When Fleetwood Mac released Tusk in 1979, it seemed to many like an act of self-destruction.
After all, the band had just delivered Rumours (1977), one of the most successful records of all time — an album of sun-drenched hooks and confessional ballads that turned personal turmoil into universal pop. But instead of simply serving up Rumours II, Fleetwood Mac went rogue, spending millions of Warner Bros.’ money and countless hours in the studio on an experimental double album that baffled the public and nearly bankrupted the band.
But with hindsight, Tusk stands not only as Lindsey Buckingham’s most radical artistic gamble but also as a prescient record that anticipated the fractured, genre-blurring sounds of the 1980s and beyond. It’s the ultimate testament to Fleetwood Mac’s restlessness — a document of what happens when one of the biggest bands in the world refuses to stand still.
Why Tusk had to be different
In 1977, Rumours had catapulted Fleetwood Mac to a dizzying level of fame. The album was ubiquitous, topping charts worldwide, selling over 40 million copies, and producing a string of hits including 'Go Your Own Way', 'Dreams', and 'Don’t Stop'. But for Lindsey Buckingham, basking in the glow of pop perfection was suffocating.
Buckingham had always been more musically adventurous than the band’s reputation suggested. Obsessed with Brian Wilson’s Smile tapes, intrigued by lo-fi home recording, and energized by the crackling energy of punk, he grew restless with the idea of repeating the same formula. To him, another Rumours would be the artistic death of Fleetwood Mac.
As he told Rolling Stone years later: “Rumours was such a huge success that the only way to not just repeat ourselves was to do something that flew in the face of it.” Tusk was conceived as that bold break.
Post-punk in the Canyon
Though Fleetwood Mac were living in Los Angeles mansions and recording at plush studios, Buckingham was increasingly drawn to the raw, jittery edge of what was happening in clubs across town. He became a fan of bands like Talking Heads and The Clash, seeing in them a vitality missing from the polished Californian soundscape.
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In the studio, Buckingham tried to inject that energy into Fleetwood Mac’s music — not by imitating punk directly, but by bringing in its restless spirit. Tracks like 'The Ledge' and 'Not That Funny' are jagged, claustrophobic, almost anti-pop. These songs were more akin to what was happening at New York's CBGB nightclub, home to Blondie, Patti Smith and The Ramones, than they were to the mellow sounds that had come out of the Laurel Canyon hills.
Mick Fleetwood recalled Buckingham turning up with tapes of The Clash's London Calling and Talking Heads’ Fear of Music blasting from his stereo. Christine McVie, who preferred polished balladry, was baffled, and Stevie Nicks vacillated between admiration and frustration. The album became a tug of war between post-punk angularity and the lush, radio-ready sensibilities of McVie and Nicks.
The most expensive album ever made
At the centre of Tusk is Lindsey Buckingham’s obsessive perfectionism. By this point, he was practically living in the studio, often working into the early hours, experimenting with overdubs, guitar tones, and unconventional recording techniques.
He insisted on recording vocals in bathrooms, hitting chairs with drumsticks for percussion, and feeding guitars through strange chains of effects. At one point, Buckingham even installed a home recording studio in his Bel Air mansion, using a 24-track tape machine to lay down demos that would later be rebuilt at the band’s main sessions.
The sessions ballooned in cost and time. Warner Bros. ultimately spent over $1 million on Tusk (some estimates put it closer to $1.5 million), making it the most expensive album ever recorded at the time. Even the album’s cover — a blurry photo of a dog biting someone’s pant leg — cost thousands in photography experiments before Fleetwood Mac settled on the final image. For a band that had just earned the label untold riches with Rumours, this was tolerated, but nerves began to fray.
Money, drugs and pressure
If Rumours was recorded against a backdrop of divorces, affairs, and personal heartbreak, Tusk was recorded under the weight of success itself. The band had money, drugs, and pressure — a combustible combination.
Mick Fleetwood later admitted to mountains of cocaine being consumed. Engineers remember long nights that stretched into dawn. Christine McVie struggled with Buckingham’s increasingly erratic methods, while Nicks drifted in and out, bringing her songs in bursts of inspiration.
And yet, despite the chaos, something magical happened: the band produced 20 tracks that stretched from the baroque pop of 'Sara' to the tribal thump of the title track, from McVie’s elegant ballads like 'Over and Over' to Buckingham’s manic explosions. It was disjointed, sprawling, and messy — but it was also daring and innovative, adventurous and raw.
An album conceived in chaos
If Rumours thrived on the band’s tangled love lives, Tusk found those wounds still raw — and in some ways even deeper. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were in a constant push-pull, their creative partnership as combustible as their failed romance. Nicks, increasingly independent, resented Buckingham’s dominance in the studio and his obsession with stripping away her lush arrangements.
Christine McVie had just broken up with the band’s lighting director Curry Grant, and her relationship with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson was volatile and chaotic. Meanwhile, Mick Fleetwood had entered into an affair with Nicks herself — a revelation that blindsided both Buckingham and McVie and added fresh tension to already frayed relationships.
Add cocaine — which Fleetwood later estimated cost him millions personally — and you had a band running on paranoia, insomnia, and occasional bursts of brilliance. The dramas didn’t just simmer in the background; they bled directly into the music. Nicks’ 'Storms' is thought to reference her affair with Fleetwood, while Buckingham’s most abrasive songs seem sharpened by bitterness.
In short, Tusk was made not in spite of the chaos but through it.
Tusk: three key tracks
1. 'Tusk'
If one track defines the madness of Tusk, it’s the title cut. Driven by Mick Fleetwood’s relentless drumbeat and Buckingham’s choppy guitars, the song’s crowning glory comes from an unlikely source: the University of Southern California marching band.
Fleetwood suggested their involvement, and the band recorded their parts live at Dodger Stadium, with Buckingham conducting them like a deranged maestro. The resulting track was utterly unlike anything Fleetwood Mac had released before — primal, absurd, and exhilarating.
Though it peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, 'Tusk' confused as many as it thrilled. For the band, however, it symbolised their refusal to be boxed in.
2. 'Sara'
If Tusk is the album where Lindsey Buckingham took Fleetwood Mac down jagged experimental rabbit holes, then 'Sara' is Stevie Nicks’ counterweight — a glowing, hypnotic ballad that feels almost suspended outside of time. Stretching to nearly seven minutes, it drifts on Nicks’ plaintive voice, delicate harmonies, and a spacious arrangement that Mick Fleetwood compared to “a watercolour painting.”
Its lyrics blur love, memory, and loss, and listeners still debate its inspirations — part autobiographical, part mythic. As one of the album’s most enduring tracks, '“'Sara' shows how Fleetwood Mac’s softer side could balance Buckingham’s restless avant-garde impulses, keeping Tusk from spiralling into pure eccentricity.
3. 'Storms'
One of Stevie Nicks’ most underrated songs, '“'Storms' is a hushed, confessional ballad that drifts like smoke through the heart of Tusk. Built on gentle acoustic guitar, understated keyboards, and soft harmonies, it captures Nicks at her most vulnerable, reflecting on heartbreak with a weary intimacy. The lyrics — “Never have I been a blue calm sea / I have always been a storm” — feel like a personal reckoning, both poetic and painfully direct.
'Storms' shows how Fleetwood Mac, even in the midst of chaos and fragmentation, could still carve out moments of quiet, devastating beauty. While it wasn’t a single, many fans and critics now see 'Storms' as one of Tusk’s emotional high points — proof that the band’s fractured energy could still converge into something timeless.
And... a Tusk track that doesn’t quite work
On the other end of the spectrum sits 'The Ledge', one of Buckingham’s more abrasive experiments. With its lo-fi guitar racket and shouted vocals, it feels closer to a basement demo than a million-dollar studio creation.
While fascinating as evidence of Buckingham’s punk fixation, it jarred with listeners who expected another 'Dreams' or 'You Make Loving Fun'. Even within the band, it was divisive. Christine McVie later admitted she didn’t understand why it was on the album.
Tusk then and now
When Tusk arrived in October 1979, Warner Bros. promoted it heavily but anxiously. The double album sold 4 million copies worldwide — a respectable figure for any other band, but a steep comedown after Rumours’ 40 million. Critics were divided: some hailed its daring experimentation, while others dismissed it as self-indulgent.
For years, Tusk was regarded as a failure, a bloated and expensive misstep that marked the beginning of Fleetwood Mac’s decline. Buckingham himself felt vindicated artistically but frustrated commercially.
Yet history has been kind to Tusk. In the decades since, critics have reassessed it as a misunderstood masterpiece, a proto-indie record that anticipated the genre-fluid landscape of modern rock. Artists from Tame Impala to St. Vincent cite it as an influence, and its messy sprawl feels prophetic in an era where genre boundaries have collapsed.
Far from bankrupting Fleetwood Mac artistically, Tusk gave the band a kind of strange longevity. It proved they were more than the polished melodrama of Rumours and that even at their peak of fame, they were willing to risk it all in pursuit of something stranger, harder, and more interesting. Today, Tusk is celebrated as an adventurous high-wire act — the sound of one of rock’s biggest bands going gloriously off the rails.
Six other albums that cost a fortune to make
1. The Beach Boys Smile (1966–67, unfinished at the time)
Brian Wilson’s lost masterpiece drained Capitol’s patience and its creator's psyche, with endless sessions and experimental techniques.
2. Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy (2008)
Reportedly costing over $13 million across 14 years, it became a symbol of excess and delay.
3. Steely Dan Gaucho (1980)
Steely Dan's seventh album became legendary for its obsessive perfectionism. Endless studio sessions, multiple re-recordings, and Walter Becker’s personal struggles stretched production costs sky-high, while the band’s exacting standards demanded the best session musicians. The result is a polished, sophisticated, and meticulously crafted album that still captures Steely Dan’s intricate jazz-rock aesthetic.
4. Def Leppard Hysteria (1987)
After drummer Rick Allen’s accident, producer Mutt Lange pushed for groundbreaking production, inflating the budget massively — but it sold 25 million copies.
5. Yes Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973)
Yes’s Tales from Topographic Oceans was a sprawling prog double album whose vast ambition thrilled some fans but alienated others. Inspired by Hindu scriptures, Jon Anderson led the band into dense, side-long suites. The sheer scale exhausted the group, tested their label’s patience, and became both a triumph of vision and a cautionary tale of excess.
6. Michael Jackson Invincible (2001)
With years of production and star-studded collaborators, it cost around $30 million — the most expensive album ever made at the time.
