“I had the greatest time”: The song that made Mick Fleetwood feel like “a pig in shit”
For the members of Fleetwood Mac, the songs don’t just capture moments in time, they tell entire stories, ones that twist and turn over time, morphing into their own ripples of memories. While it’s easy to delve into how different meanings have changed over time, one of the best examples came when Mick Fleetwood reinterpreted one of his favourites from Tusk.
The biggest, most cited chapter in Fleetwood Mac’s story often centres around the period of 1975 to 1977. These were, of course, the years that birthed two indisputable classics—Fleetwood Mac and Rumours—but also represented a period when the band’s concept and structure went far beyond expectation.
For instance, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks weren’t just channelling their frustrations into their art; each band member represented an integral component, with emotions fuelling creativity in ways few others would have been able to pull off. After all, when disagreements and fallouts start to define the entire operation, it’s usually time to call it a day.
However, with Rumours, in particular, these dynamics helped enhance the entire sound and feel of the record, pushing it to become the cultural disruptor it is today. And while things had calmed somewhat by Tusk, the tensions that lingered pushed them to explore different sonic territories beyond their usual folk-rock game.
For Fleetwood, Tusk didn’t just contain much of the same magic as before; it unknowingly held gems that would follow him after release, with songs like the Buckingham-penned ‘Walk A Thin Line’ infiltrating his solo work in ways he likely didn’t anticipate. Reimagining Fleetwood Mac songs isn’t an uncommon trend among the surviving members, but when Fleetwood felt a particular pull to the track, he knew he wanted to transform it into something closer to his own vision.
As a result, he recorded it in Africa and enlisted an “ensemble of African musicians” to transform it from a grittier rock track to one with a more ethereal edge, smoothening it out into a more rhythmic piece that blended Fleetwood Mac’s sound with something more otherworldly. However, being surrounded by a different flavour of creativity made him feel somewhat out of his depth, albeit in a good way.
“I approached it with a whole ensemble of African musicians, so as a percussion player, during these recordings, I was, as we say in England, ‘like a pig in shit,'” he mused to MusicRadar, adding: “I had the greatest time playing with these musicians on this rendition of this particular song.”
It might have seemed like a significant challenge, especially as an avenue he hadn’t really entertained before. However, the push out of his comfort zone worked well and winded up representing the one thing Fleetwood Mac came to embody: constant reinvention. After all, ‘Walk A Thin Line’ isn’t exactly one of the band’s most celebrated tracks, but Fleetwood’s endearment proved that that was never really the point to begin with.
