Lindsey reacts to Tusk
 

I enjoy these but I think I may not watch them anymore. Lindsey does not remember major songs or issues in his life. Last year Lindsey said he had no memory of turning all the dials in one direction as quoted in Ken's book. Then Lindsey cannot remember what his signature concert staple "I'm so afraid" is about. He guessed it was about his break up with Stevie except it was written years before that. Tusk is his baby which is so proud of yet he has no memory of what Tusk means or why the song is called Tusk.

***Sigh***
Turn the page

I am fascinated with this era of the band because it was like nothing before. Its the album where they were superstars and their egos were in full bloom. All of their dating life was off the charts and while Rumours had them breaking up, the Tusk era is when they started to get on each other's nerves. More drugs than Rumours. I loved hearing Stevie talk about how recording Tusk was like nothing she had experienced before. The studio became this Tusk like dark cave where they spent a good chunk of a year. Christine was with Dennis. Mick dumped Stevie. Stevie was dating lots of guys including one of the sound engineers which pissed off Lindsey. It was the end of an era too. Last album before the 1980s and the solo careers. People like to talk about the craziness of the Rumours recording but Tusk said hold my beer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X9CPGWU_dc

I agree. He often likes to answer I don’t know. Ok, he may not remember John was sailing in the ocean (according to Mick) the day at the stadium. But doesn’t he know why the name Tusk? Really? Even if it was Mick’s idea, I can’t believe he doesn’t remember. Did he really remember it and was he ashamed to talk about it? I don't think so, we're adults and too old for that. I don’t get it, pretty weird.


The title refers to a jocular term of affection for the male member: old habits die hard in Fleetwood Mac.
Obviously, Mick was referring to Harold, although if it was Lindsey who named the song, I don't know if it had any relation to that... toy.

Of all things not to remember. The album he is most proud of and had the lead single off the album. Glad he remembered it was Mick's idea to add a marching band. He does not even remember the origins of the jam. Is it not how the band would warm up and eventually morphed into Tusk? I swear you can learn more about Tusk from Stevie than Lindsey and that is crazy!


In Mick's book he wrote that Stevie threatened to leave the band if the album was called Tusk.

Lastly, they both watched the entire Tusk video and no comments on Stevie's baton twirling? SMH

I always figured that a lot of their confusion stems from the fact that they don't obsess over dates, songs, quotes and details like we as fans have done, they don't dig for the information and keep it in their brains like a little treasure. For them, it was something that happened, possibly while they were drunk or stoned lol, they moved on and it's questionable as to whether it stuck in the brain or not. And of course they are getting older on top of that.

It's frustrating that they don't remember more, but not particularly surprising.In my opinion.

--Lis

I think he didn’t want to say to his son why Tusk was called Tusk.
What the word Tusk actually referred to in their, Fleetwood Mac’s context..

“Oh yes, we called this song, and Album btw, after the nickname for Mick’s d*ck”

I’m sure his son knows anyway.

I doubt it. Do we think his son has studied every word that ever came out of their mouths, like we do? Unlikely, IMO.

You’re probably right…. would his kids want to know anyway..
Unless it came up as a joke round the Sunday dinner table.:laugh::laugh:

I know Mick's book is not 100% reliable, but it's more fun than "I don't know!" :laugh:

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. It was our way of having a live sound check so Richard Dashut could set his levels. It was just a little riff that Lindsey started playing one night, and I'm tapping my drums. We used to play it in the dark for less than a minute every night. When we began the new album we tried doing something with it, but the idea was scrapped. Months and months went by, but that riff just would not leave my head. One night Richard Dashut assembled a twenty-second tape loop of this four-bar riff. A bunch of us physically held the tape loop aloft in the studio so it wouldn't sag as we dubbed it from one twenty-four-track recorder to another. Then we sped it up, I did some overdubs, and we had a
basic track.

The next day I was at home, thinking about "the rift," and my memory returned to my visit to Barfleur in Normandy the previous summer.

One Sunday morning I had been awakened (with a serious hangover) by the raucous music of the village brass band, which was circling through the town blaring away in honor of the festival of the local saint. I tried to get back to sleep after the band had passed, to no avail. Just when I thought they had stopped for half an hour, back they came roaring through the village again. It became clear there was to be no relief, so I got up and opened the shutters onto a wonderful scene by
Brueghel: old peasants with bloodshot noses, young women garbed in colorful local costume, kids running around, drunks staggering after the band, the village all garlanded and festooned, everyone having a grand time a la fe^te.

Now, back in Los Angeles, I had a brainstorm. What was music all about anyway? Here was this brass band that was the catalyst for the village, bringing old and young together, playing and laughing. Why not try to recreate this ambience at Fleetwood Mac shows, with local brass bands, maybe from the high schools, playing "the riff" at every stop on the tour? We could bring the intimacy of the village fete with us as we traveled around the world.

That, in any event, was the basic idea. One day in the studio I volunteered to pay for a marching band to record this riff. In a typical burst of grandiosity, I said I wanted to go for an immense wall of sound, that I wanted to record the band in Dodger Stadium. Silence. They looked at me as if I were mad. Someone murmured that this idea was a little off the wall. Dark mutterings that old Fleetwood had gone round the bend on this one. Then Judy Wong, bless her, said she knew someone at Dodger Stadium.

Did you find the part where Mick says Stevie threatened to leave the band over the title "Tusk."?
The idea was crazy especially with a marching band and Dodger Stadium. I believe Mick also said he wanted to bring a local band in each city they toured in to play Tusk with them. It's just would be impossible which is why it did not happen. Its drugs, its experimental, and part insanity.
When Lindsey's son brought up the crowd noise at the beginning I wish Lindsey clarified like where it came from and why it was put in.
If you remember Mick lived out a fantasy of smoking a joint in the dugout of Dodger Stadium. I think if Lindsey really did remember he would have told his son. I see him authentic as not remembering and his son really wanting to know. His kids provoke him, make fun of him, and sometimes ask good questions.

Yes. Also the explanation of John's absence. I guess they learned about the whale episode after the Dodger day. I would remember if that happened to a friend, but perhaps Lindsey wouldn't connect that to the day of filming at the stadium. Unlikely, but not impossible.

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.

Incidentally, the film that documents this Dodger Stadium event shows only the fully costumed marching band and four members of Fleetwood Mac. Iohn McVie is represented by a life-sized photo of himself mounted on board, which l-dutifully carried around under my arm as we changed location around the ballpark. This was because the studio-loathing McVie had played his bass parts early in the process, and then set sail in the broad blue Pacific. He set out for Hawaii with three friends on his ketch; none of the four sailors could use a sextant. Following th e jet contrails, they made a perfect landfall straight into the channel at Maui. While we were actually recording at the stadium, John and eight other lads headed for Tahiti, thirty-five days at sea. One clear night, stars you could read by, shooting stars everywhere, total peace and quiet on the smooth downwind run, dolphins cruising alongside... suddenly the whole boat tipped sickeningly. Twenty-eight tons, almost keeled over. In the cabin people were on the floor, smashed crockery everywhere. They'd been rammed by a whale! At Tahiti the boat was hauled and they found a huge ding in the transom. Fleetwood Mac had almost lost Mr. McVie.

Imagine all the drama in the studio with Stevie threatening to leave the band in back to back albums. She threatened to walk if the shacking up line stayed for Rumours and threatened to walk if the album was called Tusk. And this is stuff we know so imagine the times and things we don't know.
Imagine if they said, ok bye!

Did she? I read in several sources she was very upset, it was torturous to sing it live, there was conflict, etc. but can't remember she threatened to leave the band because of that line.

I only remember that she threatened to leave over the name Tusk. I think she just hated the shackin' up line, because it exposed who she really was.

I think it’s probably a combination of things mentioned.

I think it’s clear we are seeing some ‘age’ issues. But also LB has always been pretty PG in interviews for years. In addition he probably isn’t aware of some of the details anyway.

I’m sure he’s well aware where the basic sonic parts of the track came from, but didn’t understand that was the question, I think he was locked in on the name, and he wasn’t going to say that online.

Lindsey has never been a fan of the ‘tell all’ aspect of things. I think he enjoys showing his kids this stuff which they seem to have very little knowledge of…which blows my mind.

You have access to the book. For some reason I remember from one of his books that Stevie threw down the gauntlet about that verse. She protested so much to threaten to leave the band. I forget how Mick got her to calm down.
Please enlighten me