Prolific band

bwboy · #1 08-26-2023, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Villavic

Probably the members were frustrated with Lindsey because they felt he went too far, making Tusk too different from Rumours, but I'd blame on all 5 members about accepting Mick as manager of the Tusk tour. Who chooses someone with no experience as a manager? And to top it off an addict.

Less man a month after the end of the Tusk tour, I realized I was in trouble with the rest of the band. By this time, other managers began to enter the picture. John, Chris, and I were still with Mickey Shapiro, but Stevie had signed with the tough industry mogul Irving Azoff, who managed the Eagles at the time, to represent her with regard to her looming solo career. Lindsey was with somebody else.

The sh** hit the fan at a business meeting held to overview the Tusk tour with reference to the European leg. This turned into a vitriolic review of my behavior and management skills. The basic complaint, of course, was that we'd been on the road for eight months and hadn't made much money.

The accountant, meanwhile, was looking over the books and frowning. Impressive amounts of cash were missing, having been spent on various extravagances. The accountants and lawyers were not used to this. My turn came a bit later. It was a very shifty scenario. The lawyers didn't say we had done anything wrong, but it was bordering on that. There was an unspoken implication that money was missing. We felt unjustly accused by ignorant laymen. It was most unpleasant. Granted, some kind of split was inevitable, but it was real ugly the way it was done. It was a big meeting. Everybody was there, and all the recriminations of the past eighteen months were played out. We had been pilloried for making the most expensive record in history. Tusk had only gone to number three, where Rumours had been number one. We made no money on tour. Some money was unaccounted for. The end result was that I was off the throne. It was the democratisation of Fleetwood Mac. Ever since, we've had review by committee managers, lawyers, business managers. The Gang of Four.

I was very hurt by all this. I walked outside into my garden and just sat for a long time. Chris, John, Stevie, and Lindsey tried to make it clear that they weren't mad at me, that they considered me to have acted like an over-indulgent father. But I felt humiliated and flogged in front of my community. It was horrible. If that's what they want to do, I thought, Duck it. At that point there wasn't going to be much to manage anyway, since we were all about to devolve into solo projects for a few years.

If I have to choose who pilots the plane I will fly on, I choose the best professional, not the most frequen flyer. This failur was responsiblity of the whole band.

Thanks for the quotes from Mick’s book. I’ve personally thought there was more to the story. I mean, several times in that passage Mick alluded to money missing. I know he says it was because of the extravagant traveling they were doing, but reading between the lines, it just seems like maybe Mick was caught with his hand in the cookie jar a couple of times, and he blamed it on the tour luxuries but couldn’t prove it with the accountants. I love it when he said accountants can’t understand that sort of thing LOL. No Mick, but they can understands receipts… or lack of receipts, for that matter.

Sounds like Mick had been managing FM since before Lindsey and Stevie joined, and it wasn’t until after the Tusk tour that a problem was noticed, so I can see why, after the White Album and Rumours tours went so well, they would have had no problem with Mick continuing in that role.

The book by Ken Caillat about the making of Tusk pretty much says right in the first chapter the rest of FM was held hostage to Lindsey’s demands for Tusk, for fear that if they said no to anything that he would quit. Like Lindsey performing some of his songs without the rest of the band, for instance.

UnwindedDreams · #2 08-26-2023, 02:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bwboy

The book by Ken Caillat about the making of Tusk pretty much says right in the first chapter the rest of FM was held hostage to Lindsey’s demands for Tusk, for fear that if they said no to anything that he would quit. Like Lindsey performing some of his songs without the rest of the band, for instance.

And nowadays, Mick says Tusk is his favorite album as well as Then Play On.

The Chain · #3 08-26-2023, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnwindedDreams

And nowadays, Mick says Tusk is his favorite album as well as Then Play On.

Christine recently as well, if I’m remembering correctly.

bwboy · #4 08-26-2023, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnwindedDreams

And nowadays, Mick says Tusk is his favorite album as well as Then Play On.

I wonder which album will be his favorite in another 40 years?

Seriously, I hated Tusk when it first came out, but I appreciate it a lot more now. One reason I’ve come to like it more is because there were so many years in between FM albums, eventually I went back to Tusk just because I wanted to listen to ‘new’ FM music. I went from liking only 3 songs in 1980 (Tusk, What Makes You Think You’re the One, and That’s All For Everyone) to, maybe in 1995, coming to appreciate Storms, Beautiful Child, and Think About Me) to I think the 2009 tour where they sang I Know I’m Not Wrong, where I finally came to appreciate that song, as well as Christine’s. But it took a really long time… and I was a fan! So I certainly understand why most of America rejected Tusk.

BLY · #5 08-26-2023, 04:33 PM

I remember when Tusk was released. It definitely separated the true fans of the music and the “band wagon fans” who liked the popular bands at the time. I thought releasing Tusk was genius at the time following up from Rumours and with Tusk as the lead single…I Loved it!

UnwindedDreams · #6 08-26-2023, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bwboy

I wonder which album will be his favorite in another 40 years?

When Mick is 115, I say it'll be Behind The Mask

bwboy · #7 08-26-2023, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UnwindedDreams

When Mick is 115, I say it'll be Behind The Mask

Maybe then we could get a Deluxe Edition AND a tour with the BTM gang, too!

bwboy · #8 08-26-2023, 05:30 PM

I looked online for reviews of Tusk from 1979-1980, but could only find one by Rolling Stone, which was extremely positive. Other sites had snippets of reviews, but it appears pretty divided then. Adjectives included random, abrasive, lo-fi, and new-wave.

According to Wikipedia, Mick said Then Play On is his favorite FM album, Tusk is his second favorite.

Christine: “Lindsey had already decided that he wanted to make a solo record. In order to keep him in the fold we all said ‘Well look, let him do his experimenting and incorporate it in the album somehow.’”

There is some confusion about sales for Tusk; most articles say it eventually sold 4 million copies, but online sources say it sold 2 million in America and 4 worldwide, which is shocking, really.

It was nominated for only one Grammy, for ‘best packaging’ or something to that effect.

The record company refused to build a new studio for FM, apparently feeling there were several to choose from, so the rest of the band agreed to let Lindsey have a new studio built out of their own pockets. Ironically, Lindsey still recorded 3 of his songs alone in his home, rather than the studio they had just paid 1.4 million to have built (not just one million).

Interesting stuff!

Macfan4life · #9 08-26-2023, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bwboy

I looked online for reviews of Tusk from 1979-1980, but could only find one by Rolling Stone, which was extremely positive. Other sites had snippets of reviews, but it appears pretty divided then. Adjectives included random, abrasive, lo-fi, and new-wave.

According to Wikipedia, Mick said Then Play On is his favorite FM album, Tusk is his second favorite.

Christine: “Lindsey had already decided that he wanted to make a solo record. In order to keep him in the fold we all said ‘Well look, let him do his experimenting and incorporate it in the album somehow.’”

There is some confusion about sales for Tusk; most articles say it eventually sold 4 million copies, but online sources say it sold 2 million in America and 4 worldwide, which is shocking, really.

It was nominated for only one Grammy, for ‘best packaging’ or something to that effect.

The record company refused to build a new studio for FM, apparently feeling there were several to choose from, so the rest of the band agreed to let Lindsey have a new studio built out of their own pockets. Ironically, Lindsey still recorded 3 of his songs alone in his home, rather than the studio they had just paid 1.4 million to have built (not just one million).

Interesting stuff!

Tusk wasn’t even close to a “flop” in the broader commercial sense, topping the U.K. charts and landing at Number Four in the U.S. — not a bad return on investment when you consider the amount of bathroom recording involved. But Warner Brothers certainly didn’t do the band any favors on the promo side, playing the double LP in full one day before its release date via the Westwood One radio network.

“That was ridiculous, and that was Warner Brothers’ fault,” Fleetwood told Discoveries in 2004. “I said, ‘I don’t think you should be doing this,’ and they said, ‘Oh no, it’s all part of a new thing, friendly to radio.’ But there are people with tape machines out there. And they played the whole album! I should have stopped it. But they’d convinced me it was part of a new, cutting-edge marketing thing. Who knows how much damage it did? To me it was like a milestone of stupidity, and rolling the dice unnecessarily. But the album survives.”
It also didn’t help that the album’s list price was just under $16, a lofty price for the late Seventies. (Calculated for inflation, that’s around $57 in 2020 terms.)

Tusk changed the band forever. It was creative. It was experimental. Even though it was not a flop, Warner believed it was a flop because it sold so much less than Rumours. It changed the band forever. Tusk sort of killed the band on rock stations. They were not playing Tusk or Sara. Think About Me got airplay though. The over correction from Tusk led to the music box Mirage and then the even more synth pop Tango. While Tusk was not about chasing commercial success. Tusk made the band start chasing commercial success. Classic rock stations are still a staple in every city and they only Fleetwood Mac they play are from the White album and Rumours. There was talk on a local rock radio show a few months ago and the DJ was saying that Fleetwood Mac became a pop band in the 80s.