Tusk has been shut away on one of the shelves where I house the lower leagues of my record collection since I bought it a few years back. I've never once played it all the way through. Several reasons, but mostly because I always have a problem with double albums. Patchy generally for the most part I'd say, going all the way back to The White Album.
But I did just this a couple of days ago and I did so at one sitting. I'd wondered whether I'd be able to. I even curled up on the sofa thinking I might drop off and that Tusk might help me do so. No chance. I listened to all four sides straight through with no problem whatsoever. I was rapt. It's a completely fabulous record. Not every song perhaps but certainly as a cumulative listening experience. I'd highly recommend that you do the same as I did.
My own personal judgement has never been the general consensus around this record from either the press or general public. Of course, Tusk was the long awaited and delayed follow up to Rumours, one of the best selling records in music history and cost an absolute fortune to make. It was released at the height of New Wave and Post Punk in 1979 and subsequently written off by the hip as an act of West Coast folly and self-indulgence and by fans of the band for not being Rumours. It sold, a truckload by the standards of almost any other band, but was regarded as a flop by the band's record company and management who had got far too used to the sound of constantly ringing cash tills to drop their financial expectations quite as far as this.
A couple of writers stood apart from the generally negative responses to the album. Prestigious dissenters at that. Greil Marcus, among the most esteemed of all American Rock writers, praised it to the heavens making the incredible claim that 'the stand Fleetwood Mac has taken with Tusk is as brave as that taken by Bob Dylan took with John Wesley Harding, braver maybe because Fleetwood Mac can't rely on Dylan's kind of charisma or the kind of loyalty he demands...'
You wouldn't expect Nick Kent, who pretty much personified the leather trouser approach of British music journalism to give a thumbs up to Tusk either, but generally he gave it a highly positive review at the time in the NME, concluding 'Fleetwood Mac make good, adventurous pop... if you reckon you're too hip for Tusk then you're simply too hip.'
Simon Reynolds, probably Melody Maker's leading light at the time, concurs in his article here. Reynolds has made a considerable name for himself since and deservedly so. He always writes in informative, lucid prose, more so since he has sheared off the slightly pretentious tendency that sometimes clouded the points he was making in his early writing. He loves Tusk as he did at the time, even comparing it too PiL's Metal Box, the other album that had a similar impact on him as a teenager back in 1979. He says the record helped him to empathise with others, a great thing for any album to be able to say for itself.
I'll ration my playings of Tusk. I want it to keep on surprising me. Although it's generally judged as Lindsay Buckingham's record because he took the lead in terms of how he wanted it to sound, I'd say it's truly a collective effort. Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks for the songs, vocals and playing that they contributed, the latter also for the sense of atmosphere she always provided and particularly for Sara, the jewel in the crown and the centrepiece of the album, a truly great song among good and great ones, ( it should be noted that Kent didn't like it at all ). Also John McVie and Mick Fleetwood, as good a rhythm section as Rock music ever produced, even if it doesn't say so in the books. Either this is a pure classic or I've just become middle aged. I'm sticking with the former conclusion because I don't want to relent to the latter.
P.S. While thinking about this record I had a discussion with a friend who's a huge devotee of the band. His take on it was that it's something of an unholy mess redeemed by Lindsay Buckingham's miracle working properties. Listen to it I guess. Make your own mind up.
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