The Fleetwood Mac album Christine McVie called “the antithesis of commercial”
The creation of their 1977 album Rumours had ripped at the seams of Fleetwood Mac. Across every track of the record, the band members essentially aired their dirty laundry as they sang about heartbreak, infidelity, anger and upset, all pointed at other members. It also made them a sensation as the success of the release rocketed them to a whole new level of acclaim. So what was there to do next? On rocky ground with the whole world watching, Christine McVie considered their next move to be an anti-commercial coup.
It’s a story told time and time again by music fans, but that’s simply because it’s an utterly remarkable and endlessly dramatic one. When Fleetwood Mac reformed into their best-known lineup, featuring Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nick, John and Christine McVie and Mick Fleetwood, it was a band of couples. But within a few years, Buckingham and Nicks had dramatically split, the McVie’s were divorcing, and Fleetwood would later complicate things further by having an affair with Nicks. Yet still, throughout the intense emotional turmoil, the band created some of the best-loved rock tracks ever penned.
The pain seemed to fuel them and make them stars as the sharp emotion of tracks like ‘Go Your Own Way’, ‘Songbird’, ‘Dreams’ and more connected with an even larger audience than they’d had before. It’s proof that sincerity fosters success as their revelatory and confessional works became hits.
But the aftermath for the band was an unsettled feeling. “We were too open about who we were and what we were doing – probably very naive,” Fleetwood said, reflecting on that era. So after the release of Rumours and the growth of their audience, the band’s follow-up record was an attempt to regain some control by defying all expectations.
The result was Tusk, a mammoth 20-track album that McVie dubbed “the antithesis of commercial”. It was an experimental piece as the band all seemed to bring different influences to the table, from Buckingham’s new interest in post-punk, to Nicks’ enduring dreamy rock spirit.
As the tracklist swelled and swelled and production costs kept rising, making it one of the most expensive rock albums ever made, it seemed that the band simply couldn’t be stopped. In particular, Buckingham was obsessive about the record. Producer Ken Caillatt recalled, “He was a maniac”. The guitarist was intent on throwing out the rule book of Rumours and trying something new. “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,” Caillat remembered.
But the mania was on all sides. One journalist who witnessed some of the sessions called it a “cocaine blizzard” as the band were burning out on drugs and this new, crazed idea to do something radically different. Perhaps it was them trying to outrun the pain of Rumours, of the songs they’d written then and the devastating personal experiences that had prompted it. Or maybe it was the band attempting to claw back some artistic control by defying the idea of going commercial. But either way, the record technically was a failure in comparison to their last album, yet it still sold millions of copies, gained chart topping positions and holds a special place in certain fan’s hearts.
But for McVie, it was the “the antithesis of commercial”, sandwiched between Rumours and Mirage which were made with “an effort to have a few more catchy songs”. It seems that in the middle of building their empire, they simply needed one record to go wild on, and Tusk was that.
