TUSK questions
 

Hi Everybody!

I'm writing a piece on the making of Tusk (my favorite album of all time, btw) for CREEM magazine and I just have a few questions for you knowledgeable ledgers.

1) This may seem silly, but when did they name the album Tusk? 1978 OR 1979? the story opens with Stevie's reaction to the name and threatening to quit the band.

2) are there any articles/interviews i should read that i might not know about? i've scoured the internet (thanks blue letter!) and have all the fleetwood mac books, but is there anything you can recommend?

3) any weird or rare trivia you guys know about the making of this album? (aside from kleenex boxes and bathrooms, of course.)

your help is very very much appreciated. i hope that by reaching out to the community, i can make this the truly definitive "making of tusk!"

thanks!!

CREEM is still around? I should pull out my old issues and see if I have some from the Tusk era and see what those articles and interviews said about the album.

I think they named it in 1979. Mick's book doesn't mention the exact date, but he tells about the song and Stevie's reaction:

By early 1979, many of the songs for the new album had been dreamed up and were in various states of production. Our writers were prolific, and very early on we realized we had a lot more good songs than we could fit on a single album. I wanted to make a statement too, some special contribution that would reflect my vision of what Fleetwood Mac was all about, a sense of grandeur with intimacy, if you will. That was the vision that came together in the aural collage called "Tusk."
It started as a riff we used to play when we took the stage and the lights went off and we were being announced, right before our first number.....

....That's how "Tusk" was recorded. The title refers to a jocular term of affection for the Male Member: old habits die hard in Fleetwood Mac. (When Stevie heard that we had decided to name the album Tusk, she threatened to quit the band in revulsion. But I chose to ignore her and nothing ever came of it.)

Mick tells about his contribution, but the Tusk song is a Lindsey's, isn't it? I never get it. How did Mick contribute? Or why they didn't include Mick as a co-writer?

And you know, I can't think of a better quote to describe this magnificent album.

My guess would be 1979. These guys usually named albums in the 11th hour.

Track down the reviews that Steve Simels & Noel Coppage wrote in High Fidelity & Stereo Review.

The Los Angeles Times used to be a company-town paper, & its Pop Eye section was busy publishing tidbits of information during the album's production every Sunday.

Don't forget to read the Q&A features with people who were involved, like Dashut & Caillat, on the Penguin.

thanks guys! this really helps. and yes, CREEM is relaunching the magazine.