30 YEARS AGO TUSK RELEASED

October 1979 Fleetwood Mac's

double LP Tusk was released

Tusk
Fleetwood Mac
Warner 3350
Released: October 1979
Chart Peak: #4
Weeks Charted: 37
Certified Double Platinum: 10/22/84

At a cost of two years and well over a million dollars, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk represents both the last word in lavish California studio pop and a brave but tentative lurch forward by the one Seventies group that can claim a musical chemistry as mysteriously right -- though not as potent -- as the Beatles'. In its fits and starts and restless changes of pace, Tusk inevitably recalls the Beatles' "White Album" (1968), the quirky rock jigsaw puzzle that showed the Fab Four at their artiest and most indecisive.

Like "The White Album," Tusk is less a collection of finished songs than a mosaic of pop-rock fragments by individual performers. Tusk's twenty tunes -- nine by Lindsey Buckingham, six by Christine McVie, five by Stevie Nicks -- constitute a two-record "trip" that covers a lot of ground, from rock & roll basics to a shivery psychedelia reminiscent of the band's earlierBare Trees and Future Games to the opulent extremes of folk-rock arcana given the full Hollywood treatment. "The White Album" was also a trip, but one that reflected the furious social banging around at the end of the Sixties. Tusk is much vaguer. Semiprogrammatic and nonliterary, it ushers out the Seventies with a long, melancholy high.

On a song-by-song basis, Tusk's material lacks the structural concision of the finest cuts on Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. Though there are no compositions with the streamlined homogeneity of "Dreams," "You Make Loving Fun" or "Go Your Own Way," there are many fragments as striking as the best moments in any of these numbers.

If Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks were the most memorable voices on Fleetwood Mac and Rumours, Lindsey Buckingham is Tusk's artistic linchpin. The special thanks to him on the back of the LP indicates that he was more involved with Tusk's production than any other group member. Buckingham's audacious addition of a gleeful and allusive slapstick rock & roll style -- practically the antithesis of Fleetwood Mac's Top Forty image -- holds this mosaic together, because it provides the crucial changes of pace without which Tusk would sound bland.

The basic style of Tusk's "produced" cuts is a luxuriant choral folk-rock -- as spacious as it is subtle -- whose misty swirls are organized around incredibly precise yet delicate rhythm tracks. Instead of using the standard pop embellishments (strings, synthesizers, horns, etc.), the bulk of the sweetening consists of hovering instrumentation and background vocals massively layered to approximate strings. This gorgeous, hushed, ethereal sound was introduced to pop with 10cc's "I'm Not in Love," and Fleetwood Mac first used in Rumours' "You Make Loving Fun." On Tusk, it's the band's signature. Buckingham's most commercial efforts -- the chiming folk ballads, "That's All for Everyone" and "Walk a Thine Line" -- deploy a choir in great dreamy waves. In McVie's "Brown Eyes," the blending of voices, guitars and keyboards into a plaintive "sha-la-la" bridge builds a mere scrap of a song into a magnificent castle in the air. "Brown Eyes" sounds as if it were invented for the production, rather than vice versa.

About the only quality that Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie share is a die-hard romanticism. On Tusk, Nicks sounds more than ever like a West Coast Patti Smith. Her singing is noticeably hoarser than on Rumours, though she makes up some of what she's lost in control with a newfound histrionic urgency: "Angel" is an especially risky flirtation with hard rock. Nicks' finest compositions here are two lovely ballads, "Beautiful Child" and "Storms." Her other contributions, "Sara" and "Sisters of the Moon," weave personal symbolism and offbeat mythology into a near-impenetrable murk. There's a fine line between the exotic and the bizarre, and this would-be hippie sorceress skirts it perilously.

McVie is as dour and terse as Nicks is excitable and verbose. Her two best songs -- "Never Forget," a folk-style march, and "Never Make Me Cry," a mournful lullaby -- are lovely little gems of pure romantic ambiance. With a pure, dusky alto that's reminiscent of Sandy Denny, this woeful woman-child who's in perpetual pursuit of "daddy" evokes a timeless sadness.

Tusk finds Fleetwood Mac slightly tipsy from jet lag and fine wine, teetering about in the late-afternoon sun and making exquisite small talk. Surely, they must all be aware of the evanescence of the golden moment that this album has captured so majestically.

- Stephen Holden, Rolling Stone, 12/13/79.

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FLEETWOOD MAC FOUNDER PETER GREEN PRESENTED WITH "MILLION-AIR" CERTIFICATE

Donovan, Natasha Bedingfield and More Honored at 2009 BMI London Awards

BMI.COM

BMI lauded the UK and Europe’s premier songwriters, composers and music publishers tonight during its annual BMI London Awards. The ceremony was hosted by BMI President & CEO Del Bryant; BMI Senior Vice President, Writer/Publisher Relations Phil Graham; and Executive Director, Writer/Publisher Relations, Europe & Asia Brandon Bakshi. Staged in London’s Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, the event honored the past year’s most-performed songs on U.S. radio and television. BMI is a United States-based performing right organization that collects and distributes monies for the public performance of music on outlets including radio, television, the Internet and the top-grossing tours in the U.S. British citizens honored at the event are members of the UK performing right society PRS for Music (PRS) and are represented in the U.S. by BMI.

BMI “Million-Air” certificates were also presented throughout the evening in recognition of songs that have achieved more than three million U.S. radio and television performances—the equivalent of more than 17 years of continuous airplay.

Songs honored for generating more than five million performances included “Black Magic Woman,” written by Fleetwood Mac founder Peter Green.

BUCKINGHAM & NICKS - DUE FOR A RESURGENCE?

McGee on music: The pop partnership that reinvented Fleetwood Mac The musical pairing of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks reinvigorated Fleetwood Mac's sound, which continues to influence artists today. Are they due a resurgence?

This week, I received an email from Joe Cardamone of the Icarus Line regarding a new project he has been working on with Annie Hardy from Giant Drag. He included a demo of their song Lake of Fire, stating that "Fleetwood Mac is the new black". The track is fantastic. Joe and Annie have perfectly captured the vibe of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in their pre-Fleetwood Mac days, when they were a folk-rock duo.

Musical partnerships are plentiful, but iconic partnerships are not. If you've not heard the Buckingham Nicks debut release, you really should as it helped define the Pacific coast FM pop sound of Fleetwood Mac.

Continue To Full Post by Alan McGee: Guardian.co.uk

INTERVIEW WITH FLEETWOOD MAC'S - MICK FLEETWOOD

[article has been translated]

"In the head we are still young"

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

Berliner Morgenpost

Mick Fleetwood, founder, namesake and drummer of Fleetwood Mac, has left his beloved island in the Pacific and is touring for the first time since 2004 with Stevie Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham and John McVie to the world.

The concerts are under the motto "Unleashed" ( "Unleashed"), containing all the hits and take about two and a half hours. On 19 October, they will present their program at the O2 Arena. Steffen Rüth advance telephoned briefly with the native Britons.

Berliner Morgenpost: Good morning, Mick. Where can we catch you, then?

Mick Fleetwood: In Hawaii. Three years ago, I am completely moved here, before that I was only a few months a year there. I'm in love with the island, my wife and my two twin daughters, Ruby and Tessa, are seven years old and going to school, feeling incredibly well in Hawaii. The two are still young and I think the old man on his legs. I had the great fortune to start with mid-50s once again a family. My two older daughters are already in their thirties. I like the lifestyle here, even if I do not surf. For that I am now really too big and too heavy.

Berliner Morgenpost: Are you at 61 and after 40 years of fierce musicians are happy with your health?

Mick Fleetwood: Oh yes, that's me really. As a drummer I need strength, and I did. I make a lot of sport and do not think that I have become weaker. Healthwise I am doing very well. Better than I was doing most of my adult life. I've felt in any case more than ever now. When I took drugs when I drank. That is over. But I know that I'm not 20 any more. I'm sure with my almost two meters, the back pain if I have to get up after five hours ride in the tour bus.

Berliner Morgenpost: Is age an issue of attitude?

Mick Fleetwood: There's something to it. I am very young in mind, I would say. I still feel very much energy in me. I'm full of lust for life. I am no one reclining in a rocking chair and says, "That was it. I only read books and usually do nothing more."

Berliner Morgenpost: They get along really, when you are together on a world tour?

Mick Fleetwood: We do our best (laughs). We all have become familiar in recent years, sedentary, adult. Even though this sounds funny when spoken by people around the 60th

Berliner Morgenpost: What does adult behavior?

Mick Fleetwood: Responsible. We take care of us, we no longer sit up all night and get drunk somewhere around us after each concert. That you do not think through - and you want it at all any more. Thus, it is easier now because we only have the concert. Previously we had after the concert until the real show, the party.

Berliner Morgenpost: Do you miss the good old days?

Mick Fleetwood: No, not really. Not at all. Are you growing out sometime. I would not swap my life I have today, with the life I had as a 25-year-old.

Berliner Morgenpost: What makes you think of bands from each other?

Mick Fleetwood: Good. Much better. The past with our whole relationship highs and lows within the band is indeed documented in great detail. It was a strange and sometimes really difficult trip with this band, it was not always everything, but the point is: Here we are. We are musicians, we like to play together that makes us really very happy. Now I'm sitting here as relaxed as an elderly English gentleman, but on stage I can be wild and dramatic, this is a good balance.

Berliner Morgenpost: What do you think, why people want to still see Fleetwood Mac?

Mick Fleetwood: Fleetwood Mac When we were constantly aware that it is the audience that was what made us. I think I speak for all members of the group: We care. We have never been indifferent or uninterested to our fans.

Berliner Morgenpost: The last album "Say You Will" has been released over five years ago. Will you play at the concerts and new songs?

Mick Fleetwood: Yes. We will play songs that we know that people they may be. For the first time in the career of Fleetwood Mac, we come without a new album. But with a program that gives the people what they want. New songs will be this time are not between us and the audience. We will embark on a journey that all know already.

Berliner Morgenpost: So there will be many famous songs from your album. Can you explain why, "Rumors", which appeared in 1977, has become one of the most popular and successful records in pop history?

Mick Fleetwood: Yes, I think I can explain. The band then vibrated, there was a lot of interpersonal dynamics. The relationships we have with each other, just fascinated. Another factor was that we were practically three different bands in one, with the voices of Christine, Stevie and Lindsey. Nevertheless, we harmonized vocally. The album also had a lot of content, emotional chaos, it was crazy. John and Chris were married and separated just Stevie and Lindsay fell apart, too. We all slept together and had to somehow incorporate them in the music.

Berliner Morgenpost: The music itself is timeless, right?

Mick Fleetwood: That's it. The album musically as such has survived. It does not sound outdated today. They started experimenting with drum machines and such stuff, which meant that many records from the eighties sound antiquated. Our albums were truly organic and have remained contained. The songs finally hung together as a complete, powerful work, not a single number dropped off over the others. Such a thing is rare.

Berliner Morgenpost: You have never made a secret of it, where are you politically.

Mick Fleetwood: Why should we? We are left. Where is justice denied, violence comes into play. We civilized nations should other ways of dealing as the master of war. There are always alternatives.

Berliner Morgenpost: "Do not Stop" They have played in 1993 at the inauguration of Bill Clinton ...

Mick Fleetwood: ... and at his departure from the White House again. Bill is a good guy. Unfortunately, there was no time then U.S. president, for whom we would want to occur. And Obama, whom we all appreciate very much, has indeed committed dear Bruce Springsteen. But if he hands over to Hillary in 2017, then I very much hope that we are there again.

Full Untranslated Article

ROCK LEGENDS FLEETWOOD MAC ARE COMING TO SWEDEN THIS WEEK

NOJO

Rocklegenderna i Fleetwood Mac kommer till Sverige i veckan.

Bandet som blev berömt för sina inre stridigheter har lugnat ner sig.

- I dag är jag verkligen lycklig, säger Mick Fleetwood till TT Spektra.

Fleetwood Mac kommer till Norden utan en ny platta i bagaget.

- Det är en ny erfarenhet att åka ut och spela låtar som vi hoppas att folk kommer att känna igen och älska, säger Mick Fleetwood.

"The Unleashed Tour" startade i USA i mars och Europadelen drar igång i Köpenhamn 8 oktober. Två dagar senare intar Mick Fleetwood, 62, John McVie, 63, Lindsey Buckingham, 60, och Stevie Nicks, 61,Globen i Stockholm.

Mick Fleetwood har lirat i Sverige flera gånger. Premiären var 11 maj 1968 på Club 700 i Örebro och han har trummat i Stockholm, Göteborg, Lund, Jönköping, Umeå och Örnsköldsvik.

- Jag gillar Sverige, så det ska bli trevligt att spela i Stockholm igen. Och jag tycker att vi låter bättre än någonsin.

Full Article

Loose Translation:

Rock legends of Fleetwood Mac is coming to Sweden this week.

The band that became famous for its internal strife has calmed down.

- Today I am really happy, "says Mick Fleetwood to TT spectra.

Fleetwood Mac, the Nordic countries, but a new flat in your luggage.

- There is a new experience to go out and play songs that we hope people will recognize and love, "says Mick Fleetwood.

"The Unleashed Tour" started in the U.S. in March and the European section kicks off in Copenhagen, 8 October. Two days later, taking Mick Fleetwood, 62, John McVie, 63, Lindsey Buckingham, 60, and Stevie Nicks, 61, Globen in Stockholm.

Mick Fleetwood has lirat in Sweden several times. The premiere was 11 May 1968 at Club 700 in Örebro and he has been drumming in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Lund University, Umeå and Örnsköldsvik.

- I like Sweden, so it'll be nice to play in Stockholm again. And I think we sound better than ever.