Tusk (album)

Background

Going into Tusk, Lindsey Buckingham was adamant about creating an album that sounded nothing like Rumours, despite encouragement from their label, Warner Bros., who wanted the band to follow up with a commercial record. "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."

Mick Fleetwood decided early on that Tusk was going to be a double album. After their label turned down Fleetwood's offer of buying a new studio to make the record, Fleetwood Mac used some of their royalties to construct their own studio, Studio D.

After the studio was built, Buckingham asked Fleetwood if he could record a couple tracks at his home studio. Fleetwood acquiesced, but told Buckingham that the other members needed to be integrated at some point. For example, Buckingham would play a snare drum track on a Kleenex box in his studio while Fleetwood would overdub his drums later on. Despite this, three tracks were recorded solely by Buckingham: "The Ledge", "Save Me a Place", and "That's Enough For Me".

Producer Ken Caillat noticed Buckingham's obsessive nature in the studio. "He was a maniac. The first day, I set the studio up as usual. Then he said, ‘Turn every knob 180 degrees from where it is now and see what happens.’ He’d tape microphones to the studio floor and get into a sort of push-up position to sing. Early on, he came in and he’d freaked out in the shower and cut off all his hair with nail scissors. He was stressed."

Buckingham had become infatuated with bands such as Talking Heads, and with Tusk, he "was desperate to make Mac relevant to a post-punk world." Bob Stanley commented that compared to Rumours, Tusk "was unleavened weirdness, as close to its predecessor as the Beach Boys' lo-fi Smiley Smile had been to Pet Sounds," and commented that "much of it sounded clattery, half-formed, with strange rhythmic leaps and offbeat tics." Bassist John McVie has commented that the album sounds like "the work of three solo artists", whilst Fleetwood later proclaimed that it is his favourite and the best Fleetwood Mac studio album created by the group.

An alternate version of Tusk was released on Record Store Day 2016.

Commercial performance

Tusk peaked at No. 4 in the U.S., spent over five months within the top 40, and was certified double platinum for shipping two million copies. It peaked at No. 1 in the UK and achieved a Platinum award for shipments in excess of 300,000 copies. The album gave the group two U.S. top-ten hit singles, with the Buckingham-penned title track (US #8/UK #6), and the Stevie Nicks composition "Sara" (U.S. #7/UK #37). Further releases from the album, "Not That Funny" (UK only single release), "Think About Me" and "Sisters of the Moon" were slightly remixed for radio, and were less successful. The latter two appear in their 'single versions' on the 2002 compilation The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac, while "Sara", which was cut to 4½ minutes for both the single and the first CD release of the album, appear on the 1988 Greatest Hits compilation and the 2004 reissue of Tusk as well as Fleetwood Mac's 2002 release of The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac in its unedited form.

Though the album sold 4 million copies worldwide, and earned a Grammy nomination in 1981 for its art designers in the category "Best Album Package", and considering the comparatively huge sales of Rumours and the album's unprecedented recording expense, the band's record label deemed the project a failure, laying the blame squarely with Buckingham. Fleetwood, however, blames the album's relative failure on the RKO radio chain playing the album in its entirety prior to release, thus allowing mass home recording. In addition, Tusk was a double album, with a high list price of $15.98 (US$53 in 2017 dollars) ($2.00 more than other double albums).

Critical Reception

Many contemporary reviews of the album, like that of Rolling Stone, emphasized the experimental nature of the album, with comparisons to The White Album not uncommon. "Like The White Album, Tusk is less a collection of finished songs than a mosaic of pop-rock fragments by individual performers." Robert Christgau was more ambivalent, lauding Buckingham's production and experimentation, while dismissing Christine McVie's and Stevie Nick's contributions.

Retrospective reviews have seen the album in a more positive light. AllMusic found the album to be in its own ballpark, calling it "a peerless piece of pop art". Pitchfork found the album to be "self indulgent" and "terrifically strange". Buckingham's "The Ledge" and "Save Me A Place" were seen as the album's most memorable tracks, with the latter particularly praised for its pensive lyrics and lyrical resemblance to "Go Your Own Way".

Track listing

A 2-disc remastered version of the album was released in 2004, featuring the entire, unedited version of the original album on the first disc and various demos, outtakes and alternate versions on the second disc.

A 5-CD deluxe edition featuring many unreleased demos, live tracks and an Alternate Tusk was released on December 4, 2015.

Tusk was also issued as a 180-gram 2-LP set.

In addition to the above outtakes, several other Nicks songs were demoed for Tusk: "Love You Enough" (unreleased), "Beauty And The Beast" (The Wild Heart), "Smile At You" (Say You Will), "Secret Love" (In Your Dreams), "The Dealer" and "Watch Devil" (24 Karat Gold: Songs from the Vault).

(* = Previously unreleased; All live tracks are previously unreleased.)

Cover versions