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Fleetwood Mac\u2019s 12th album is both demented and debonair, familiar and foreign \u2014 a sprawling double LP that, like the Beatles\u2019 White Album before it, reveled in its own messiness, jumbling together the work of three distinct songwriters. Singer Stevie Nicks and keyboardist Christine McVie carried the commercial weight on Tusk,<\/em> penning playful pop grooves (the latter\u2019s \u201cThink About Me\u201d) and stormy rockers (the former\u2019s \u201cSisters of the Moon\u201d) that massaged the same sweet spot as their previous record, the mega-platinum 1977 masterwork Rumours<\/em>. <\/span><\/p>\n But Lindsey Buckingham was unwilling to repeat himself. Savoring the edgier modern sounds of New Wave and punk, the singer-guitarist prepared to march into the unknown <\/span>\u2014 whether or not his bandmates were interested in the journey. That friction ultimately defines Tusk<\/em>, the band\u2019s fractured masterpiece.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe explosion of the punk movement had changed the musical landscape, and the popular conception was that bands like ours, Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Elton John and everyone else from our era, were a bunch of dinosaurs who\u2019d lost touch with the real world,\u201d drummer Mick Fleetwood wrote in his 2014 autobiography, Then Play On<\/em>. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t true, of course \u2014 we were in touch and aware of all those changes in culture, Lindsey most of all. He was intrigued by punk bands like the Clash and lots of New Wave artists such as Talking Heads and Laurie Anderson, and he wanted to follow that muse creatively. The issue for him was whether or not he was going to be able to do that with the rest of us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n They did, of course, in the most Fleetwood Mac way possible: with lots of drama and loads of cocaine. And they wound up with 20 songs that showcased each facet of their style \u2014 from the twangy, galloping mania of \u201cThat\u2019s Enough for Me\u201d (which Buckingham once described as \u201crockabilly on acid\u201d) to the title track\u2019s brassy, percussive chaos.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think\u00a0Tusk<\/i> is a spectacular record,\u201d Nicks said in the liner notes<\/a> to the album\u2019s 2015 reissue. \u201c<\/span>We were all down with getting heavy, but Lindsey was really trying to make it weirder and heavier than any of us were able to comprehend. But we went along. We followed him up that mountain!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In honor of Tusk<\/em>\u2018s 40th anniversary, here are 10 things you may not know about the band\u2019s most outrageous LP.<\/p>\n 1. Fleetwood Mac recorded the bulk of Tusk<\/em> in their own space at L.A.\u2019s Village Recorder, Studio D, which they had built using some of their advance album royalties. They eventually racked up more than $1 million in costs, the first LP to ever cross that threshold. Given their collective lack of self-control, they should have known that their plan wouldn\u2019t work out. The band transformed Studio D into their own weird, expensive oasis \u2014 ordering fancy lobster dinners and lavishly decorating vocal booths. \u201cWhen we were locked up in Studio D for a year \u2014 with the shrunken heads and leis and Polaroids and velvet pillows and saris and sitars and all kinds of wild and crazy instruments and the tusks on the console, like living in an African burial ground \u2014 it was heavy, intense heavy,\u201d Nicks said in the<\/span> reissue liner notes.<\/span><\/p>\n Christine McVie called the excess \u201cquite absurd\u201d in a 2015 Uncut<\/em><\/a>\u00a0interview. \u201cThe studio contract rider for refreshments was like a telephone directory,\u201d she said. \u201cExotic food delivered to the studio, crates of champagne. And it had to be the best, with no thought of what it cost. Stupid. Really stupid. Somebody once said that with the money we spent on champagne on one night, they could have made an entire album. And it\u2019s probably true.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 2.\u00a0Buckingham demoed several of his songs at home before bringing them to the band. When he got to the studio, he lobbied for \u2014 and received \u2014 a replica of his personal bathroom in order to capture the \u201camazing sound\u201d he was churning up. \u201cWhat I\u2019m basically trying to do is take a track that we cut in the studio which has very, very dry sounds on it \u2014 no ambience, no echo at all \u2014 and selectively, say, take the snare drums and vocals, run them through these speakers [and] mic the bathroom, which is right across the hall, which has an amazing sound: 1927 bathrooms, believe me \u2014 they\u2019re rock & roll all the way,\u201d he said in studio footage from the Tusk<\/em> era. \u201c[I] mic what\u2019s being recorded in there and record it back on some empty tracks so that the whole song takes on a much more atmospheric sort of feel to it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In the same clip, Fleetwood argues that Buckingham\u2019s home-to-studio process marked the \u201cpeak\u201d of the guitarist\u2019s \u201ccreative smarts.\u201d Given the end product, it\u2019s hard to argue: The guitarist was willing to take risks, even if that meant dangling a microphone precariously close to a toilet.<\/span><\/p>\n 3. Even when he entered the studio, Buckingham experimented restlessly with recording techniques \u2014 often to the annoyance of others. \u201cI remember Lindsey used to make such a horrible sound,\u201d engineer and co-producer Ken Caillat told me for 2018\u2019s Fleetwood Mac <\/i>FAQ,<\/em> noting how Buckingham had entered the studio with chopped-down hair and layered make-up on his face. \u201cHe would physically make me distort the guitar so that it sounded like fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. I remember when he was recording \u2018Not That Funny,\u2019 he insisted he wanted a really weird-sounding vocal, so he made us tape a microphone to a tile floor, and he was doing a push-up over the microphone, singing, \u2018Not \u2014 that \u2014 funny \u2014 is \u2014 it?!\u2019 Anything to make it weirder was better on his songs.\u201d (Evidence of the push-up technique survives \u2014 in one scene from the previous clip, Buckingham coos out \u201cooh-ahh\u201d vocals into the floor.)<\/span><\/p>\n Elsewhere, Buckingham messed around with playback speeds, tuned down his guitar to bass range \u2014 the trashy guitar sound on his ramshackle cowpunk ditty \u201cThe Ledge\u201d \u2014 and, with Fleetwood, banged around on random junk for percussion sounds (on the title track, he and Fleetwood utilize lamb chops and a Kleenex box, respectively). <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was losing a great deal of myself,\u201d Buckingham\u00a0told Mojo<\/i>.\u00a0\u201cMy thought was, let\u2019s subvert the norm. Let\u2019s slow the tape machine down, or speed it up, or put the mike on the bathroom floor and sing and beat on, uh, a Kleenex box! My mind was racing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 4. Nicks\u2019 \u201cSara\u201d was inspired in part by an unborn child that resulted from an affair with the Eagles\u2019 Don Henley. The track caused some serious issues in the studio. The song\u2019s elegant album version originated from Nicks\u2019 monstrous home demo, which featured several verses that never made it to the final LP. \u201cI played it for J.D. [Souther] and Don Henley, and they both said, \u2018You know what, it\u2019s almost not too long. It\u2019s good in its full 16 minuteness \u2014 it\u2019s got all these great verses and it just kinda travels through the world of your relationships,’\u201d she said in the reissue liner notes. \u201cThey were really complimentary to me and these are two great songwriters. I knew I had to edit it down, but I found it hard to get below seven minutes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She eventually took an ax to the track, chopping it down to the 6:22 album version \u2014 and then the 4:37 single that wound up a minor U.S. hit. And it was just as tough for Fleetwood to find his way into the track, navigating around a guide vocal that included accidental leakage from her rough piano part.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe timing of it was just so individual \u2013 there was no way [Christine McVie] could get in there,\u201d Fleetwood added. \u201cThe vocal and piano were just not able to be separated. But the guys were saying, \u2018The timing is all over the place,\u2019 so I said, \u2018Just let me weasel around and make it okay. If I\u2019m playing brushes there\u2019s no absolutes, no hits, it can just grease around.\u2019 So I spent about 24 hours \u2014 a long, long time \u2014 dropping in phrases, schmoozing my way around her timing, and that\u2019s the track that survived, with Stevie playing piano.\u201d<\/p>\n 5. The rhythmic core of the manic \u201cTusk\u201d originated from a brass band Fleetwood heard in France. \u201cI was in a room in the town square with a horrific hangover, and I was woken by the sound of the local brass band that relentlessly went round and round the square,\u201d he told British GQ<\/em> in 2015. \u201cAs the day went on, they got drunker and drunker. But one thing was apparent. Everyone followed the brass band around the town, and I thought, \u2018What a good idea!’\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The massive, 112-piece USC band tracked their performance live at the L.A.\u2019s Dodger Stadium, and the surreal scene was famously filmed for a promo video.<\/span><\/p>\n 6. Peter Green, Fleetwood Mac\u2019s co-founder and chief songwriter of their early blues era, contributed a brief guitar cameo to Christine McVie\u2019s airy ballad \u201cBrown Eyes.\u201d This studio reunion should have been legendary. Instead, hardly anyone remembers it happened \u2014 or exactly how <\/i>it happened. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI remember [Fleetwood Mac guitar tech] Ray Lindsey was jamming with Peter because Peter wanted to have a guitar player to play with him,\u201d Caillat told me in Fleetwood Mac FAQ<\/i>. \u201cBut that\u2019s not going to make the record. I just remember that I thought it was kinda silly \u2014 the guy who should have stayed there was Lindsey, and then it would have been historic. But he just kinda took off like he didn\u2019t want to be bothered or didn\u2019t want to be shown up. I don\u2019t know. To the point where a guitar player, Ray Lindsey, stoned out of his brain, was playing. I remember [co-producer Richard Dashut] was playing drums by the time Mick was too screwed up to play. It was not even worth pressing the record button.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Green\u2019s contribution amounted to a truncated flurry of notes in the fade-out \u2014 not exactly the dual-guitar fireworks Caillat had hoped for. \u201cI don\u2019t remember Peter Green coming in, so I don\u2019t think I made any judgement on whether to use [his part] or not,\u201d Buckingham said. \u201cMick would ultimately have had the decision to use his playing or not. And it was Christine\u2019s song to do with as she wished.\u201d Fleetwood added, \u201cI can\u2019t recall why we only used Peter at the very end, but it\u2019s great that he\u2019s on here, because it\u2019s Peter and it\u2019s his band.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The session generated more magic than originally thought: A bluesier version of the song, featuring Green\u2019s full performance, appeared on an expanded Tusk <\/em>reissue in 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n 7. Buckingham reportedly consulted the Beach Boys\u2019 then-unreleased Smile<\/em>recordings for \u201cresearch purposes\u201d during the sessions, taking his Brian Wilson obsession to a new level.<\/strong> \u201cPet Sounds<\/em> is the acknowledged masterpiece, and it\u2019s everything it\u2019s said to be, with Brian taking some of the influences he got from Phil Spector and making something all his own,\u201d Buckingham wrote in his Beach Boys dedication for Rolling Stone\u2019<\/em>s 100 Greatest Artists list. \u201cBut even before that there\u2019s Side Two of The Beach Boys Today!,<\/em>which is really just one ballad after another and is for me one of the great sides on a rock album. Those are beautiful numbers \u2014 \u201cPlease Let Me Wonder,\u201d \u201cKiss Me Baby,\u201d \u201cShe Knows Me Too Well,\u201d \u201cIn the Back of My Mind\u201d \u2014 that foreshadow Brian\u2019s angst and show where he\u2019s starting to expose his vulnerability. A lot of what you find later on Pet Sounds<\/em> or Smile,<\/em> you could find in a different form early on.\u201d<\/p>\n By 1979, Wilson had long since abandoned the latter LP, a self-declared \u201cteenage symphony to God\u201d full of ornate, interwoven fragments, and progressive pop pilgrimages. But the unfinished sessions had become mythical among musicians and diehard fans, Buckingham among them. And according to Domenic Priore\u2019s 2005 book, Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson\u2019s Lost Masterpiece,<\/em> the guitarist \u201caccessed\u201d the tapes while recording Tusk,<\/em> perhaps channeling Wilson\u2019s work on two especially dreamy cuts: his own \u201cThat\u2019s All for Everyone\u201d and Nicks\u2019 \u201cBeautiful Child.\u201d<\/p>\n 8. The album was a commercial disappointment, relative to Rumour<\/i>\u2018s blockbuster status. And while the glut of experimental songs contributed to that backslide, the record company\u2019s strange promotional ideas didn\u2019t help. \u201cThat was ridiculous, and that was Warner Brothers\u2019 fault,\u201d Fleetwood told Discoveries<\/em><\/a>in 2004. \u201cI said, \u2018I don\u2019t think you should be doing this,\u2019 and they said, \u2018Oh no, it\u2019s all part of a new thing, friendly to radio.\u2019 But there are people with tape machines out there. And they played the whole album! I should have stopped it. But they\u2019d 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It also didn\u2019t help that the album\u2019s list price was just under $16, a lofty price for the late Seventies. (Calculated for inflation, that\u2019s around $56 in 2019 terms.)<\/span><\/p>\n 9. There are a lot of theories about the album title. Depending on the source, the name was inspired by the African nature photography of Peter Beard (who worked on the surreal collages that adorn the album\u2019s inner packaging), by Fleetwood\u2019s nickname for his own penis, or by genitalia in general. Dashut concurred. \u201cWhat I\u2019m fairly certain of is that it didn\u2019t come from the dick meaning,\u201d he said. \u201cI know we joked about that, but I don\u2019t think we were that frivolous to make that the album title. It was part of the artwork and the overall artistic concept. I\u2019m not sure if any of us knew what it meant.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Larry Vigon, the band\u2019s art director during that period, said it originated from the elephant references in Beard\u2019s artwork. And Beard himself added, succinctly, \u201cThe album was named Tusk<\/em> because of all my photographs with tusks in them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n 10.<\/b><\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/span>Mick Fleetwood re-recorded the Buckingham track \u201cWalk a Thin Line\u201d for his 1981 LP, The Visitor<\/i>, with a cameo from his ex-brother-in-law George Harrison. Luckily, Harrison was also available for the session, and his signature slide-guitar twang adds another dimension to this otherwise snoozy cover. \u201cI really loved the song and wished that I\u2019d written it,\u201d Fleetwood told MusicRadar in 2012. \u201cI approached it with a whole ensemble of African musicians, so as a percussion player, during these recordings, I was, as we say in England, \u2018like a pig in shit.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Fleetwood Mac\u2019s \u2018Rumours\u2019: 10 Things You Didn\u2019t Know | Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Ryan Reed Rolling Stone Online October 11, 2019 How an in-studio bathroom replica, juvenile dick jokes, and a Peter Green guitar cameo informed the band\u2019s sprawling,\u00a0experimental\u00a0follow-up to\u00a0Rumours Fleetwood Mac\u2019s 12th album is both demented and debonair, familiar and foreign \u2014 a sprawling double LP that, like the Beatles\u2019 White Album before it, reveled in … Continue reading Fleetwood Mac\u2019s \u2018Tusk\u2019: 10 Things You Didn\u2019t Know | Rolling Stone<\/span>
\n<\/strong>Ironically, the band entered the Tusk<\/i> sessions with a more frugal mindset. They\u2019d already envisioned recording a double LP, allowing each of their songwriters enough room to stretch out \u2014 but that plan promised financial ruin after the drug-and-drink-fueled sessions for Rumours<\/i>. (The quintet considered thanking their cocaine dealer in that record\u2019s credits before he was killed via gang violence.) The solution: avoid the punch-clock by investing their royalties into a space at the Village Recorder, a state-of-the-art studio that formerly functioned as a Masonic Temple and meditation headquarters of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/b><\/span>Buckingham was eager to experiment on Tusk<\/i>, to move away from the perfect intonation and sleek engineering that defined Rumours<\/i> in favor of the rawness and realness he admired in New Wave and punk. Sticking a microphone in the bathroom was apparently a natural move. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/b><\/span>In contrast to the quintessentially lush, epic-scale production of Nicks\u2019 and Christine McVie\u2019s songs, Buckingham\u2019s Tusk<\/i> tunes are full of harsh tones, jagged arrangements, and vocal performances that feel almost confrontationally haggard. That\u2019s because, by the time he\u2019d entered Studio D, he\u2019d already ripped apart his recording rulebook and set it ablaze. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/b><\/span>Stevie Nicks rarely writes a conventional love song, and \u201cSara\u201d is one of her most complex and mysterious, alluding to romance, friendship, and unrealized motherhood. \u201cHad I married Don and had that baby, and had she been a girl, I would have named her Sara,\u201d she told Billboard<\/em> when asked about her relationship with Henley. \u201cBut there was another woman in my life named Sara, who shortly after that became Mick\u2019s wife, Sara Fleetwood.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/b><\/span>In retrospect \u201cTusk\u201d was an odd choice for a lead single: a nervous, jittery Buckingham sing-along with a mysterious title, an out-of-nowhere drum freakout, and only a handful of lyrics, with the bone-dry tom-toms mixed louder than the whispered vocals. Then there are the interjections of the University of Southern California Trojan Marching Band, whom Fleetwood recruited after encountering a brass band outside his hotel room in the French fishing village of Barfleur. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/b><\/span>Green\u2019s most productive years were behind him by 1979, when he dropped by Studio D for this somewhat random guest spot. He\u2019d been out of Fleetwood Mac for nine years by this point, battling mental illness and problematic drug use, and his solo career had become a commercial afterthought \u2014 a sad tumble into obscurity for a guitarist once anointed the most innovative in England. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nBuckingham worshiped Wilson for approaching pop like high art. You can hear the influence in their mutual love of complex vocal harmony, widescreen production, and avant-garde arrangements.<\/p>\n
\n<\/b><\/span>Tusk<\/i> wasn\u2019t even close to a \u201cflop\u201d in the broader commercial sense, topping the U.K. charts and landing at Number Four in the U.S. \u2014 not a bad return on investment when you consider the amount of bathroom recording involved. But Warner Brothers certainly didn\u2019t 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. <\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/b><\/span>No one seems to agree on the origins of Tusk\u2019<\/em>s mysterious title. Caillat recalled some band members using the tusk as a symbol for \u201cmale prowess\u201d \u2014 an in-joke that he found quite irritating. \u201cI used to get so annoyed when these guys would be talking about it, like, \u2018Get it, \u201cTusk\u201d?’\u201d he told me in Fleetwood Mac FAQ<\/em>. \u201cYeah, I get it. What, are you six years old?\u201d He emphasized that, despite the chatter, the name had \u201cnothing to do with Mick\u2019s penis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/b><\/span>Fleetwood has always banged the drum for Tusk<\/em> over the years, hyping it over its multi-platinum predecessor. (\u201cAlong with [1969\u2019s]\u00a0Then Play On<\/i>, it\u2019s probably my favorite Fleetwood Mac album,\u201d he told Rolling Stone<\/em> in 2016.) So it makes sense that, when assembling the track list for The Visitor<\/em>, he decided to rework this meditative Buckingham cut, along with the band\u2019s early blues anthem \u201cRattlesnake Shake.\u201d The result is breezier and more uptempo, featuring backing vocals from a group of African musicians and a more conventional pop lead vocal from George Hawkins.<\/p>\n