The Fleetwood Mac album Lindsey Buckingham considered his first solo record: “It definitely divided up the room”
Each and every Fleetwood Mac project comes along with a story. Some of them, the world knows well, like the now-infamous tale of Rumours. Some still remain lesser known, such as the anecdotes of the earlier lineup with Peter Green or the continuing complexities of the later years. But in Lindsey Buckingham’s eyes, the story of one album he worked on isn’t the story of the band – it’s merely his, grabbing that record and seeing it solely as his own.
It’s a selfish line of thought, really. A band is a band. Especially in Fleetwood Mac, and especially in that iteration of Fleetwood Mac with Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, there was far too much talent in the room for it to ever be the case that one person ruled over a record totally and completely. In particular, there were always too many songwriters in the room for that to happen, as Nicks and McVie especially always had their own distinctive voices that demanded space on a tracklist.
Even if they didn’t, though, the lines of collaboration and ownership are messy to the point of being blurred. Back in those Fleetwood Mac days, when Buckingham and Nicks were still so tied together, would it ever be possible to separate the two? When Buckingham attempts to call some of the band’s work his “first solo album”, is that ever fair given the level of impact Nicks’ artist had on him for years prior, with her influence existing in his work whether he wanted to admit it or not or whether he felt she carried her weight or not?
The long and short of it is that no Fleetwood Mac album was ever a Lindsey Buckingham album; there was always a lot of collaboration. But when the record in question is Tusk, it does become complex, as this wasn’t a solo album, but it was an album that Buckingham ruled over like a dictator.
“He was a maniac,” the album’s producer Ken Calliat said of Buckingham in that period as the guitarist became a man utterly obsessed. “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. Early on, he came in and he’d freaked out in the shower and cut off all his hair with nail scissors,” Callait recalled, adding as a serious understatement, “He was stressed.”
It wasn’t that the rest of the band didn’t want to collaborate on Tusk; it was simply that Buckingham seemed utterly intent on running off in his own direction, desperately bringing in all kinds of new ideas and genres. The rest of the group wanted to write their songs, do their work, and be the band as usual. Buckingham, on the flip side, was obsessed with being something different, which he admitted to, stating, “For me, being sort of the culprit behind that particular album, it was done in a way to undermine just sort of following the formula of doing Rumours 2.”
John McVie once commented that Tusk “sounds like the work of three solo artists” because of the disjointed nature of the band’s relationships at the time and the splintered motivations in the room. Buckingham took that even further in 2008 when he claimed that, really, Tusk can be seen as his solo debut, given the weight of his work there and what it represents to him as an individual artist.
“It was the beginning of everything for me,” he said, “You could look at that almost as a first solo album. Certainly, it was the setting of a tone to which I still try to adhere. A point of departure in terms of what I think is important.”
All of this led to Tusk having a complex history. It worsened the ruptures in the group as Buckingham became an overbearing leader, marching them in his direction only, leading to the rest of the band initially hating the album. But as time went on, Buckingham believes that Tusk holds up, not just as a reflection of his solo abilities, but as a whole project as he said, “I think Tusk has stood the test of time and it’s one that resonates with fellow artists more in a lot of ways,” adding, “It also has become understood in terms of why it was done and is appreciated for that. But in the moment, it definitely divided up the room.”
