The “most important” Fleetwood Mac album, according to Mick Fleetwood
Most bands are only fortunate enough to have just one album that ties their entire career together. Compared to the thousands of artists that peter out after just a handful of decent songs, every classic group has that one album in their arsenal that changed everything for them.
While anyone would consider Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours as the moment where everything blew up, Mick Fleetwood felt that their true progression happened one album later.
That opinion has always made Tusk one of the most fascinating records in Fleetwood Mac’s catalogue. While Rumours perfected the band’s pop instincts, Tusk deliberately pushed against those expectations, refusing to simply repeat the formula that had made them global superstars.
When Fleetwood first put the band together, there was a slim chance that they were going to be known as one of the biggest pop stars in the world. Having been led by Peter Green, many of the group’s early hits seemed to happen purely by accident, more concerned with playing the kind of down-and-dirty blues emanating out of England than anything that would give The Beatles a run for their money.
While they started off strong with songs like ‘Albatross’, their career was going to be lined with dysfunction for decades to come. After Green left to pursue his own solo ventures, the band drafting in Bob Welch and Danny Kirwan seemed like a great idea, only for Kirwan to be shown the door and Welch to leave after clashing with their style.
Since it’s commonly a good idea to have a frontman in a band, Fleetwood was on the hunt for a new guitarist when he heard Lindsey Buckingham. Although Buckingham definitely had a spark in him, he came with the condition that his girlfriend Stevie Nicks join as well. Two musical lovebirds and two songwriters for the price of one. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, after one album of everything running smoothly, Rumours was where all hell broke loose, with every member going through emotional turmoil in between takes. Despite their personal lives being in shambles, they turned that pain into classics, channelling their angsty aggression into songs like ‘Go Your Own Way’ and ‘Dreams’.
For all of the great music made on their magnum opus, there was still more to be done on Tusk. Looking to outdo everything they did on the last album, every songwriter in the band retreated into their little corners, with Buckingham turning in zany works like ‘Not That Funny’ and the title track juxtaposed with Nicks’s ‘Sara’ and ‘Storms’.
Even though anyone with ears can hear the group’s dysfunction on the record, Fleetwood thought it was one of the best leaps forward they had ever made, saying, “Tusk is probably my favourite and most important Fleetwood Mac album. Tusk meant this band’s survival – if we hadn’t made that album, we might have broken up.”
It’s not like the album isn’t devoid of charm, either. Throughout its runtime, Christine McVie’s songs like ‘Think About Me’ and ‘Brown Eyes’ go down incredibly smoothly, and Buckingham’s need to experiment does have a few moments of payoff, like the idea of bringing a marching band into the equation for the title track.
Moments like that perfectly captured Buckingham’s restless creative mindset during the sessions. He seemed determined to dismantle the polished California soft-rock sound that Fleetwood Mac had become famous for and replace it with something far more unpredictable.
If anything, the one thing Tusk taught the band was to give everyone time to breathe, with Buckingham and Nicks cutting independent solo records in between working with the group in the future. Since everyone expected them to break up after Rumours, Tusk is the sound of an outfit desperately trying to balance their creative muses with the usual compromises.
In many ways, Tusk feels less like a traditional follow-up album and more like a survival document. Every member was pulling in different directions creatively and emotionally, yet somehow the tension itself became the thing holding the band together.
