“A little bit of knee-jerk”: the album that took years for Lindsey Buckingham to appreciate
Following up on a global smash hit like Rumours was always going to be a challenge of a complexity that Fleetwood Mac hadn’t faced before. The 1977 album catapulted them to unprecedented commercial heights, earning them more fans and acclaim than they could have dreamed of during their earlier struggles. Building on its success posed a daunting question. Remarkably, against all odds, the band didn’t simply replicate their soft rock formula but instead embraced the experimental—all thanks to the creative vision of Lindsey Buckingham.
1979’s Tusk is a real oddity. It has always been akin to The Beatles’ Revolver, a significant moment of invention moving far away from what came before. Because of this, it has always been the favourite of the hipsters among the band’s fanbase. A double album that was the most expensive of all time for decades – costing roughly $5.88million to produce in today’s money – it is celebrated for Buckingham taking the creative reigns and, in doing so, creating sparse, interesting arrangements influenced by the day’s most exciting form, post-punk.
With Buckingham’s admiration for groups like Talking Heads, the album incorporated compelling, complex rhythms and angular guitar work, pushing Fleetwood Mac into avant-garde territory that would have been unthinkable during the Rumours era. It was a bold and ambitious move, and although it was deemed a “flop” at the time for selling only four million copies compared to its predecessor’s ten million, it has since earned widespread respect as a daring and innovative effort.
Tusk remains a symbol of retaining artistic integrity over succumbing to industry whims, and whether people like his work or not, it is a credit to Buckingham for instituting such a brave move. He knew that standardising a sound and adhering to expectations would result in him and Fleetwood Mac pigeonholing themselves further and being stuck in a creative corner for the rest of their careers.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess that when working on such a creative departure, outside of post-punk, Buckingham looked to the best two acts to ever do it in this department, The Beatles and Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys. Although he knows that the Fab Four’s career was short, he also knows that their evolution was more consequential than any other, with them leading examples of making good, refreshing musical choices. As for Brian Wilson, who set the scene for The Beatles’ experimentation with 1966’s daring art-pop progenitor Pet Sounds, he’s a “hero” of Buckingham’s.
Although Buckingham now cites Wilson as a hero, his relationship with Wilson’s work—particularly Pet Sounds—hasn’t followed the typical fan trajectory. In a famous quote featured on Wilson’s website, Buckingham admitted that it wasn’t until he achieved global fame himself that he fully grasped the significance of Pet Sounds as a groundbreaking, expectation-defying masterpiece. Since that moment of realisation, Buckingham has become an ardent admirer of Wilson, viewing him as an artist singularly devoted to his own creative vision.
Buckingham said: “The first time I heard Pet Sounds, I have to admit that I did a little bit of knee-jerk in the same way probably the record company and some other people did because it wasn’t as accessible as Brian’s songwriting approach had been up to that time. I’m not sure I fully appreciated that until years later (when) I started making records myself.”
Although Fleetwood Mac and The Beach Boys have little in common sonically, the fact that Pet Sounds inspired the ‘Go Your Own Way’ band to chart a new course demonstrates how momentous it is.
