Fleetwood Mac's Rumours (the world's favourite album until Michael Jackson released Thriller) occupies a special place in everyone's record collection. It seems to mean something special, personal and different to everyone who owns it, and so to me, Rumours will always be synonymous with long red February sunsets over the French Alps, where I spent a week some years ago, learning how not to snowboard.
Like my other chalet-mates, I had grabbed a random selection of CDs before leaving home, and although I had owned and cherished a copy of Rumours for years, I hadn't appreciated quite what a magnificent album it was until I heard it one afternoon while taking in those spectacular Alpine views. To this day I still can't explain why; hearing it in the right place at the right time, perhaps, but the album took on a miraculous new significance for me, instantly becoming one of my all-time favourites, and my friends universally agreed that it was a good choice of album to take away on holiday.
I probably would never have heard Fleetwood Mac's follow-up album, Tusk, had it not been for the recommendation of one of our chalet-mates, a Yorkshire lass called Jane, who told me she thought Tusk was an infinitely better album than Rumours, adding enigmatically that I wouldn't know why until I heard it. Well, I do love a challenge, and so it was that I vowed to buy a copy as soon as I returned home.
Tusk reputedly cost millions to make, and although it wasn't a total commercial failure, by all accounts the returns weren't anything like Warner Brothers had anticipated. More or less everyone concerned blamed this on Lindsey Buckingham, the man who had single-handedly saved Fleetwood Mac (now, there's gratitude) some years earlier from drowning in mediocrity by reinventing the tired blues band as über-gods of FM radio, drenched in California sunshine and killer harmonies. Co-producer Buckingham decided he wanted something really different from its million-selling predecessor, and, taking inspiration from the Punk and New Wave movements, set about deconstructing the Fleetwood Mac sound.
The record company were dismayed by what they were presented with; a self-indulgent double album of strikingly different musical styles, lacking in the velvety texture and continuity that Rumours had, and lacking in its predecessor's obvious commercial potential. The good that came out of this was that Buckingham's often startling studio experiments led to many fantastic and eclectic solo albums, and turned an already awesome guitarist into someone untouchable in his own field. Fleetwood Mac, however, required Buckingham's Midas touch to be successful, and so it was that his solo career never really took off while Mac would never enjoy another success like Rumours.
Tusk starts with the haunting Over and Over, which just gives me the shivers every time I hear it. It's a slow and tender Christine McVie composition that sounds as smooth as anything on Rumours, although the backing is kept sparse to the point of being skeletal. Occasional bursts of slide guitar and spectral backing vocals add texture, while McVie's honeyed vocals sound every bit as delicate as her fractured emotions as she lays her soul bare ("All you have to do / Is speak out my name / And I would come running, anyway"). The result is a song which could easily move me to tears, thanks largely to Lindsey Buckingham's slick production, and that same bluesy, soulful feel returns later in Never Make Me Cry, a vintage Mac cut from what is otherwise a very unpredictable album for the first-time listener.
Track two is Buckingham's own The Ledge, which sets out his stall for the rest of the album. It's completely unlike anything you've ever heard before from anyone, let alone Fleetwood Mac, apparently arranged using rubber bands for guitar strings and biscuit tins as drums, and that doesn't mean it's a bad track: it just sounds, well, different. The whole thing is a breath of fresh air: pure, primitive and honest rock and roll. It enters your head, messes about a bit (listen on headphones and you'll know what I mean) and leaves via the other ear before it outstays its welcome. It's also one of the most enduringly charming songs on the album, and its close cousin That's Enough For Me does the same job to a slightly diminished extent.
Before we've had time to come up for air, we're straight into McVie's next composition, Think About Me, a bright and breezy slice of radio-friendly FM pop which seems quite out of place next to The Ledge. I would imagine it was strategically put there by a record company boss to give us something familiar three tracks in, but it's a welcome dose of the usual solid fare to compliment Buckingham's musical whims.
One of Fleetwood Mac's great strengths was that the three-way songwriting partnership allowed for great diversity. The first of Stevie Nicks' compositions, Sara, is bland and overlong, but Storms is quite entrancing, while she is at the peak of her mystical best on the moody epic Sisters Of The Moon. By the halfway mark, it starts to appear to be the case that Tusk is actually three solo albums in one: the madcap experiments of Buckingham's, Nicks' mystical ramblings and those ice-cool bluesy offerings from Christine McVie.
It should be noted here that the majority of songs on Tusk were written by Lindsey Buckingham, many of them just as original as The Ledge if occasionally slightly flawed. Save Me A Place could almost be the Beach Boys, with its flawless gospel-tinged harmonies, and the lush That's All For Everyone finds a tired and emotional Buckingham yearning for creative freedom. One of the weaker tracks, What Makes You Think You're The One, sounds like a half-baked jam session which somehow made it onto the album, as does the catchy-but-insubstantial Not That Funny, where he vents his spleen at something or other. Even one of McVie's weaker moments, Honey Hi, sounds like an incomplete demo, but hey, that kind of thing was never supposed to matter in New Wave's DIY ethic, and it's a pleasant enough way to while away three minutes.
Tusk's title track is the complete opposite, however, and Buckingham's great centrepiece of the album. Drawing inspiration (allegedly) from Buckingham's jealousy of Nicks' (alleged) affair with Mick Fleetwood, it's a slow burner which begins with Mick Fleetwood's excellent jungle drum beat and slowly unfolds to reveal a simple but enormously effective bassline, an impassioned vocal, and reaches a crescendo with a 100-piece marching band and the repeated refrain of 'Don't say that you love me! Tusk!' (allegedly, Tusk is the nickname Fleetwood assigned to his male member. What, you mean yours doesn't have a name?) Heady stuff indeed.
Tusk's followup, Mirage (1982), suffered from trying too hard to replicate the success of Rumours, while Buckingham's solo debut, released two years after Tusk, is worth a listen only if you've really enjoyed Tusk's more extreme experiments, although its successor Go Insane (1984) is far more polished. I reckon Tusk is a masterpiece of an album, so if you're reading this, Jane from Yorkshire, thanks, because my world is a far better place for your recommendation. That said, it is not an album which will automatically appeal to casual Fleetwood Mac fans. Try it. You'll either love it or you'll hate it, but at least you'll have listened to it.
As an interesting footnote, US college rock band Camper Van Beethoven covered Tusk note-for-note in 1987 whilst snowed in on a skiing holiday with an injured drummer. The tapes were remastered and released in 2004, and if you enjoyed the original Tusk as much as I did, then you'll be interested in CVB's tribute, a highly irreverent but affectionate tribute which matches Buckingham's spirit of musical adventure.
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