[face of glass]

Originally posted by shackin'up
well of course it's going well with the lyrics, and i don't think he's serious on the content here, but he definately sound and looks deadserious in the delivery here. It's not that he's taking much distance ....

True. I believe he has a very strong male aggression/dominance side in him and that’s why he looks dead serious in there. But it’s not like he could not be intentionally exaggerating or smirking at himself in there just a little.

Originally posted by snwriter
I choose to believe the reality that Christine and Stevie are great songwriters, often better than Lindsey.

But LB isn’t necessarily often focusing on the songwriting itself. For the record: I think that in terms of “classic” songwriting (the school of Tin Pan Alley and the Beatles etc.) Chris beats Stevie and Lindsey easily. But then again SN and LB need not be as great in that area because Stevie covers her weaknesses up in performance while Lindsey puts his focus on the overall arrangement. He isn’t just speaking through the songwriting in there, he’s speaking to us through his guitars and every little bit of music he puts to the track.

Originally posted by snwriter
and that they have a major say in what THEIR songs sound (ed) like.

That I agree with. But I certainly don’t think that neither of them suggested Lindsey what to play because they are unable to imitate his playing skills. It’s Buckingham’s interpretation that seeps through in the end and he said a lot in all of the Tusk songs.

Originally posted by snwriter
"Brown Eyes" is highly reminiscent of the Peter Green-era of FM, it sounds very much like "Sun King" off the Beatles' Abbey Road, which John Lennon said was very influenced by the then current Fleetwood Mac.

Really? I don’t hear that; all I hear is the similarity between “Albatross” and “Sun King”. And Chris wasn’t a band member yet during the first success run of “Albatross”. That song (which is supposedly Shadows-influenced) sounds almost like an anomaly in the FM catalogue.

For me the main focus in the arrangement of “Brown Eyes” are Lindsey’s guitar parts and the vocal harmonies. Those harmonies have gone through Buckingham’s hands in the mixing board. You could state that Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut helped there too, but the overall vision to me seems to be Lindsey’s. There’s this quote from the sessions. I’m paraphrasing Sodascouts but here goes:

Originally posted by sodascouts
I remember Richard Dashut saying that for Tusk, they would get the song to something that sounded terrific and then Lindsey would say "Great, now let's turn all the knobs the other way and do the exact opposite." He wasn't going for what sounded terrific, he was going for what sounded different.

Now of course I partially disagree with what she wrote but you get the point, I hope.

It’s Buckingham’s show all along. If you feel the repetitive piano riff of “Sara” or “Beautiful Child” represents a unique artistic vision then fine. For me it sounds like Stevie’s demos, although a bit more polished. The magic comes in when those guitars and the voice treatments enter the track. It isn’t just Stevie’s and Chris’ personality expressed in there, it’s Lindsey’s too. His guitar speaks through these and offers other points of view to the topic. He supports the ladies all the way on Tusk.

Originally posted by snwriter
It's also well-documented that both Christine and Stevie resented the "credit" Lindsey kept taking for their songs during his interviews of the late '80s and early '90s.

That I believe is just the band members’ unwillingness to attest much weight to Lindsey’s contributions. They still had a band to run and they still wanted to be successful; they didn’t want to admit that a large part of it may have come from a member who left them under bitter circumstances. It wasn’t yet the time to speak what they might have felt, it was time to colour it a little.