Day 203: Fleetwood Mac – Tusk
I’m going to cheat a little bit today and go for a band that I’ve already covered so that I can skip the introduction and write a bit less. I have a day off tomorrow, I just want to maximise my time off today. There’s no band or artist whose background I’ve covered more extensively than Fleetwood Mac, I mean come on, I made demonstrative pictures and everything. Plus I was listening to “Big Love” the other day and boy is that a song.
Album cover courtesy of Warner Bros
Today’s album Tusk was Fleetwood Mac’s attempt to show that they’re not just a one trick pony when it comes to their music – Rumours had become a phenomenon and their label was pushing them to record something that would sound like Rumours 2, but instead Lindsay Buckingham wanted them to change direction completely. He wanted them to do something that keeps them relevant in the post punk and new wave age and was essentially a polar opposite of Rumours:
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.
While the album did sell four million copies, it was still viewed as somewhat of a commercial flop, especially since it was the most expensive album ever recorded at the time. They were at a massively expensive studio insisting on recording a long double album, all the while having lobsters and champagne delivered in crates. Christine McVie said people joked that someone else could have recorded an album with the amount of money that they spent on champagne per evening, and she said they were probably right.
It’s not hard to see how or why it didn’t have so much commercial appeal. It’s not just that it’s different to Rumours, it’s that a lot of it just isn’t that good. Stevie Nicks really shines on songs like “Storms” and “Sara” and I like “That’s All for Everyone” where you can hear the impact of Brian Wilson and the unreleased tracks from Smile that Lindsay Buckingham had accessed. But the vast majority of it is just not that great to me, it feels a little bit flat and none of it is particularly memorable, aside from the titular track. And this is Fleetwood Mac, you’d think it’d be difficult for them to make something that’s not memorable.
You can hear the Talking Heads influences in the vocals on songs like “What Makes You Think You’re the One” or “Not That Funny”, but we already have a David Byrne and we only ever really need one. The great thing about that guy is that he’s a true original and there’s just no one like him. I’d give a bit more leeway in trying other band’s styles on for size if they were whippersnappers starting out, but this was album number 12.
Also, my hot take is that an album just doesn’t need to be 75 minutes long, not unless every single second of it is perfect and you just couldn’t have cut a single thing from it. On this one, you could have cut a fair few things and probably have had a better album – if this was just a bit sharper and more condensed, I’m sure I would have liked it a little bit more, but a few of these songs just leave you thinking that Fleetwood Mac could do better.
A lot of people view Tusk as Fleetwood Mac’s masterpiece, but I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s a collection of them trying on different hats that they needed to try to become the band that they eventually became, but some of this could have stayed in the archives. If another band released this as a super long double, I’d probably not even finish it. To me it’s a slightly disjointed collection of stuff that’s mainly pretty mid, I’ll give it a sacrilegious 7/10. It’s not bad, it’s Fleetwood Mac, but it’s about as average as Fleetwood Mac gets.