Saturday was Record Store Day and vinyl enthusiasts hit their favorite record stores in droves. To celebrate the ninth annual event, Metallica gave a special performance from the indie store Rasputin Music in Berkeley, California. Elsewhere, Mumford and Sons performed at Vintage Vinyl in St. Louis, while Kacey Musgraves set up at Lunchbox Records in Charlotte, N.C.
Warner Bros. issued a limited edition run of The Alternate Tusk on 180 gram black vinyl. Fleetwood Mac fans took to Twitter to share their excitement for the new release.
39 years ago today, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours began a long run at the top of the Billboard 200 chart, where it would stay for a (nonconsecutive) 31 weeks. The only brief interruptions in the number one spot were from The Eagles Hotel California and a live Barry Manilow album. No thanks. Since its release, Rumours has sold over 40 million copies worldwide—behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller (makes sense), and, for some reason, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell.
Anyway, Rumours is flawless—don’t listen to this guy. And not only is it flawless in and of itself (Robert Christgau wrote that it “it jumps right out of the speakers at you”) but the tales of its recording are notoriously batshit crazy, too.
Cody Frost tackles Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” on The Voice UK, hoping to keep her place on #TeamGeorge for the Live Final. Watch Cody’s electrifying performance below.
Like 1979 original, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk reissue is bold, brash and excessive
Fleetwood Mac’s deluxe reissue of Tusk is as brash and elaborate as the 1979 original, offering extended insights into the development of 20 eclectic songs.
In its original form, Tusk was a 2-LP set that followed the mega-success of Rumours, which had delivered enduring pop classics “Don’t Stop,” “Dreams,” “You Make Loving Fun” and “Go Your Own Way.”
Flush with fame and cash, and fueled by cocaine use, according to band co-founder Mick Fleetwood, the band was intent on not making Rumours II. Instead, they released a 20-song set that mostly (not entirely) eschewed the sunny California harmony pop sound of Rumours. Songs haltingly methodical and slow crash into breakneck-paced punk-rock romps. On the first listen, it can be unsettling. After that, it works wonderfully.
A few hits emerged from between the heart-racing highs and the faint-pulse lows, including the title track, featuring the USC marching band, and the ethereal top-5 smash “Sara.” Most of the rest was not radio-friendly. Tusk was a critical smash but a commercial flop when stacked up against Rumours-sized expectations.
The passage of time has solidified the legacy of Tusk as a masterpiece. The anniversary set captures the album’s essence with an in-depth exploration of how it unfolded. Here’s why fans will wallow in its abundance of material:
It’s excessive, just like the original. The deluxe version delivers 84 tracks, spread across five CDs (the digital version is organized along the same lines.) Those tracks include inside-out looks at the evolution of the album, including the aforementioned title track (eight versions, including one live performance) and “I Know I’m Not Wrong” (eight versions.) Both have aged well. To be sure, half as many versions of each would be plenty, while leaving room for more outtakes and alternate takes.
The hidden gems shine. Stevie Nicks’ “Sisters of the Moon” starts softly and builds for five minutes, her distinctive raspy vocals taking center stage. An alternate take of “Storms” haunts with the backing of Lindsey Buckingham on acoustic guitar. Buckingham’s “The Ledge,” “That’s Enough For Me” and “I Know I’m Not Wrong” fuse rockabilly and punk; they sound like they could have been written on the same wild night, and that’s a good thing. On each of these three tracks (average length about 2:20), by the time you ask yourself, “Wait, this is Fleetwood Mac?” the tune is already over — and it’s time to jam on the brakes for a track like Christine McVie’s “Brown Eyes” or “Never Make Me Cry.” Those tracks may not rank among McVie’s career’s best, but they showcase a moody, silky voice that keeps you from skipping ahead. The alternate takes of these songs give a sense of what it was like in the recording studio, one that was famously, and very expensively, custom built for the band.
22 vintage live tracks. We don’t get a single concert, but rather selected tracks from the band’s 1979-80 tour in support of Tusk. Many were taken during a June 1980 run at Wembley Stadium. The tracks present a time capsule of a band still riding the crest of its popularity yet testing the waters with the new material. “Sara” is gorgeous in its simple arrangement and Nicks’ passionate vocals during a 1980 Tuscon, Ariz. show. Buckingham practically barks at a St. Louis crowd during a November 1979 performance of “Not That Funny.” He gets the point across. During that same show, McVie plaintively belts out “Over and Over,” the mournful leadoff track on Tusk. Tracks from the band’s 1975 eponymous album and Rumours round out the live offerings.
The band’s cohesiveness is on constant display. Watching and hearing Fleetwood Mac’s disparate units combine talents is the real pleasure in following the band. “The magic of a band, any band, is in the combination,” Fleetwood once said. Although they don’t write songs, Fleetwood and fellow original band member John McVie provide the band’s backbone, something that’s evident during the live performances of “Not That Funny” and “Tusk.” Ultimately, Buckingham’s orchestration of these songs works so well because it’s those guys who form the orchestra. Each of main album’s tracks takes on the distinctive personality of the songwriter — Buckingham (nine tracks), McVie (six) or Nicks (five).
The set, issued by Rhino Records, is available in multiple physical and digital configurations. Among them is a gift set that contains 5 CDs, a DVD, 2 LPs and a booklet, and retails for about $100. All the music can be purchased digitally for $39.99 on music services. The biggest fans will enjoy this encyclopedic approach to an album that holds up to an in-depth re-inspection. The set minus the 22 live tracks sells for $10 less. You can save another $10 by dropping all the outtakes and alternative tracks, but that’s where the real fun stuff lives.
Ken Paulsen / silive.com / Friday, February 12, 2016
Despite popular narratives, Tusk isn’t all druggy, unabashed excess. Instead, this new sets shows the record as a deeply self-conscious document, the sound of a band that didn’t rebel against success so much as it misunderstood the privilege it brings.
Tusk, Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 double album, is full of backstory. If its mega-successful predecessor Rumours had the Behind the Music-made backstories of deceit and division, Tusk (like the album itself) had several conflicting and chaotic backstories. It was the first record to cost over a million dollars. The affairs and divides of Rumours had, by 1979, grown into wider fissures between band members and, in some ways, full-on breakdown. There’s also the notion that this is the cocaine record, a product of excess and disconnection from sense.
Perhaps connecting all these stories together—or fracturing them further—is the idea that Tusk was Lindsay Buckingham’s brainchild. In the liner notes to this new Deluxe Edition of the album, Jim Irvin lays out Buckingham’s mindset post-Rumours. He didn’t want to lean back on success and make the same record again. He was also, so the essay suggests, influenced by the growing punk movement. That Irvin himself seems disingenuous about punk, referring to the movement as a “grubby breeze” and to the moderate chart success of the Ramones or the Damned as “if they were mould spores ready to discolor the musical wallpaper.” And though he sees punk and new wave as music with a “youthfully abrupt” attitude to the past, he does concede that Elvis Costello and the Clash, among others were “speedily evolving.” His attitude, colored by a clear love of the “plush delights” of Rumours, seems to echo Buckingham’s. He borrows the ethos of punk in claiming that Tusk was a “fuck you” to the business of music.
Digging into this new 5CD/DVD/2LP version of Tusk, with all its bonus tracks and liner notes and photos, suggests that Buckingham’s view of the record and its making veers us away from the notion of coke bloat. The album isn’t truly about unabashed excess. Instead, this new edition helps us to re-see the record as a deeply self-conscious document, wherein Buckingham’s turn to the Talking Heads and the Clash (influences largely absent on the actual music of Tusk) seem to suggest an any-port-in-the-storm approach to making new music. The truth, though, is that the success of Rumours was hardly a problem. Tusk suggests that Fleetwood Mac was for a moment—due to inexperience, drugs, personal rifts, whatever—unsure not of how to follow up Rumours, but of how to make any other record. The “idiocy of fame” Irvin suggests as a target for Fleetwood Mac rings as naïve even now. Buckingham’s genre-hopping was little more than diving into of-the-moment trends. Mick Fleetwood, according to liner notes, wanted to make an African record, calling it a “native record with chants and amazing percussion.” These starting points for Tusk suggest not a rejection of success, but rather a fundamental misunderstanding of the privilege it brings.
That misunderstanding bleeds into the confused album itself. But this misunderstanding, and all the other confusions that went into the record, is what makes it so fascinating to listen to. For one, Buckingham’s conceits of ambition distract from some of the album’s purest pop moments. “Sara” shimmers” on clean, crisp pianos and beautiful vocals (Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie are actually the voices that keep this record together, though their influence is undersold in the liner notes in favor of the Buckingham defiant-burdened-male-genius narrative). “Over & Over” is bittersweet, dusty country-rock. “Storms” feels both spare and dreamy, leaning on vocal harmonies and tumbling guitar phrasings. “Angel” is stripped down and lean, letting the rhythm section take over rather than Buckingham’s layering. “What Makes You Think You’re the One” is catchy, straight-on power-pop, even with the high-in-the-mix snares and Buckingham’s unruly, edged vocals (which appear plenty on the record).
There is new territory here that works, namely the shift to a focus on drums in “Tusk.” Some of the skronky and brittle guitar tones feel fresh, though they sometimes land (“I Know I’m Not Wrong”) and sometimes fail (“Ledge”). But Tusk is at its best when it merely twists the band’s sensibility into something a bit more edgy and challenging than Rumours. The out-and-out experiments—like the hazy layers of “That’s All For Everyone” and the oddball chug of “Not That Funny”—feel awkward and pretentious, as if Buckingham didn’t quite understand the trends he was immersed in. Meanwhile, other places like “Honey Hi” just pile on the too-polished layers to saccharin effect.
Hearing Tusk now, all the ambition and hand-wringing around its creation feels largely unnecessary, with Buckingham’s ambitions for the album more relevant as ways to square with success that gave far more than it took away. But absent of all that outside story, it plays like a fascinating, uneven record. It is, like so many double albums, too long, but it also pushes the band places it hadn’t gone before. That those places are still firmly rooted in their pre-existing pop aesthetic, the very thing they claim to be turning away from, adds an interesting wrinkle.
The extras here further drive home the self-conscious nature of Tusk, suggesting even more that its excesses were more tantrum than rebellion. The “Alternate Tusk” included with largely unreleased takes is a compelling listen. It definitely doubles down on the album’s eccentricities. Buckingham’s vocals are as edged and shrill as ever. An extended take of “Sara” feels more spacious and haunted than the album take. “Storms” is spare and acoustic, with layers peeled back to reveal the song’s broken-hearted center. It plays like a long shadow to “Landslide.” “Tusk” gives the synths more space than the horns, but all the notes feel 8-bit next to the drums in the mix. Overall, this version is more disjointed and odd than the album version, and certainly worth a listen. But assembled here for a massive reissue, there’s a constructed feel to it that seems canned and, like so many other things around Tusk, overwrought. Like the original version, it is fascinating both when it struts with confidence and when it trips over its own self-aggrandizing ambitions.
The singles and outtakes drive home the defensive nature of Tusk, as well as the obsessive tinkering that happened as a result. Single versions of several songs skew any discoveries back to the middle. “Think About Me” is mixed to be all vocals and drums. “Sara” gets cut to a truncated, claustrophobic four-ish minutes. Even “Not That Funny”, a bad single candidate, sounds tame when those bleating guitars get sanded down. There are some interesting versions here, especially early takes on “Storms” and “Never Make Me Cry”, but while the evolution inherent in six versions of “I Know I’m Not Wrong” seems compelling on paper, in practice none of the takes stand out.
The two discs of live performances from the Tusk tour are—surprise, surprise—both fulfilling and frustrating. For one, they put songs from Tusk alongside songs from the band’s catalog, and the fit once again suggests the fleeting nature of the ambition of this double record. But the performances themselves are often ragged, sometimes exhausted. Nicks labors through a version of “Landslide” as if she’d prefer never to sing it again. Meanwhile, for a band not interested in repeating early success, they really stretch out a bombastic performance of “Go Your Own Way.” Between exhaustion and wanking, the band does sometimes nail it, though, especially a version of “Sara” here, a solid take on “Tusk”, and a charged, scuffed-up take on “Dreams”.
Tusk is an album that is excellent—and these uneven extras add interest to it—because it seems to come from such a flawed perspective. Buckingham and company spent over a million bucks on an album supposedly influenced by punk. The band was railing against a system that paid for that record. And, in the end, those pretenses of rebellion give way to simple artistic uncertainty. Even now, this set seems unsure of which way to present the album. We get a remastered version, an alternate version, a surround-sound DVD version, and a new pressing of the record on two LPs. This edition is an expansive, if expensive, gift to fans, and worthwhile in that regard, but its presentation also reminds us that Tusk isn’t the product of a burst of creativity or a major shift in artistic vision. Rather, it’s the sound of a band that didn’t know where to go, so it went everywhere at once. If that sounds dismissive, it’s not. Beneath all the conceits and mythologies that surround this record, it’s the basic fact that it’s always reaching that makes it the strange, great record it is.
Matthew Fiander / Pop Matters / Friday, February 12, 2016
Fleetwood Mac has ranked No. 6 on Pollstar’s Year End Top 20 Worldwide Tours, with total gross sales of $125.1 million and an average gross of $2 million per show. In 2015, the band took its ON WITH THE SHOW TOUR to U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
2015 was another busy year for Stevie and the members of Fleetwood Mac. The ON WITH THE SHOW TOUR was front and center, but Stevie made headlines of her own throughout the year. Here is a recap of some of the year’s biggest moments for the band.
January
Following her surprise New Year’s Eve appearance at a Deer Tick concert in Brooklyn a few weeks earlier, Stevie treated fans to another surprise — an unexpected acoustic performance of “Gypsy” and “Blue Water”! Rolling Stone hosted the performance in honor of Stevie appearing solo on the cover of its magazine for the first time since 1981.
Just a few shows into the second leg of the tour, Mick Fleetwood fell ill after a show in Nebraska. It appeared to be the stomach flu. Fortunately, Mick recovered quickly and the band was back in business.
Stevie graced the cover of Rolling Stone Australia. The editors went retro for the cover, opting for a ’70s-era photo by Sam Emerson. The US version of the magazine, released in January (RS1227), featured a newer photo by Peggy Sirota.
As Leg 2 of Fleetwood Mac’s insanely lucrative ON WITH THE SHOW TOUR was ending, Warner Bros. took advantage of the moment by reissuing Stevie’s 2007 release Crystal Visions…The Very Best of Stevie Nicks on clear double vinyl, with a large poster and a handy-dandy vinyl messenger bag.
LIFE featured Fleetwood Mac in a collector’s edition. Despite the great exposure (for already overexposed album!), the feature met with some controversy, namely from Rumours co-producers Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut who questioned the merits of the piece. Most fans know that the album couldn’t have been made without their studio craftsmanship, so don’t sweat it, boys!
Between tour legs, Lindsey Buckingham paid a visit to USC, whose world-renown marching band helped make his Fleetwood Mac’s iconic “Tusk” legendary…and the focal point of every college football game’s half-time show! Linds performed his acoustic classics before aspiring student entrepreneurs and encouraged the kids to make a big splash, creatively speaking.
Age-defying Miss Nicks turned 67 in May. People have longed marveled at the seemingly ageless woman with flawless skin, but Stevie’s night-owl schedule, free of those damaging UV rays, is largely to credit. (La Mer skin care products help out, too.)
Fleetwood Mac kicked off Leg 3 of their ON WITH THE SHOW TOUR in May, a day after Stevie’s 67th birthday. Celebrities such as Adele and Florence Welch (of Florence and the Machine) attended the European opener, later taking to Twitter to gush about meeting Stevie. (She seems to have that effect on people.)
In June, Fleetwood Mac performed at the Isle of Wight, England’s largest and most famous music festival of nearly 60,000 attendees. The barrage of hits caused a drunk sing-along among the sea of fans, which spanned kilometers!
As expected, Fleetwood Mac made Forbes’ coveted list of the World’s Highest-Paid Celebrities, ranking at #24 with a whopping paycheck of $59.5 million. Stevie and Christine were the third highest-paid women in music, behind Katy Perry (#1) and Taylor Swift (#2).
Fleetwood Mac’s music continued to reach new audiences with this Watkins Family Hour cover of “Steal Your Heart Away” from Mac’s 2003 album Say You Will. Not bad for a band you’ve probably never heard of.
Stevie Nicks ranked No. 53 on Rolling Stone‘s list of 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. Some fans felt the prolific songwriter should have been ranked higher on the list, but considering the magazine once described her second solo album The Wild Heart as an “outright catastrophe” and her singing as “inchoate ramblings,” it’s a sheer miracle she’s on the list at all! By the way, that disparaging assessment of this two-million seller that produced the monster hit “Stand Back,” is curiously omitted from Rolling Stones‘ online album review archive. Editor’s remorse? Karma? Who knows? But you can read the full critical takedown here.
https://stevienicks.info/2015/08/145381/
September
Thirty-four years after they released “Leather and Lace,” Don Henley and Stevie Nicks reunited for a tender new ballad called “It Don’t Matter to the Sun.” Even if the two are no longer “lovers forever,” they still know how to tug at those heart strings.
Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley made headlines in 2015 by announcing his plans to record a solo album. Leaving a supergroup to do your own thing? Having done it herself, Stevie might have a few things to say about this subject, like “Let me sing on your record!” (Stevie will be providing harmony vocals on Kelley’s cover of Tom Petty’s “Southern Accents.”)
If showing up unexpectedly at a Los Angeles Foo Fighters’ concert to perform two of your own songs wasn’t shocking enough, what Stevie did toward the end of “Gold Dust Woman” will have you in jaw-dropping disbelief. The impromptu moment showed that even Stevie, who rarely strays far from her stage routine, could be spontaneous.
In October, Fleetwood Mac finally made its way to Australia after cancelling a planned tour in 2013 due to bassist John McVie’s cancer scare. Fortunately, McVie recovered and the band was ready to rock fans Down Under. The opening shows in Sydney were blockbusters, catapulting the band into the top spot on Billboard Boxscore, with gross sales exceeding $5.4 million.
After a staggering 150 shows, most of which were sold out, Fleetwood Mac ended the ON WITH THE SHOW TOUR in the beautiful city of Auckland. For most Australasian fans, it was the wind…the rain…the water! that they had to contend with in order to see their heroes in action. Despite the elements, which often made for a soggy concert experience, most fans would probably say it was all worth it. #BucketList Fleetwood Mac closed out the year at No. 6 on Pollstar’s Year End Top 20 Worldwide Tours, with total gross sales of $125.1 million.
Rock a Little was kind of Stevie’s Tusk…big, brash, and a bit all over the place. It also represented everything The Big ’80s could serve up…drum machines, synthesizers, and power ballads. So how does it stand 30 years later?
On December 4, Fleetwood Mac’s most unusual album Tusk got the deluxe treatment, augmented with elaborately reissued editions. Getting the DVD-Audio mix of the album, the track-by-track analysis, and The Alternate Tusk impressed even the most jaded Fleetwood Mac fans.
Never ones to stay at home for long, Stevie and Mick attended the star-studded Broadway premiere of School of Rock in New York. The two megastars schmoozed with the likes of Sting, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Helen Mirren. Mick’s uber-cute twin daughters Ruby and Tess were there too!
Both Mick and Lindsey have been fanning the flames of a possible new Fleetwood Mac album for the past two years. It was clear that Stevie was the lone hold-out, or so it seemed. But now she appears to be on board, if what she told an interviewer at the School of Rock Broadway premiere is accurate.
Though it was an awkward pairing, The Voice judge Gwen Stefani and contestant Jeffery Austin did their best to cover Stevie and Don Henley’s classic duet “Leather and Lace” for the live finale. By the end, you didn’t quite get the sense that Gwen and Jeffery were “lovers forever,” but maybe “pals for a while.”
New box set expands, reveals Fleetwood Mac’s enigmatic opus
When the five members of Fleetwood Mac reconvened in the studio in 1978 to record the follow-up to their massively successful/decade-defining/inescapable disc Rumours, it would have been painfully easy to simply spit out Rumours II.
Instead, they took 13 months and spent a then-unprecedented $1 million-plus to birth Tusk, a double album of 20 songs spanning 72 minutes. The effort defied expectations, confounded some fans, sold “only” 4 million units, and produced only two singles resembling hits: the tribal-sounding title track (recorded with the 112-piece University of Southern California Trojan Marching Band), and Stevie Nicks’ ethereal “Sara.”
However, a funny thing happened with Tusk in the ensuing 35 years. Its standing among both Mac fans and musicians has skyrocketed, as has respect for the wildly diverse songs and experimentation. Now, Rhino/Warner Brothers has released Tusk: The Deluxe Edition. The 5-CD/2-LP/1-DVD set includes the original album remastered, a bevy of outtakes and alternate takes, and plenty of live material from the ensuing tour.
In the booklet of liner notes and rare photos, Jim Irvin celebrates the potpourri grab bag of music, spearheaded by Lindsey Buckingham’s newfound infatuation with the sounds of punk and New Wave music, and a desire to not repeat the same old formula. He would even adopt an entirely new look for the photos shoots and tour of closely cropped hair, suits, and…uh…heavy makeup.
“Listening to Tusk is like walking around a ridiculously eclectic art gallery curated by someone who’s keeping their aesthetic a secret,” Irvin offers. “And old master next to an abstract, a kinetic sculpture next to a watercolour. It makes no sense at first.”
Though, contrary to the established Rock History Narrative of him fighting for the change alone, both Nicks and Mick Fleetwood and not just Buckingham were also eager to shake things up, according to their own comments today.
And what of the effect as a whole? Buckingham certainly brings an un-Mac-like tension, nervous energy, and biting sarcasm to efforts like the deranged square-dance sound of “The Ledge,” the punkish “What Makes You Think You’re the One,” the biting “Not That Funny,” and the “rockabilly on acid” of “That’s Enough For Me.”
Stevie Nicks, always given something of a short shrift in terms of songwriting since she doesn’t play an instrument (not counting the tambourine), offers some of her finest work in the longing “Storms,” an upbeat “Angel,” elegiac “Beautiful Child,” and mysterious “Sisters of the Moon,” which surprisingly resurfaced on the set list for the Mac’s recent reunion tours.
Only Christine McVie’s contributions seem slight and listless — both lyrically and musically — save for some soft-and-gentle work on her usual romantic balladry in “Over and Over” and “Brown Eyes.”
Tusk‘s recording period saw Christine’s involvement with both Grant Curry (the band’s lighting director) and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, while Buckingham fell into an intense involvement with record-company exec/former model Carol Ann Harris (who later wrote a not-that-flattering book about the relationship, Storms).
The shocker, fans later found out, was the news of Nicks and Fleetwood’s brief-but-intense involvement. It led to Fleetwood’s divorce from Jenny Boyd…who had previously had an affair with previous lineup guitarist Bob Weston…and was the sister of Rock’s Greatest Muse, Pattie Boyd, who sent both George Harrison and Eric Clapton into romantic bliss and yearning, poured out on vinyl.
And when Nicks and Fleetwood’s involvement ended, Nicks’ best friend, Sara Recor (partial inspiration for the song), took up with Fleetwood without either bothering to tell Nicks about it, which crushed her (are you following all of this?).
Thus, Nicks admits today that a number of her songs are about Fleetwood, and it’s not hard to interpret many of hers and Buckingham’s lyrics as continued musical snipes and judgments on their relationship.
Of the demos and alternate versions, there’s some very interesting development chronicled in the songs “I Know I’m Not Wrong” and “Tusk” as Buckingham — like he did with much of the material — tinkered with them in his own studio extensively before bringing them to the band. It was a way of songwriting that gave him more control, but which the band agreed to abandon after Tusk.
And on the live discs, listeners will find a band surprisingly willing to take risks with tempos and delivery onstage with material recorded in studio. And that includes tunes from their previous two records, Fleetwood Mac and Rumours.
So, while the hefty Deluxe Edition of Tusk may be for Mac Addicts only (and those with record players), less expensive options included a 3-CD Expanded Edition and a 1-CD Remastered effort.
In either case, for what attention and sometimes derision it received on release, Tusk is the one effort in the band’s discography whose standing has improved with time. Oh, and the meaning the title? It was Fleetwood’s slang term for a penis. You’re welcome for that.
Bob Ruggiero / Houston Press / Monday, December 28, 2015
Fleetwood Mac reissues Tusk with unreleased alternate takes and live renditions.
(Editor’s note: The article was edited for grammar. The original published article can be accessed by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page.)
Tusk, Fleetwood Mac’s 1979 opus was a daring experiment, one that defied commercial possibilities while expanding the band’s musical parameters into areas that were otherwise unimaginable. It was especially daring considering the fact that the band had just come off two LPs that had broken them wide open in the States, Fleetwood Mac and Rumours, albums that would go one to become among the best-selling albums in all of music history.
Helmed by the most successful line-up in their lengthy history — that being the front line axis of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie — the band continued to venture even further from their blues based roots, having been hailed as the champions of soft-rock radio in all its endearing essence. In truth, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, the band’s namesakes and longtime standard bearers, had become token players in their own outfit, having ceded control to the trio responsible for their hits. Nevertheless, Fleetwood Mac was more potent and impressive commercially than at any time in their storied history, flush with widespread acclaim and ready to take on the world.
While the album was successful by most standards — it reached the Top 5 in the U.S., spent over five months in the Top 40, and was certified double platinum by virtue of selling two million copies — it didn’t come close to matching the levels achieved by its two immediate predecessors. Warner Bros. blamed RKO radio for playing the album in its entirety prior to release, encouraging volumes of home taping. The album cost over $1 million to make, the most expensive record in pop music history up until that time, and with consumers forced to shell out an extra $2 to cover the price of the resulting double album, economics discouraged those on a budget from making a ready purchase. It did produce a pair of hits in “Sara” and the title track, but given the fact it bore 20 tracks in all, expectations were never fully realized.
Tusk can now be seen as the bold effort it is, and it’s possible to appreciate all it has to offer.
Nevertheless, in retrospect, it is a fascinating album, a brilliant combination of excess, eccentricity, and studio savvy. Consequently, any reason for reexamination is well worth the time and effort. To be sure, this 2015 version isn’t its first reissue; an extensive re-release was launched a decade ago, but it pales in comparison to the expansive treatment the album is accorded this time around. Offered now as a six-disc set in its most elaborate configuration, it features an entire side of outtakes, rarities, works in progress and demos, as well as two discs culled from live recordings extracted from the Tusk tour, an alternate version of the album as it was first intended, and a DVD containing a surround sound mix of the original recordings.
Tusk deluxe is housed in an elaborate box that also boasts heretofore unseen photos and an extensive essay by journalist Jim Irvin, who, in turn, offers insights about the circumstances surrounding the album’s recording while reflecting on the general bewilderment it cast on an unsuspecting record label, music critics and the public in general, most of whom were either too confused or too overwhelmed to give it the time and attention the album deserved. As Irvin points out, many second generation copies were obtained from used record stores, discarded by the original owners simply because they had no patience for digesting it all.
More than 35 years later, Tusk can now be seen as the bold effort it is, and in listening to the various rehearsals and formative versions of its staple songs, it’s possible to appreciate all it has to offer. (Buckingham’s multiple takes on “I Know I’m Not Wrong” and his slow construction of “Tusk” offer fascinating insights into the way the genesis of the record was fashioned, one layer at a time.) No, it’s hardly a perfect record, but in terms of sheer brashness and bravado, it sets an exceptionally high bar.
Lee Zimmerman / Glide / Wednesday, December 23, 2015
The Mac’s wild, punk-y follow-up to Rumours hits just as hard 36 years later, especially on this extras-packed reissue.
While the music scenes of England, New York City and scattered bohemian enclaves the world over embraced punk’s do-it-yourself radicalization in the late Seventies, nearly every superstar of sunny southern California kept on making smooth and glossy soft rock as if Joey Ramone and Johnny Rotten had never happened. This didn’t comfort Lindsey Buckingham. The pressure to follow Fleetwood Mac’s astronomically successful 1977 LP, Rumours, with a follow-up just like it drove the singer-guitarist to turn to Talking Heads, Elvis Costello and other upstarts for inspiration and liberation.
And so he began what became 1979’s famously experimental and eclectic double-disc, Tusk, at home with the deliberate goal of shaking things up. While Buckingham crafted his unconventional solo recordings, the Mac had Studio D at L.A.’s Village Recorder built to their specifications, where they added to his songs and recorded their own with results that veered from demo-quality rockabilly to exacting balladry. Both capitalized on the freedom that came with their success: Because drummer Mick Fleetwood himself managed the band, absolutely no one but the musicians and their near-exclusive producer-engineers Richard Dashut and Ken Caillat had any input. Tusk may have been the first album to cost a million dollars, but much of it was in spirit and practice nearly as DIY as the era’s New Wave.
Sequenced for maximum disruptive effect, Tusk alternately reassures and startles: Christine McVie’s placid lullaby “One More Time (Over & Over)” opens the album with a soothing dose of musical morphine, but gets followed by the wake-up call of Buckingham’s anxious “The Ledge,” the album’s most punk-influenced track. As confirmed in the interviews that accompany this deluxe five-CD/two-LP/one-DVD box set edition, much of Tusk – like its predecessor – is a Rashomon-esque account of life within the band as seen through the sharply contrasting viewpoints of their three songwriters. One of Stevie Nicks’s most delicate and downhearted songs, “Storms,” wallows in the guilt over her affair with then-married Fleetwood, and the subsequent karmic payback she endured when her best friend secretly moved into his house. Buckingham’s confrontational “Not That Funny” addresses Nicks, by then his ex, whom he saw as getting caught up in celebrity culture. It’s this candid quality that makes Tusk so contemporary even decades later.
Tusk’s one-of-a-kind combo of punky verisimilitude and surreal opulence drives one point home harder than ever: No other band could’ve recorded this album.
That forthrightness gets magnified exponentially by the deluxe edition’s supplemental discs. One of them, “The Alternate Tusk,” presents the entire album via divergent versions of every song, including an early, piano-led rendition of Nicks’s “Sara” that lingers for nearly nine minutes; and Buckingham’s languid “That’s All for Everyone,” here featuring entirely different lyrics. Another disc, “Singles, Outtakes, Sessions,” demonstrates through multiple editions of some tracks like Buckingham’s “I Know I’m Not Wrong” – the first song recorded for the album, but the last one to be definitively completed – how the album evolved during Tusk’s year-long creation. The version of “Save Me a Place” on this disc lacks the weeping bluegrass harmonies that define the released take, but Buckingham’s vocal here is even more pained. Two discs of “Tusk Tour Live” serve as a considerably longer and looser alternate edition of the band’s 1980 live album, which chronicled that same world trek. And the set’s audio DVD provides a new 5.1 surround sound mix by Caillat that maximizes the album’s one-of-a-kind combo of punky verisimilitude and surreal opulence, and drives one point home harder than ever: No other band could’ve recorded Tusk.
Barry Walters / Rolling Stone / Tuesday, December 22, 2015
