Billboard Online
Nov 19, 2015
by Gary Graff

Lindsey Buckingham has long told the story of reaction inside and around Fleetwood Mac when 1979’s Tusk fell far short of sales for its predecessor, Rumours. “The conventional wisdom was, ‘You blew it,'” Buckingham recalls with a laugh. “A lot of people were pissed off at me for that.”

Not so now.

The often experimental Tusk — which will be celebrated with a deluxe edition box set on Dec. 4 — may not have lived up to Rumours​’ diamond-certified status, but it was still a double-platinum release that hit No. 1 in the U.K. and No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and spawned a pair of top 10 hits in “Tusk” and “Sara.” More importantly it became a sonic inspiration (and has been cited as such) for many that followed and, in Buckingham’s mind, gave Fleetwood Mac a broader artistic license that his bandmates would later appreciate.

“For me, being sort of the culprit behind that particular album, it was done in a way to undermine just sort of following the formula of doing Rumours 2 and Rumours 3, which is kind of the business model Warner Bros. would have liked us to follow,” Buckingham tells Billboard. “We really were poised to make Rumours 2, and that could’ve been the beginning of kind of painting yourself into a corner in terms of living up to the labels that were being placed on you as a band. You know, there have been several occasions during the course of Fleetwood Mac over the years where we’ve had to undermine whatever the business axioms might be to sort of keep aspiring as an artist in the long term, and the Tusk album was one of those times.”  Continue reading Lindsey Buckingham on Fleetwood Mac’s Risk-Taking Classic Album ‘Tusk’ | Billboard →