Tusk

How do you follow up one of the most popular albums of all time? That problem was facing Fleetwood Mac after their monster-selling album Rumours, which sold 40 million copies. Two years later, in 1979, they released Tusk, which is thought of as one of the biggest busts in rock history. In some ways, that is correct, as it only sold 4 million copies, and was the most expensive album to make up to that time. But in retrospective, it is some ways their best album, and the view of it has come around almost 180 degrees.

Fleetwood Mac, in its most recent iteration (which has lasted almost forty years), has always been a three-headed beast, with songs by Lindsey Buckingham, Christine McVie, and Stevie Nicks. It is never more so that on Tusk, which in a way is like The Beatles "White" album, which is an album of four solo artists. Each songwriter has five to seven songs, intermingled in a haphazard order. But each songwriter is at their greatest talent here, and their most representative. For instance, Stevie Nicks is at her most Stevie-Nicksiest on Tusk.

It was Buckingham who was responsible for most of it, as the band basically let him have his way in the studio. The title is a euphemism for penis that the men in the band used; Nicks threatened to quit the band if they used the title, but I guess she backed down. The production is much sparer than other Fleetwood Mac albums, except for the very experimental  and weird title track, which used the USC marching band.

Things kick off with one of McVie's trademark love songs, 'Over and Over," which are almost always simple and pure sounding. Then we get one of Buckingham's standard songs, "The Ledge," which to me, like many of his songs, sounds like a wind-up toy. His songs are almost always full of guitar. I saw him in concert and he had five guitar players, and the sound was like a sledgehammer, but pleasantly so.

Nicks doesn't arrive until the fifth track, with "Sara." This was the big single from the album, a very quiet song that she recently verified was about an abortion she had of a baby fathered by Don Henley. I think the five songs she does on this album are five of her best, reaching from different parts of her psyche. There's her "Welsh Witch" stuff with "Sisters of the Moon," a hard rocking song:

"Intense silence
As she walked into the room
Her black robes trailing
Sister of the Moon"

She has a very good pop song called "Angel," and then two crushing beautiful songs, "Beautiful Child," and my favorite, "Storms," which starts with a soft guitar and quietly builds, just like a storm. In fact, the word storm does not appear until late in the song:

"So I try to say
Goodbye my friend
I'd like to leave you with something warm
But never have I been a blue calm sea
I have always been a storm."

McVie and Buckingham aren't as interesting lyrically, but the sequencing of the album usually has one of Buckingham's hyper ditties following of Nicks' emotional ballads, which provides for an exhilarating listen.

Tusk sold only one tenth of the copies of Rumours, and didn't have a number one single, while Rumours had four. But if I was forced to make a Sophie's choice, I'd take Tusk with me to the desert island.