Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac create Tusk, 1979

Fleetwood Mac Create Tusk, 1979

After a huge world tour, Fleetwood Mac reconvened in an expensively customised Los Angeles studio to make the follow-up to the biggest-selling rock record of its time, Rumours. So how did they spend $1 million in the process? And why did it sell a tenth of its predecessor?

Part 1: “Complete Crazy Land”

Stevie Nicks on fractured love lives, crocheting scarves and the record they thought they were going to make.

Stevie Nicks: “Rumours was a perfect, off-the-top-of-our-head thing that turned into a huge-selling, amazing record. It wasn’t planned, but we were not going to make that same record. Nobody wanted to do exactly the same thing each time, that’s just five people being creative. This was different though, this was Lindsey [Buckingham] really making a stand. ‘I’m not going to do a remake of Rumours. I don’t care what anyone says.’ And the rest of us were like, ‘What do you mean? Why would any of us want to do Rumours over, we just want to make a great new record.’ If you want to go down some different pathways, study and research some different genres of music and change it up, everybody was fine with that, but Lindsey was just so adamant about doing something that was the total opposite of the previous records. He announced it so viscerally, so demandingly that I think he scared all of us. We were like, What the ****?

Mick [Fleetwood] wanted to make an African record. He was saying, ‘Let’s do chants and amazing percussion’. I love all that too, so great, and Christine [McVie] too, and John [McVie] would have liked to have been in an all-black blues band, so he was all for that. We were definitely all on the rhythm train. So we set off on this journey, and this record started to unravel itself in the Village and become something extremely different.

I think Tusk is a spectacular record. But when we were making it for that 13 months we were locked up in the Village – we’d completely redecorated this Studio D, we had shrunken heads and leis and Polaroids and velvet pillows and saris and sitars and all kinds of wild and crazy instruments, and these tusks on the console, it was kind of like living on an African burial ground – it was heavy, intense heavy. Sometimes it wasn’t very happily heavy either. 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 quite comprehend. But we went along, we followed him up the mountain.

My affair with Mick went on for the first three months of Tusk. We broke up, my best friend Sara fell in love with him and that just turned into a nightmare. She moved in with Mick overnight and I got a call from Sara’s husband telling me the news. Neither of them bothered to tell me. I went and sat up on the mountain for three hours and watched my life pass before me, then I had to get up the next day, get dressed and go into work, and not ever look at Mick for months. It was horrible, horrible, months of sitting in that room, five days a week, all day long, and all night sometimes, sitting on the couch just watching, writing in my journal and watching some more, and crocheting scarves by the dozen, it was a very strange atmosphere. I’d have been happy to sit it out in the lounge, but I wasn’t gonna not know what was going on, not be a part of the music that was being made in my name. So I was gonna sit there and watch everybody, even though I would have liked to have been anywhere else. I was like, ‘Lindsey with your new ideas be damned. Mick, you be damned also – Christine, John and I will watch and make sure that you guys don’t go completely round the twist and mess up everything for us. We’ll be the keepers of the gate while you guys go to complete and utter crazy land.’

I didn’t understand the title, there was nothing beautiful or elegant about the word ‘tusk’. All it really brought it mind was people stealing ivory. Even then in 1979 you just thought, the rhinos are being poached and the tusks are being stolen and the elephants are being slaughtered and ivory’s being sold on the black market. I don’t recall it being [Mick’s slang term for the male member], that went right over my prudish little head. I wasn’t told that until quite a while after the record was done, and when I did find out I liked the title even less!”

Part 2: “Our Place Of Worship”

Mick Fleetwood on replica bathrooms, par-taying and working ones’ balls off.

“Our lifestyle was well and truly changed by Rumours, riding a wave of personal and musical success beyond any measure. The whole thing was like a Fellini flick. There we all were, busted up as usual, at the height of our success. Stevie and I were very prone to living the rock’n’roll lifestyle, more than anyone else in the band, we were the par-taying group leaders. That was alive and well. But it didn’t detract from what we doing. Studio D at the Village was our place of worship. It was really a trip.

That studio was everything we’d ever dreamt of, including replicas of bathrooms that Lindsey Buckingham liked at home. It sounds like an indulgence, but in truth it’s very much not. I think it’s a really cool thing that a bunch of people don’t go in and say, ‘Hey, let’s just feed them fish, make an album in three months and get the **** out of here.’ We worked our balls off, willingly and lovingly, and we always do. And, by the way, that’s our money. We were funnelling our resources back into our art. We learnt not to go for the cheap one, I’m glad that didn’t happen.

I remember Lindsey sitting on the lawn with me saying, ‘Can I do this, bring stuff in from home?’ And I said that it was not going to be a problem. However, this is a band, at some point it has to be integrated. [He was doing] a lot of experimental stuff excluding our direct input, but I had muscle memory of Peter Green doing that, so it wasn’t that shocking. Like Lindsey playing a Kleenex box as a snare drum and getting me to overdub. That didn’t freak me out because John and I remembered that happening on Then Play One, Peter playing the timpani part or something. It’s fair to say Lindsey felt he had to fight to get this to happen. I think that all went away. When we went into making this album there was no trepidation at all.

We referred to Fleetwood Mac as The Bubble. We lived and coexisted in that for many years, the touring and the studio was one big journey, one commitment. We were very focused. Because we managed ourselves we didn’t have a paranoid Svengali going, ‘It’s gonna be the kiss of death if you do this’. So we did it.

Tusk stands as a testament to Lindsey, who really foresaw that pitfall that happens to some artists who can end up with a form of complacency, which leads to, ‘Oh, we’re sort of done.’ Tusk stands as a great body of work, a creative milestone and a lesson learned, that if you want to keep creatively stimulated you have to take risks. Fellow musicians and young bands are discovering it all the time, which is very gratifying. It truly is my favourite album.”

Jim Irwin / Mojo Magazine / January 2016

LIVE IN CONCERT (2023-2024)

Billy Joel and Stevie NicksStevie Nicks

November 29, 2023
San Diego, CA
Viejas Arena

December 2, 2023
Inglewood, CA
The Kia Forum

December 5, 2023
Palm Desert, CA
Acisure Arena

December  8, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Phoenix, AZ
Chase Field

December 12, 2023
Sacramento, CA
Golden 1 Center

December 15, 2023
San Francisco, CA
Chase Center

February 10, 2024
Atlantic City, NJ

Mark G Etess Arena
On Sale Friday, September 29. 2023

February 14, 2024
Belmont Park, NY

UBS Arena
On Sale Friday, September 29. 2023

February 21, 2024
Greenville, SC

Bon Secours Wellness Arena
On Sale Friday, September 29. 2023

February 24, 2024
Hollywood, FL

Hard Rock Live ^
On Sale Friday, September 29. 2023

February 28, 2024
New Orleans, LA

Smoothie King Center
On Sale Friday, September 29. 2023

March 3, 2024
Omaha, NE

CHI Health Center
On Sale Friday, September 29. 2023

March 6, 2024 – North Little Rock, AR
Simmons Bank Arena
On Sale Friday, September 29. 2023

March 9, 2024 – BILLY JOEL
Arlington, TX
AT&T Stadium

Two Icons One Night presented by Live Nation
^ Non-Live Nation show


Previous 2023 dates

March 10, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Los Angeles, CA
SoFi Stadium

March 15, 2023
Seattle, WA
Climate Pledge Arena

March 18, 2023
Las Vegas, NV
T-Mobile Arena

May 12, 2023
Raleigh, NC
PNC Arena

May 16, 2023
Knoxville, TN
Thompson-Boling Arena

May 19, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Nashville, TN
Nissan Stadium

May 22, 2023
Atlanta, GA
State Farm Arena

May 25, 2023
Orlando, FL
Amway Center

June 16, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Philadelphia, PA
Lincoln Financial Field

June 20, 2023
Toronto, ON (Canada)
Scotiabank Arena

June 23, 2023
Chicago, IL
United Center

June 27, 2023
Louisville, KY
KFC Yum! Center

August 5, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Columbus, OH
Ohio Stadium

August 8, 2023
Milwaukee, WI
Fiserv Forum

August 12, 2023
Houston, TX
Toyota Center

August 15, 2023
Austin, TX
Moody Center

August 19, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Kansas City, MO
Arrowhead Stadium

September 23, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Foxborough, MA
Gillette Stadium

September 27, 2023
Pittsburgh, PA
PPG Paints Arena

October 1, 2023
New York, NY
Madison Square Garden

October 4, 2023
Buffalo, NY
KeyBank Center

October 7, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Baltimore, MD 
M&T Bank Stadium

October 28, 2023
Memphis, TN
FedEx Forum

November 1, 2023
Savannah, GA
Enmarket Arena

November 4, 2023
Allentown, PA
PPL Center

November 7, 2023
Detroit, MI
Little Caesars Arena

November 10, 2023 – BILLY JOEL
Minneapolis, MN
U.S. Bank Stadium



2022 Tour

Stevie Nicks

Jazz Aspen Snowmass
Snowmass, CO
Labor Day 2022

Ravinia Festival
Highland Park, IL
September 8, 2022
September 10, 2022

Pine Knob Music Theatre
Clarkston, MI
September 13, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

Sea Hear Now Festival
Asbury, NJ
September 17, 2022

Xfinity Center
Mansfield, MA
September 19, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

Maine Savings Amphitheatre
Bangor, ME
September 22, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

Sound on Sound Festival
Bridgeport, CT
September 24-25, 2022

Ohana Festival
Dana Point, CA
September 30, 2022

Hollywood Bowl
Los Angeles, CA
October 3, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

POSTPONED
Ak-Chin Pavilion

Phoenix, AZ
October 6, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

POSTPONED
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

The Woodlands, TX
October 9, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

Ameris Bank Amphitheatre
Alpharetta, GA
October 12, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

Ascend Amphitheater
Nashville, TN
October 16, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

Credit One Stadium
Charleston, SC
October 19, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

PNC Music Pavilion
Charlotte, NC
October 22, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
Tampa, FL
October 25, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre
West Palm Beach, FL
October 28, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

Orion Amphitheatre
Huntsville, AL
October 31, 2022

RESCHEDULED SHOWS

Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
The Woodlands, TX
November 2, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton

Ak-Chin Pavilion
Phoenix, AZ
November 5, 2022
w/ Vanessa Carlton


For What It’s Worth (2022)

Edge of Midnight (2020)

Beautiful People Beautiful Problems (2017)

New Release

Stevie Nicks, Stand Back 1981-2017, compilation

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