was) between 1982 and 1987. I like the running orders you set up.

I liked Tusk as a single. I think 'Think About Me' and 'Tusk' should have been swapped.

Think About Me FM jam
Sara FM ballad
Tusk. FM funky


It would have given a little more of a normal vibe with the first two. Then turn everything on it's head with Tusk. I remember when it (Tusk) was released and I heard it for the first time, I stopped playing and listened to it, then continued running around.

The title song is one of my all-time favorite songs period. It’s a one-off tribal thing that gets me all frisky every time I hear it.

I love the title track. Lindsey's songs grew on me. That's All For Everyone, Save Me A Place, Tusk and WATL, in particular.

Ahead of its time has been used to describe the title track in hindsight- Perhaps would've been better as a selling feature that the album had this quickly title track alongside the great Mac music that we know and love. Still a great tune though highly original and fun to listen to.

IF you had to skip one Lindsey song on Tusk, what would it be?

For me, it would definitely be Not That Funny. The live Mirage version ruined it for me.

Yes it wasn’t my favorite of his live performances but I love the studio version. No skips for me!

I would skip Not that Funny. The live Mirage version saves it for me.

I love the 4 piece jam. Otherwise, I have no use for that song .

Yeah, right!:lol:

For you people who don't know to what I'm referring, skip ahead to about the 9:10 mark. Ef*cking gads! The HUMANITY!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbrCeJdyPqE

Oh, I like that part.

Also going to that YouTube video and seeing suggested clips reminded me of Lindsey laying his head on Stevie’s back. I liked that.

9:10 is the reason none of my high school friends would watch Mirage with me, UNLESS I skipped NTF. They liked the rest of it, but thought that NTF was NTG.

Homer- probably skip the Ledge and That's All for Everyone, Not That Funny, What Makes You Think You're the One, Thats Enough for Me. Keepers would be Walk a Thin Line, Save Me a Place, I know I'm Not Wrong, and Tusk for a single CD.

I've always thought I Know I'm Not Wrong would've been a decent single.

Especially with the alt version with Stevie’s vocals more prominent.

Wow. The Ledge, and WMYTYTO are my favorites.

Stevie would just have used those songs for solo albums, not held them for future FM albums.

if there was no Tusk, all their albums would just be trying to be commerciality-attempting replicas of Rumours.

as far as songs go, i adore Think About Me but all other Chris songs are too slow for me. i adore alternate version of SOTM, and am ok with album versions of BC and Storms but adore live versions from BN FM. i could never stand Sara, such a dirge. Lindsey songs are a great solo album on their own and i used to listen to just them. i adore WMYTYTO and WATL, and Tusk is my Gen Z daughter's favorite Mac song. i've never been at FM or LB show where Tusk was not a huge crowd pleaser. guess everyone knows it from football games. short punkish NTF on OWTS tour was fantastic. TAFE has been revered by newer artists as huge influence but i just don't care for it.

I think the album was designed to alienate about half the people posting in this thread, with their ideas for more sales, more sameness, more mainstream radio logic. A Tusk album that sold 15 million in 1979 is a contradiction in terms. Without that album, the band would have been, by 1979, just an old character actor (pop culture was that evanescent and that brutal). Without the burn and the freakishness, there would have been no reason for the Washington Post or the Philadelphia Enquirer critics (Ken Tucker, John Rockwell, Robert Hilburn, and all) to write articles comparing Tusk with The Long Run — giving Fleetwood the clear lead for creativity and fire. I don’t want a one-album Tusk any more than I want a twenty-minute Nights of Cabiria.

My mum and pops were USC football season ticket holders in 1979–80. We went to all the home games at the Coliseum. “Tusk” was unmistakably important to the Trojan halftime shows and the games in general. All the Trojan fans knew it (and even the Bruins knew it) and got pumped up when Traveler the white horse rode out with the song blaring from the band. It was a whole scene for a long time at USC games. I think the Trojan Marching Band angle made “Tusk” the song immortal in Los Angeles. Everyone knew it. As I said, even my parents knew it. One afternoon, they played it for a friend, another doctor, and she bought the album. I doubt she listened or liked the rest of the album much, but “Tusk” was her longtime musical gimmick. She joined us at many a Trojan football game, where Tusk was the immediate signal for celebration in the stands. It was ecstasy for the crowds, and Fleetwood Mac’s mystique was intertwined in it. I also saw the first incarnation of the marching band play at the Forum in December — this is what Los Angeles was like in the late Seventies! You just can’t separate “Tusk” from Fleetwood Mac in 1979: they were both the same thing (for a time). Album sales are another thing. They indicate that some people just didn’t want the album playing in their car — but they wanted the song at the football games.

When I was very young and first heard TUSK (the single) I was confused and completely enthralled. THIS was the same band that made the previous album I’d heard 3000 times before the age of eight? I loved the drums, the horns, the video...

When I was still young and first played through the TUSK album, I was confused, somewhat deflated, yet oddly intrigued. Very few things struck me as perfectly realized moments of pop but many, many fragments and moments were quite stunning. I quickly realized that was the point—fragmentation and excess were the aesthetic principles of the record. And when I mean excess, it’s as much about the exceeding spareness in Christine and Stevie’s songs as it is about Lindsey’s frenzied experiments. For a band that claimed “less is more” as a motto, they outdid themselves here. “Storms,” “Angel,” “Never Make Me Cry,” “Over and Over” and “Sisters” are treated with deliberate simplification. Only “Sara,” “Brown Eyes,” “ That’s All” and “Beautiful Child” embrace full-scale orchestration—and in those cases it seems as if this is to prove a point: we CAN do it, but we choose not to most of the time.

Case in point: One can’t help but think “What would ‘Never Forget’ sound like if it were arranged and recorded in the manner of “Don’t Stop” or “YMLF?” It has all the trappings of a hit but is stripped of all that “cream on top” (Mick’s phrase) that carried a good song into the top ten. The decision to record crude and/or bare arrangements of these songs with such precision is one of TUSK’s primary head scratchers. It’s an experiment that initially seemed to fail but over time reveals itself as evidence of Lindsey’s genius. One of the reasons TUSK ages so well is because the songs do not succumb to stock-in-trade treatments that would render the songs bland decades later. Instead, we get these well-crafted folk-rock songs immortalized through eerie reverb and aggressive spareness. It’s the aural equivalent of certain scenes from Kubrick’s “2001.”

So you're referring to Tango, with the stock in trade, dated treatments?:lol:
Because to me, that's what it is. They no longer sounded like a band...

Actually, yes. TANGO sounds far more dated today than TUSK.

Which is exactly what happened post Tusk (seeking commercial success ahead of the integrity of the music). I like Mirage but even Christine commented how it was not daring at all. Its very safe and very light pop purposely made commercial music because of the backlash to Tusk. After a half decade apart and Mick's bankruptcy, Tango was even less daring than Mirage and most songs did not even sound like Fleetwood Mac. Its sad that we never got another Mac album with these 5 members free of pressure to make the music they want to make. Tusk made the band lose their rock chops. Classic rock stations only play songs from the White Album and Rumours.
There was no way to duplicate the success of Rumours so it would be silly to try. The Eagles are a great example. Hotel California and Rumours were released not far apart. They both were hugely successful selling similar amount of copies and Grammy nominated with multiple hit singles. The Eagles too were under pressure to make Hotel California 2. Their 1979 release The Long Run vs Mac's Tusk took different approaches. The Eagles were attacked for being blase. Disco was dominating the charts and Henley stated the title track was about the long run to see who would really survive and keeping their band together. The Long Run kept a similar formula from Hotel California and The Long Run debuted at #2 the first week and then went to #1 for 9 weeks with the same amount of hit singles. Oddly enough "In the City" was not officially released as a single but was played so much it literally was the 4th hit single from the album. The album sold 9 million copies which was huge but still half of Hotel California. There was a little rebellion in the album (not as much as Tusk of course) in taking swipes at the current disco trends in music in adding songs "The Disco Strangler" and "Those Shoes." The Long Run was actually supposed to be a double album but Henley stated they discovered they did not have enough good material to put out so curtailed that idea while in the studio.
Fleetwood Mac completely changed their sound. I am not sure how one can best describe the sound of Tusk. Everyone would have a different description. Its lots of folk music sounding IMHO. Many of the songs with drums have very awkward and soft beats that are interesting to say the least. I would love a Sisters on the album like its done live and the same with I know I'm not wrong.

The idea of this thread is "what if" And its an interesting question. The Eagles still put out a hugely successful album that few bothered to compare to Hotel California. I still think the Mac could have put out a similar type of album. But Lindsey was being very rebellious and I love Tusk for the music it is. I just hate the fact how the album led to them chasing commercial success more than ever and putting out bubble gum pop. Tusk created the monster that Lindsey tried to kill. When Gold Dust Woman and Storms were recorded, the band was not focusing on "will this get played on the radio?" Will it be a hit single? You cant say the same for Seven Wonders ;)

Excellent comparison of my two favorite bands! :xoxo:
I doubt The Long Run could have ever been a double album. On History of the Eagles, Bill Szymczyk(their producer) says they all showed up to record TLR, without a single finished song to record. And from the studio footage I've seen, they were pretty much coked out of their minds. And they were dicks. Dicks who couldn't stand each other any longer. It was no surprise when they broke up shortly thereafter.

Yes there was tons of Eagles drama but my point remains. Its a valid comparison of both bands Rumours vs Hotel California and Tusk vs The Long Run

The Long Run was originally slated to be a double album. Who knows, maybe when they heard the Mac was doing one they wanted to copy. Henley did an interview in the mid 80s with Musician magazine where he raved about Lindsey and even had him play on his 1984 solo album. He spoke about Lindsey during Tusk working in his bathroom playing on kleenex boxes. As much as he admired the creativity, its something that Henley would not want to do to his sound. This was also the interview where he said there was talk of members of the Mac and Eagles forming a band of their own.

My point being is the Eagles had no problems or issues using their same winning formula for the follow up to their huge Hotel California even though they were under the same pressure. No one said the Long Run sucked or was Hotel California 2.

Not arguing the point.

The Eagles were always more about sales, and being somewhat "corporate rock" than FM. On FM's part, thanks to ONE person, Lindsey.
"Perfection wasn't an accident" - Glenn Frey.
If memory serves, Lindsey's song on Don's album was, "You Can't Make Love". Yes, the disc is in the next room, but I'd have to get up and go look!:D It sounds like Lindsey's guitar playing, but I never could really hear his voice on it.

Ever since $tevie got Lindsey fired, I've been much more into the Eagles. I'm absolutely obsessed with History of the Eagles. I've watched the entire thing probably close to 100 times. And the weird thing is that I think both Henley and Frey are COMPLETE DICKS. Horrible, selfish people. Yet I'm inexplicably drawn!:lol:

I agree that Henley and Frey were ruthless tyrant S.O.B.s
Henley has a soft spot in my heart when he hung up the phone on Stevie when she told him she was marrying her best friend's husband.
However without a doubt, Henley, Felder, and Frey were perfectionists with huge egos.
The writing between Henley and Frey is incredible yet still so underrated.

I think that everyone that ever left the band, left because of Glenn. I think he was horrible, selfish person. I mean, I'm sure they wouldn't have had the success they had without him, but watching behind the scenes footage, I think he was a first class PRICK(even though he mellowed in later years - just like Lindsey). It was HIS way or the highway. I also think he was INCREDIBLY JEALOUS when Don became "the voice" of the Eagles. "It's MY BAND, you dick!!!"

I saw Henley solo several times back in the day. I never saw Glenn solo. What does that tell you?:lol:
Henley's like Christine. I could listen to him sing the phone book.

It's cute how you don't know the record company picks the single. Go twirl around your apartment now.