Tusk - Fleetwood Mac (1979)

Fleetwood Mac released Rumours in 1977 (released in February, missing my 3 months in 77 thread). It was (and is) one of the most successful and well-known albums in the history of rock music.

Obviously it’s hard to follow up such a massive success. Don’t repeat yourself, but don’t do things differently, and it will be a disappointment of it doesn’t sell better than the last one. And the band had written their own check and wasn’t going to be told “no” on basically anything they decided to do, which is (almost!) never a particularly good idea.

The decision was made to record in their own studio space, with no one really in charge except the band (and guitarist Lindsay Buckingham’s increasing control-freak-ism). The result was 10 months of recording that yielded an album that was not at all what the label (or a lot of Mac fans) wanted.

The songs are all over the map in terms of style; sometimes funny, sometimes absurd, sometimes beautiful. No one would deny that they were still an incredibly talented band, but the relations between the bandmembers were at an all-time low.

So in some ways you can add this to a long history of bands giving in to excess and poor quality control and releasing double albums that only have about one album’s worth of good music. Or you can add it to the list of follow-ups to things that were basically impossible to top.

You can also put it on the list of great Fleetwood Mac albums. The songs are varied but often solid. The good tracks are amazing, and the less good ones are at least fascinating.