The Fleetwood Mac song Mick Fleetwood couldn’t stand hearing: “He was appalled”
He was an integral part of Fleetwood Mac, but, for the most part, Mick Fleetwood found his contributions to the band were removed from the songwriting process and, instead, seemed to centre on bringing the vibes. But, it wasn’t that unexpected.
When talking about the songwriting process, drummers usually get the least amount of input into the track. Unless you’re someone like Phil Collins or Neil Peart, who write the lion’s share of the material, it’s hard to really get a word in when all you have to do is keep a steady rhythm and move the track along from one section to the next. While Mick Fleetwood would not let anything slide from the back of Fleetwood Mac, he was none too happy with what Lindsey Buckingham did with ‘Walk a Thin Line’.
Granted, you could pick any member of Fleetwood Mac and find some harsh opinions of Buckingham during the making of the album Tusk. He was already getting a lot too big-headed when recording the album Rumours, so now that that album became one of the most successful albums of all time, it’s not like was going to be humble about his ideas.
But Buckingham didn’t think they should go into the studio and pump out the same record again. No band should find themselves in a holding pattern, but the guitarist may have gotten a little too different when working on the tracks. Imagine if someone like Tom Petty suddenly decided he wanted to make something like Blondie or Devo, and you’re somewhere close to what Buckingham was thinking.
He also had a habit of not being the best team player. Every band isn’t a democracy, but Buckingham wasn’t above just erasing someone else’s take because he thought it wasn’t good enough and just played everything himself. Tusk was already being looked at as the band’s version of The Beatles’ White Album, but every time he took the lead on a song, we were listening to ‘The Lindsey Buckingham Experience’.
Being influenced by the sounds of punk that were just starting to make waves, ‘Walk a Thin Line’ was intended to sound a little bit rough around the edges, featuring a drum part that sounds borderline incoherent from one bar to the next. Since Fleetwood couldn’t grasp what the guitarist wanted, Buckingham just played the whole thing himself…and Fleetwood didn’t really forgive him for it.
Recalling the song’s recording, Buckingham told Paul Zollo that Fleetwood hated the final drum track, saying, “That was me on the drums. Mick was appalled. He was appalled that these drums were going out, and people would think that it’s him because it offended the finer points of his sensibilities. And I understand that. I was really going for slop.”
Then again, anyone who is semi-interested in their craft would be pissed off at something like this. Here’s one of the greatest percussionists of the British blues scene, and there was some random kid who decides that he’s going to make the sloppiest drum take possible and then slap your name on it.
You can see what Buckingham was going for a little bit, but ‘Walk A Thin Line’ is still aching for a bit more muscle behind the drums. There was no time for negotiation at this stage, though. Fleetwood Mac had retreated into their own little corners, and that tension that started on Rumours had finally reached its boiling point.
But maybe the grandest point came when Mick Fleetwood would take the track on in his own right, producing a cover of the tune for his own album The Visitor from 1981, which not only had Fleetwood on drums but also welcomed Beatles guitarist George Harrison on the six-string. He made sure everybody knew how he felt about the track; he erased it from his mind and replaced it with another.
