Lindsey's songs on Tusk
 

I was wondering if anyone could tell me whether the other members of the Mac play on any of Lindsey's Tusk songs ("The Ledge," "Walk a Thin Line," etc.). I had heard that he did everything himself in his home studio. Is he or Mick playing the drums? Is Stevie doing some of the vocals on "The Ledge"?

Thanks for whatever help you can give.

--Frank

I can at least say with a fair amount of certainty that John plays bass on "Save Me a Place" and Mick plays drums on "Walk a Thin Line", because there's clips of those two being worked on in the studio on the Tusk documentary. But, if I recall correctly, Lindsey also played his own drums on something and for some reason in my mind I'm thinking THAT was "Walk a Thin Line", so I'm clearly no help. And as for the other songs, I have no clue one way or the other!

I do remember an interview where Mick talked about Lindsey coming to him with the idea of laying down his own tracks at home and Mick told him "well, you're in a BAND, Lindsey..." but then warmed up to the idea. I can't imagine going up to the drummer of the band you're in and telling him that you want to play your own drums on your tracks and actually thinking he'd be fine and dandy about that.

I will say that while I love Lindsey's songs on Tusk and some are my favorites of his songs, the lack of Chris/Stevie vocals on the majority of them is sort of sad and it'd be interesting to hear what he could have done with them if he had incorporated them in a little more.

I think Stevie's vocals are pretty apparent on 'The Ledge', especially the ending when she hold the "really all abouuuuuuttt..." for a few nano-seconds.
I'm also feeling her layered into 'That's Enough For Me' somewhere, maybe in the "yeah! yeah! yeah! yeah! uhhhh huhhhhh whoaaaahhhh!" part.

Thanks. That was helpful. I remember reading in the Carol Ann Harris biography that Lindsey wanted to play absolutely everything on his songs and that he had a heated conversation with Mick about it. But then she also writes something about Lindsey lecturing Mick and John on how to play their instruments while they were recording Tusk. Wow!

BTW, how does one get ahold of the Tusk doc you refer to?

Best,
Frank

On some of his songs, the entire band plays, on others it's him and only a partial band. For instance, he plays piano on WMYTYO. He and Mick worked on that tune together.

I hear he did some of the drumming, not sure which songs...

I've always had a problem distinguishing actual Stevie from Lindsey altering his own voice to that point where it sounds a lot like Stevie's, but I definitely always thought it was the latter on this song. I always thought it was Lindsey having fun layering his own voice over itself.

For some reason I remember an interview with Stevie, perhaps from Melbourne, where she goes through and introduces a bunch of songs from Tusk. I believe she says that The Ledge was all Lindsey. (She also talks about how Christine did NOT like That's Enough for Me)

I could be wrong there, I'll have to see if I can find my copy of that interview....

~Mic.

The details -- even those from Lindsey himself -- have sometimes been contradictory. Past threads on the Ledge have done a good job of marshaling much of the known evidence. Can anybody track that down with a search?

Also, see Madness Fades for some details (sometimes ambiguous) about individual songs, like "The Ledge":
http://www.madnessfades.net/TheLedge.htm

or about the album as a whole:
http://www.madnessfades.net/Tusk!.htm

Stevie said about the Ledge that,

I can't even explain it to you. He recorded it in his kitchen. Alot of his stuff was recorded in the kitchen. But he wanted to do his thing and he did it. But its very interesting and its good. I love it. It took me awhile to understand it and I know him well, but now I understand it and its real different.

And about That's Enough for Me:

It has been "that's enough for me" all through the album! I like it now. It's raucous too. Christine hates it. She will very laughingly look Lindsey straight in the eyes and say, "I hate that song" and we all just die laughing because Christine can say it. She's the one person that can walk in and say "You look so bad today, you should go home" and you won't feel bad. You'll just go home and change and come back. But she can do it. She is the one person that go up to any of us and tell us that she thinks what we are doing is totally off base. Christine has accepted it, she says she will have nothing to do with it on stage. We'll all go have a drink.

Lindsey recorded the major part of his songs alone, but took those recordings to the band. And he knew exactly how he wanted his songs to sound. WMYTYTO is 100% drummed by Mick-an incredible job that is. So is Tusk.
I bet that there's been more rerecording with Mick and John on LB's tracks.

See, I always thought all the vocal tracks were Lindsey, with some sped up to sound like Stevie's voice. A precursor to the uh-aah stuff in Big Love.