Bryce: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Two Tusks podcast. I'm Bryce. Hello, Jeff.
Jeff: Hello.
Bryce: Welcome back.
Jeff: Yes.
Bryce: It is side D. We are here on the fourth side of- Final side.
Bryce: Tusk. It's our final side.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: How do you feel after this, like, two-month project?
Jeff: I was actually thinking the other day about how I really want to take Tusk and make the Jeff.
Bryce: Version of.
Jeff: Tusk that only is like 10 songs.
Bryce: And mostly.
Jeff: Just the ones that I really like because there was there been some real bangers
Jeff: on here that i've enjoyed.
Bryce: Yeah but.
Jeff: I will say that side d is not it probably only has one song.
Bryce: I feel you on
Bryce: both of both counts yeah like i've been thinking over the
Bryce: past few weeks like what if you rearranged this into its
Bryce: three pieces among the three songwriters as
Bryce: three solo albums like three lps or something
Bryce: um but i also think that they might be
Bryce: they would each be too lopsided yeah i think there's
Bryce: something about all of them being really different and weird that's good
Bryce: and also yeah this is definitely the miscellaneous side of
Bryce: this album um but it also has some of my favorite musical moments there you.
Bryce: Go so there we go uh you want to jump into our first track here honey high jump
Bryce: right in honey high honey high honey hi honey hi let's uh listen to a little
Bryce: preview of honey high sure how could you forget honey high i couldn't,
Bryce: Honey High.
Jeff: Honey High.
Bryce: The first track off of Side D. How do we feel about Honey High? It's kind of slight.
Jeff: I listened to this one, and there was something that was, like,
Jeff: pulling at my brain, saying, what is it about this song?
Jeff: And I finally realized what it was today, the last time that I listened to it.
Jeff: You talked before about the Beach Boys influence. This sounds like a Beach Boys song.
Bryce: Like.
Jeff: Between the bongos and the—.
Bryce: The little wood— wood um wood blocks yep.
Jeff: It's got a very light kind of yacht rock tropical kind of vibe to it.
Bryce: Yeah um in that way it sits alongside
Bryce: um never make me cry right kind of
Bryce: the watery beachy imagery of it
Bryce: sure um in uh in get
Bryce: tusked the uh memoir about recording this by ken
Bryce: calais and ernan rojas they uh described this as uh christine actually christine
Bryce: had described it at the time as the island love groove song and when i found
Bryce: that quote earlier today i had to write it down because at no point did i think
Bryce: it was an island groove song that.
Jeff: That lines up perfectly with.
Bryce: My impression and.
Jeff: This was a christine joint okay.
Bryce: Yeah i.
Jeff: Thought that it was so sweet and saccharine i was like i'm pretty sure this is christine.
Bryce: Yeah though i do think you can piece out the the other voices and backup voices here.
Bryce: I think you can hear Stevie a good bit and a little bit of Lindsay in the backing vocals.
Bryce: This is kind of a strange song. I didn't get the island-y thing until I saw
Bryce: that. I legitimately didn't.
Bryce: I think I have...
Bryce: Paint a lot of this album as country.
Jeff: And i.
Bryce: Think in my head this was a this is a country song.
Jeff: You know it it possibly could be but i think that it was like the third time
Jeff: that listened to it that the the bongos i think that's what really like leans
Jeff: it more into that like kokomo kind of and you know i.
Bryce: Think i was stuck on um there's a little uh ding sound uh right after.
Jeff: That Yeah.
Bryce: And for some reason, yeah, I thought like, oh, it's kind of triangly.
Bryce: It's kind of giving farm triangle.
Bryce: But I, I have, I have like a really hot and cold relationship with the song.
Bryce: I think it's super catchy. Yeah, I think this is another song where by the time
Bryce: you get to the end of it, where it's doing this three or four part canon,
Bryce: basically, you're kind of locked in like,
Bryce: honey, honey, hi, daddy, I'm here to tell.
Bryce: Oh, I'm far away from like it's it's it's it that vocal interplay is so good.
Bryce: You just need all of this warm-up to
Bryce: get into it between a really strangely structured song yeah there's a lot of
Bryce: like um six measure phrases almost you know a lot of beats like why do you have
Bryce: this line here when you could just go right into the second chorus like a lot
Bryce: of little things like that it's.
Jeff: Kind of awkward i mean that's the thing that differentiates to me between this
Jeff: and a beach boy song is that beach boy songs are usually very smooth right.
Bryce: They're Very easy.
Jeff: To listen to. Whereas this one is a little bit disjointed.
Bryce: You're caught flat-footed when those structures are not in four measures.
Bryce: When there's six measures, I don't know. I think in other pop songs when there's
Bryce: a six-measure phrase, it's usually like, it sounds good.
Jeff: You.
Bryce: Don't it's rather rather you don't get this like like starting and stopping almost.
Jeff: Yeah of.
Bryce: Like wait are we nope okay now we're going into.
Jeff: There's a i mean this and i think this
Jeff: whole side like has a lot of this to it i think it's somewhat endemic
Jeff: of how a lot of this album
Jeff: has some really interesting ideas that i almost want
Jeff: to see yet another pass over yeah
Jeff: because like this one like a lot of the songs on
Jeff: this album i also feel like it doesn't have enough of a change like where a
Jeff: lot of these songs end up kind of just oozing together into one big verse right
Jeff: even if they do have chorus type of stuff that there's not much of a musical
Jeff: change or anything to signal that we're moving to a different part of the song.
Jeff: It's kind of this one droning tale.
Bryce: Yeah, that's a lot, especially on this side, for sure.
Jeff: Yeah. Also, this one might have the longest fade in.
Bryce: It's so long.
Jeff: I don't know, Tusk might have a longer fade in.
Bryce: It's so long, and it sounds really bad. I think it sounds so—they don't need
Bryce: it, because the instruments don't start at the same time fucking either.
Jeff: Yep. When I got in my car and I was driving over here, and I turned on,
Jeff: I usually listen to the side right before we record.
Jeff: And my phone was connected to my Bluetooth and I was like, did I not hit play?
Jeff: Did I not start? And then I heard it like really faintly.
Bryce: I felt the same thing when we were playing it here. I was like,
Bryce: I hit play, right? I don't want to like, oh my gosh. Yeah.
Jeff: Also, can we talk a little bit about daddy?
Bryce: Daddy, all I'm trying to tell you. This is...
Bryce: The third, if you look at the Fleetwood Mac's discography, so we're here on Tusk.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: But Christina V has two other daddy songs up to this point. Fleetwood,
Bryce: on Fleetwood Mac, she has Sugar Daddy.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: Which is, you know, if he wants to pour me whiskey, he can pour it neat, but he can't love me.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: And then Rumors, which had Oh Daddy.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: Which was kind of about Mick Fleetwood going through his own divorce.
Bryce: And so we also get daddy here in Honey High.
Jeff: Yeah, I think it's.
Bryce: So it's a part of this that like really has aged poorly or really weirdly for
Bryce: me, because I'm not into daddy imagery at all. I'm not for it.
Jeff: Well, yeah, I was I was thinking about like I was actually thinking a lot about
Jeff: this when I listened to this side because I was just kind of trying to find something to hang on to.
Jeff: But a lot of it was the idea that like this is from a different time and there
Jeff: probably has been an evolution of the way that that word is treated in popular
Jeff: culture that now makes it like stand out like a big bright light to me when I hear it in a song.
Jeff: And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, hello, daddy. Hello, daddy. Yeah.
Bryce: That's why. Go listen to Oh, daddy. From rumors. Oh, daddy. You know, you make me cry.
Jeff: Oh, goodness. Daddy. No. Oh, boy.
Bryce: Um another fun story from the get test book about this uh at one point they
Bryce: are they recorded a fencing match in the studio okay,
Bryce: for honey hot percussion yeah uh they recorded a fencing match that was in time
Bryce: with the song okay i don't know what that means they.
Jeff: Invented beat saber so early.
Bryce: They were the first stomp The first Beat Saber. A quote from Irnan,
Bryce: it was a lot of fun and it sounded great, but eventually we had to erase it
Bryce: when we ran out of tracks while recording the background vocals.
Jeff: What a weird reason to remove something so interesting and experimental.
Bryce: It sounded good, but, you know, the suits made us get ruined.
Jeff: Do we have another tape anywhere in here? Do we have any more?
Bryce: Now, granted, at the time, that's a real excuse.
Jeff: Sure.
Bryce: You know, mixing consoles, I think, that they were using in that studio was probably 24 tracks.
Bryce: And then I think they had like a 16 track second guy.
Bryce: They had a little fella over in the corner. That's the quickest way for me to describe it.
Jeff: I'm trying to imagine what that would sound like. Because this song is so chill.
Jeff: And having this kind of like, it might have been the spice that I needed to jazz it up a little bit.
Bryce: Well, let's listen to the alternate version of Honey High. This one is going to be different.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: Here we go.
Bryce: The alternate Honey High. It sounds more like a demo.
Bryce: Just guitar, keyboard, and Christine's vocal track. Probably a scratch vocal
Bryce: from the actual recording of it.
Bryce: And so you don't get the canon part at the end with the multiple voices. No background vocals.
Bryce: Something about this version of this song makes Honey High catchier to me.
Bryce: Something about just the Honey Honey High...
Bryce: At the end is all i need.
Jeff: Like that's.
Bryce: That's such enough of a hook that it kind of outperforms the studio that portion of the studio version.
Jeff: Well i did notice that daddy isn't with us anymore no daddy
Jeff: um no i agree that uh the
Jeff: thing is that i think that that the lyrics
Jeff: seem like they've been simplified in a way that that does just kind
Jeff: of cut to the heart of the sweet little song that we've got here um i think
Jeff: that though it loses a lot by simplifying the the music right by only having
Jeff: the couple of instruments yeah
Jeff: like i mean you know maybe adding add the fencing back in or it definitely.
Bryce: Goes from feeling like a band's song to christine's song.
Jeff: Yes in.
Bryce: In in so many words um i,
Bryce: I think it's interesting also in those last honey, honey highs at the end is
Bryce: you hear without the backing vocals and without, you know, the the the sheen
Bryce: of getting a perfect take.
Bryce: You hear her voice cracking as she's trying to hit those high notes and kind
Bryce: of similar to what we talked about in in the earlier Lindsay song.
Bryce: Uh and i know i'm not wrong i
Bryce: think where uh you just have
Bryce: where you he where that cracking as kind
Bryce: of the voice shifts along the windpipe it cracks um it feels like that's here
Bryce: too the intention almost the intentionality of it but instead of leaving it
Bryce: so raw yeah in invisible i I guess, and I know I'm not wrong.
Bryce: It gets kind of smoothed out by having a nicer take, multiple background tracks.
Jeff: Well, it's kind of strange because this version seems more like something,
Jeff: the arrangement seems like it was made for a more impactful song.
Jeff: Like not to insult Christine, I like pop songs or stuff, but this seems like
Jeff: the sort of thing where if you took this and you put in a bass line and a normal
Jeff: drums, not even the bongos,
Jeff: this would be the sort of song I wanted to hear really smoothed out
Jeff: really produced really because then it would be very just very catchy earworm
Jeff: i don't need to really be zoned in on the lyrics when most of them are just
Jeff: the word words honey high like i don't need to hear every intonation of your
Jeff: voice as you soulfully channel the honey high because because.
Bryce: Unlike um never make me cry which is a like a vocal showcase.
Jeff: Right this is not yeah um.
Bryce: And even maybe those two songs are similar in like the depth of their lyrics
Bryce: but but at the same time never make me cry is much more read read readable.
Jeff: You can read into it yeah more.
Bryce: Than lord i really love you love you love you honey honey honey.
Jeff: You know like it's it's like a reminiscent the lyrical content is reminiscent
Jeff: of like a like a 60s song like a doo-wop song or like early Beatles of just like very simple.
Bryce: Love you, baby. Yeah.
Jeff: Uh, candy with one flavor.
Bryce: Um,
Bryce: a funny bit in get tusked so get tusked is
Bryce: written by ken and ernan and uh when ken
Bryce: is talking about honey high they don't talk about honey high very much in in
Bryce: the book other than like the whole band put it together they use a lot of little
Bryce: instruments and they had a fun time jamming it out but um so ernan kind of talks
Bryce: about that process and in ken's uh short section talking about it instead of
Bryce: talking anything about like the recording of the song he mentions that uh.
Bryce: Christine gets dropped off by dennis wilson who she's dating at
Bryce: the time sure the beach boy who he likes to party he's
Bryce: drinking and drugging yep and he drops her off in
Bryce: his new uh shelby cobra a sports car
Bryce: and uh ken uh
Bryce: kind of sees you know sees her get out and
Bryce: dennis ends up giving him a ride offers like hey do you
Bryce: want to take a ride in my fucking shelby cobra uh and
Bryce: he does yeah and uh he
Bryce: realizes that the jug of orange juice that dennis
Bryce: is drinking in the car is not just orange juice and that
Bryce: dennis really likes this car yeah and the
Bryce: streets of los angeles do not okay so
Bryce: just a fun little a fun little uh side journey
Bryce: there uh in honey high i i i honestly don't have too anything else to say about
Bryce: this because it does feel like a pretty big departure from where the studio
Bryce: version ended up but at the same time i see a straight line between these two things it's.
Jeff: Also i mean just i mean and because of the time between us recording these i
Jeff: you know kind of wipe my memory of some.
Bryce: Of the previous.
Jeff: Stuff and dig back in but the one thing i think that this side and this just
Jeff: goes for everything is that the the previous sides have had at least a few places
Jeff: where we've had some really raw emotional.
Bryce: Content and.
Jeff: This being more of kind of a just an easy going you know.
Bryce: Yeah you're great song uh is.
Jeff: Is very much a departure from that i could i could see it being i don't know
Jeff: i could see somebody turning that disc over and being like Wait, where am I now?
Bryce: When is it going to start? When is it starting?
Jeff: That's right.
Bryce: Well, why don't we take a real hard dog leg left and move on to the second song, why don't we?
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: Let's listen to a little bit of Beautiful Child before we talk about it.
Jeff: All right.
Bryce: Beautiful Child.
Bryce: That's maybe my favorite song on the album.
Jeff: Yum.
Bryce: Beautiful Child. It's really, it's great to sing to. I mean,
Bryce: that's going to be my number one with a bullet.
Bryce: It's amazing to sing to. If this is in your vocal range and you have a car with
Bryce: a sound speaker system, you should try singing Beautiful Child.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: Because you will go 95 miles per hour in your car.
Jeff: Oh, this makes you go really fast.
Bryce: It makes you go very fast.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: I'm not a child!
Bryce: How do you feel about Beautiful Child?
Jeff: I'm very confused by this song. Like, I think that when I first listened to it.
Bryce: Oh, yes, I forgot.
Jeff: No, continue. Yeah, when I first listened to it, I thought it was,
Jeff: like, you know, it's a Stevie Nicks, like, showcase, right?
Jeff: We're hearing her kind of do another one of these big kind of tone poem songs.
Jeff: The musically speaking, there's not a lot here. It's mostly just kind of backing her up.
Jeff: Um, and then I started kind of catching these snippets of the lyrics and I,
Jeff: I really, I think that I may not have the proper framework to,
Jeff: because there's a lot in here, you know, there's a part at the beginning about
Jeff: how you fell in love with me when I was 10 and,
Jeff: like, there's a read of this song that I don't know if this is like,
Jeff: like a, a person talking
Jeff: about getting into a relationship with somebody with a
Jeff: big age difference or something i don't know um
Jeff: i know that there are some a lot
Jeff: of the lyrics i really like i really like the your eyes say yes but you don't
Jeff: say don't say yes yeah because you know you you that common phrase is like your
Jeff: eyes say yes but your ankles say no way buddy uh but having that kind of inversion of that.
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: But I don't really know. I listened to this song like four or five times reading
Jeff: the lyrics trying to be like, what is this about?
Jeff: Because the vibes that I was getting, it was like, this could be a song about,
Jeff: about, um, falling in love young.
Jeff: You know, there's nothing that says there's an age difference in the song, but.
Bryce: Sure.
Jeff: I don't know. I was hoping that you might have some insight for me on this.
Bryce: I do, I do. So.
Bryce: This is one where, because of the sensitivity of the lyrics,
Bryce: the band did not really ask Stevie to explain it at the time.
Bryce: Though, as described in Get Tusk, it did come out later what the song was about.
Bryce: So the song was about Stevie's relationship with Derek Taylor.
Bryce: He was the press officer for the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Birds, and some other folks.
Bryce: And he was indeed much older than her. And so I think that's probably where
Bryce: most of that comes from, is that he was just significantly older.
Bryce: You could maybe add a reading of.
Bryce: Of maybe she's addressing Lindsay because they were like, I want to say like
Bryce: high school sweethearts, they they knew they were together for a long time.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: Since they were children, though, maybe not 10 years old.
Jeff: Right.
Bryce: Um, cause it, I mean.
Jeff: The, the read, I mean, I don't really know, but the read that I get when I hear
Jeff: this is that it's almost like a song about somebody who is younger that is dating
Jeff: somebody older, but who wants to do that.
Jeff: And that like, then as the song goes on, we kind of get into the second love
Jeff: you from afar stuff where it's almost like, well, this was something that happened
Jeff: and everybody was on board with it, but it was so tumultuous that it ended up kind of falling apart.
Jeff: And that the singer has made their peace with that sort of thing.
Jeff: And I don't know if that's right,
Jeff: but that was just what I got after listening to it a bunch of times.
Bryce: Yeah. I think the other thing that I picked up is that I think if you were to
Bryce: think of a time and place for the lyrics, I believe that they're meant to represent
Bryce: maybe their last day together.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: And I think you see that in some of the lyrics, right? You say it'll be harder
Bryce: in the morning. I wait for you to say just go.
Bryce: Like, those are very much like the morning after sort of messages.
Jeff: I think it's interesting because I do think that there's just like,
Jeff: there's like four lines in here that if you changed them would make this an entirely different.
Jeff: Like the, the, the very specific age call out at the beginning,
Jeff: I think does some strange, like it kind of, it, it points the song in a different
Jeff: direction that I think, um,
Jeff: a lot of the CB songs are a little bit more poetic and nebulous and stuff,
Jeff: but I think that kind of like having that lyric in there, I don't know.
Jeff: And it could just be like we were talking about the time difference of different
Jeff: social mores and stuff like that.
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: That it could just be that it comes off differently to me here in 2025 than it did when it came out.
Bryce: Absolutely. And I think we talked about this a little bit where Stevie's,
Bryce: the writing of Stevie's songs is intentionally.
Bryce: There's an.
Jeff: Ethereal airy.
Bryce: She writes about a lot of things.
Jeff: Right.
Bryce: She writes about a lot of things. And I think there's even a word where you
Bryce: can read Beautiful Child similarly
Bryce: to Sarah of like, okay, maybe this is also about like a lost child.
Bryce: And...
Bryce: And I'm putting some silence there.
Bryce: Apparently, when UNESCO, UNESCO and UNICEF in 1979, they called it the year
Bryce: of the child or the year of the international year of the child or something.
Jeff: Interesting. Okay.
Bryce: And apparently Stevie donated the royalties of this song to that foundation, to that campaign.
Bryce: And so I don't think you're far afield to say that it also might actually just be about a child,
Bryce: about losing a child or a child disappearing from your life.
Jeff: It's also, you know.
Bryce: It's many things.
Jeff: I've thought about this too, where like, um, this whole album,
Jeff: a lot of the songs, uh, like we talked about this when we,
Jeff: with going from what makes you think you're the one to storms where like the
Jeff: previous song will prime you in a way.
Jeff: And I think that there's a good possibility. I actually thought about just rearranging
Jeff: my little track list and listening, trying to listen to a song without listening
Jeff: to honey high first, because that's such a romantic song.
Jeff: And then it comes right into this that really starts out with that lyric that
Jeff: it was hard for me to see this as anything but a song about a romance.
Jeff: And it's very possible that it's just that's just happening because my brain
Jeff: is trying to make these sides into a narrative or a story. Yeah.
Jeff: Or the thing before has me thinking about that.
Bryce: And I think we talked about it briefly, but that tonal whiplash was intentional
Bryce: that at least at least on a high level,
Bryce: the idea of creating contrast between these these wildly different sounding songs,
Bryce: wildly different messaging of songs that that was intentional.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: But I think the intentionality was as the opposite, right?
Bryce: I think it was intentional to make a bit of chaos and mess, not necessarily
Bryce: to say, this is the best version of our story that is from here to here to here to here to here.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: It's just, everyone thinks we're going to go here, so we're going to zag on them.
Jeff: Right.
Bryce: You know?
Jeff: Yeah. The contrast.
Bryce: Yeah. Well, before I guess let's get into the alternate beautiful child. Okay.
Bryce: But I will say a few things before it. Similar to some of the other alternates that we've had.
Bryce: This one was also previously released.
Bryce: And so I'm just putting an asterisk here on what the like providence of this take might be.
Bryce: Only only because I think there's a world where they took. I think what we're
Bryce: going to listen to is a slightly earlier take or a slightly earlier mix of this.
Bryce: And I don't know how much from the initial time it was re-released to this current
Bryce: re-release for The Alternate Tusk if it was what that process looked like, right?
Jeff: Oh, okay. What happened between the two?
Bryce: Right. You know, I mean, granted, I don't know enough about the alternate test
Bryce: to say this was the philosophy of this recording either.
Jeff: Right.
Bryce: Or to say that that would be different than what they did with Beautiful Child.
Bryce: Anyway, this version makes me mad.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: This version makes me really mad.
Jeff: Makes you drive even faster.
Bryce: I drive 105 miles per hour. Here is the alternate Beautiful Child.
Bryce: It's like an experience. I'm chiming out over here.
Jeff: I thought this was the one that made you mad.
Bryce: It does make me mad.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: I've not approached the alternate versions in a sense of you took this from me.
Bryce: At no point during the other 19 songs do I listen to the alternate task and
Bryce: go like, we were robbed of this.
Bryce: You robbed us of the good version of Sarah.
Bryce: Like, I generally want to be like, this is what they ended up with.
Bryce: These were the decisions, but this alternate version of Beautiful Child with
Bryce: the electric guitars, with just the really soft kick drum, no snare at all.
Bryce: Yeah i i it's
Bryce: not as shined up as the the
Bryce: studio version is but the emotion
Bryce: and the drama in this version are just like
Bryce: a different like a completely different galaxy compared
Bryce: to the original take it's just even
Bryce: the vocals like that is i'm pretty sure that's almost the
Bryce: entire like vocal take from the
Bryce: studio version yeah like the only like the background vocals are
Bryce: different some of the vocals that she doesn't hear
Bryce: are a little different but generally that's the take that they use yeah
Bryce: and um i think
Bryce: it's one where addition by subtraction did not work um compared to pretty much
Bryce: any of the other examples on this album and that's what makes me mad is the
Bryce: sense that like damn you almost hit a perfect game on some level but you made me see your missteps.
Jeff: Uh i was very confused.
Bryce: Because when you told me that this version made you mad i.
Jeff: Thought it was because it was so terrible so i was listening to it i was like i kind of like.
Bryce: The way the guitar kind of comes in like it's good like that there's very little
Bryce: electric guitar in the studio version and it's pulling its weight and then summon this version.
Jeff: Yep.
Bryce: You know, it's not as poppy. It's not as poppy. I'll give it.
Bryce: It's not as poppy of an arrangement as the studio version, but God, like...
Jeff: I think it's, I don't know. I think it's one guitar track away from being like
Jeff: an 80s ballad, like the, you know, the.
Bryce: Some power chords.
Jeff: Right. Well, though, like the, like every rose has its thorn.
Bryce: Right?
Jeff: Like that electric guitar really makes it sound a lot more like an 80s song
Jeff: than something from before.
Jeff: Um no i i really i do think i like that version better the only thing is i i
Jeff: didn't because we didn't get that far down the lyrics i'd forgotten that there's
Jeff: one lyric in this that like there's one line in this thing that drives me up the damn wall is.
Bryce: It too trusting yes but then women usually.
Jeff: Are yes there are like three more words in that in that
Jeff: line than there need to be and it makes it really awkward where
Jeff: it has to all be kind of women usually are
Jeff: like yeah you know why is there yes too trusting
Jeff: but women usually are like that's
Jeff: a lot shorter but then women usually
Jeff: are and then that too trusting yes but then women
Jeff: i'm like no just trim it down because and it would it it wouldn't stick out
Jeff: in my mind except for the fact that like in a in a song where i have a hard
Jeff: time hearing lyrics a lot of times and i can make out just about every lyric
Jeff: to this song but that is like a run on sentence in the middle of a very interesting yes.
Bryce: But yeah it is it does almost have like a musical vibe cadence.
Jeff: Like too trusting yes well like you
Jeff: can a little expository like every line kind of is its own thing so i understand
Jeff: why you wouldn't want to break it into two lines it should be broken into two
Jeff: lines or they should cut out two or three of those words and just squeeze it
Jeff: together a little bit because out of all the lyrics here you know every line is like,
Jeff: very much its own thing. It's all out.
Jeff: It's all stark. You can hear it. You can get it. You know what the idea is.
Jeff: But that one line just like, I don't know, it bugs me grammatically and lyrically and musically.
Bryce: If anything, I think I, yeah, I...
Bryce: I do feel a little bit of a twinge with that line because it does feel,
Bryce: again, I think it's comforative sensibilities.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: Like, I would probably not want to say women are too trusting in the lyrics of a song.
Jeff: Well, then there's that part of it, too. Yes.
Bryce: Um but i um some of the other stuff here on the alternate is by not having that snare.
Bryce: Um going back and listening to the studio version
Bryce: makes you realize how forward that snare is and
Bryce: uh and i think it also creates more
Bryce: space for the bass by having less electric guitar
Bryce: it's another kind of song where the bass is doing a lot
Bryce: of work yeah um for what
Bryce: is another song where it kind of doesn't change the it
Bryce: feels like it doesn't like the lyrics change like there's enough
Bryce: structural change between okay this is a verse and a
Bryce: chorus we've got a verse and like a chorus a and a chorus b like okay
Bryce: there's a lot changing but at
Bryce: the same time musically we're kind of
Bryce: keep bouncing around what feels
Bryce: like some of this just the same couple of chords over and over
Bryce: again um which we'll fucking get into
Bryce: next with walk up in line too um and
Bryce: i also thought it was interesting that uh this
Bryce: has basically the final vocal take um because it's good in fact i I think part
Bryce: of what makes me think that this is an early take of the final cut is that the piano,
Bryce: right in the beginning, there's that bit where the piano is like a little late on a note.
Bryce: And it does that in this one, too.
Jeff: And there would be another one of these things where the piano track kind of
Jeff: got baked into the to the to the hole.
Bryce: Or did that mistake get baked in?
Bryce: There are other songs on tusk where there are
Bryce: bits that seem like a mistake are completely like
Bryce: in uh it's not that funny right we talked about
Bryce: the symbol the muting at the end of
Bryce: right of of not that funny and you
Bryce: know that sounds different in those two takes
Bryce: which to me signals that that's intentional
Bryce: that's written into the song right play a crash and
Bryce: then mute the middle love it for a brief period and
Bryce: and maybe that's just what it is here is like kind of lag on that seventh note
Bryce: maybe just like actually make it seem like oh it you know yeah um it's not perfect
Bryce: it's imperfect okay uh any other thoughts here on beautiful child the alternate.
Jeff: Um, I, there's a, something that I've felt a lot of times and I feel, uh,
Jeff: I feel it a lot on this alternate take, uh, which is that I sometimes wish that
Jeff: there was a version that had kind of even more instrumentation where we kind of,
Jeff: there, there's a, there's an idea in here about using some of the stripped down
Jeff: instrumentation to really like punctuate some of the lyrics.
Jeff: And I think that sometimes with Stevie songs, I can get, they can become a little
Jeff: monotonous because they're long and they're there.
Jeff: You got to really like Stevie Nicks for a lot of these songs.
Jeff: And so I do appreciate that electric guitar.
Jeff: And I kind of wish that we would see more of that, of like the rest of the band
Jeff: getting to to kind of help out, you know, we express some emotions in the background
Jeff: while these things are happening.
Jeff: I think I made a similar was the one about the underbook of the water imagery.
Bryce: Oh, Never Make Me Cry.
Jeff: Yeah, well, thinking about having more, you know, a less stripped down version
Jeff: that had a little bit more production.
Jeff: But then, again, I think that that's, I mean, you know, that's just my personal
Jeff: taste wish casting kind of stuff.
Bryce: But, I mean, that's probably some amount of reaction that people had listening to the original.
Bryce: It's like, why is this so weird? Couldn't you have just made a regular rock song?
Jeff: Right, right.
Bryce: All right, well, let's jump into another track here. Why don't we go to Walk It In Line, huh?
Bryce: This is another Lindsey Buckingham song. Here we go.
Bryce: All right, that's Walk a Thin Line. How do you feel about Walk a Thin Line?
Jeff: Oh, poor Lindsay. Poor Lindsay. He's out there all alone. He's got to walk that line.
Jeff: Nobody's listening. No one wants to listen to his wisdom. It's not.
Bryce: He's not subtle. I like Lindsay, but his songwriting is a little flat.
Jeff: I agree. I like this song.
Jeff: I do. It's very, it's like I like it, but I mean, it's like it does the,
Jeff: I like it, but there's nothing too notable about it. There's nothing that really stands out.
Jeff: It doesn't seem very experimental. It just seems like a very kind of basic song. The lyrics are basic.
Jeff: The instrumentation is very, I don't know, just regular.
Jeff: Like, I liked it, and I kept coming back to it trying to figure out if the only
Jeff: reason I liked it was because I just didn't have anything bad to say about it.
Jeff: Like, there's a difference between being inoffensive and actually being,
Jeff: like, you know, excited about a thing.
Bryce: It feels kind of like the opposite of Save Me a Place from Side A,
Bryce: where Save Me a Place is also kind of slow and tender and accompanied with this
Bryce: big vocal dubbing of multiple voices in the chorus,
Bryce: kind of giving this big pop.
Bryce: Where here on Walk a Thin Line,
Bryce: similarly, you know, it goes from one voices to many in a really interesting,
Bryce: cool interplay, especially on that, like, I walk a thin line, line. And,
Bryce: Because it sounds softer, it's not.
Bryce: I mean, for as like kind of obtuse as the song is, Save Me a Place is even more obtuse.
Bryce: And I think in that case, like the sentimentality to me plays a little stronger
Bryce: on Save Me a Place versus Walk a Thin Line, even though they both are impressive,
Bryce: slower Lindsay songs with impressive tracked vocals.
Jeff: I mean, I will say that this one, again, I don't want to repeat myself too much,
Jeff: but this is another one where it's just like, there's this kind of verse cadence
Jeff: and it's repeated five times and then the song is over.
Jeff: There's not like a appealing guitar solo. There's not even like,
Jeff: I think it would have been nice to have seen like a key change to emphasize
Jeff: like one of these verses or just,
Jeff: it's such a basic song that it's like, boy, put some gravy on this thing,
Jeff: like put some pepper on there.
Bryce: They talk about that in the book too of like
Bryce: it's just kind of two chords back and forth and we
Bryce: try you know we zhuzhed it up and we did all the vocal harmony interplays um
Bryce: uh who is this ken uh talks about this initially um it had started a little
Bryce: bit as a faster demo probably a little over 120 bpm that's always.
Jeff: 70 seconds long.
Bryce: So they slowed it down to about 69 bpm
Bryce: sure uh ken described it as a dreamy
Bryce: trance-like stoner ballad oh that
Bryce: makes a lot of sense yeah i do and i think
Bryce: we talked last time about the beach boys and their um smile album i believe
Bryce: smile is a big influence here on this i can see it um one of the stories about
Bryce: i believe it's this track is the the drumming on it this is this is one this
Bryce: is a drumming story this is yay,
Bryce: you want to let's let's listen back in just for another brief second here of
Bryce: the drums of walk a thin line,
Bryce: Did you catch it?
Jeff: I don't know that I did.
Bryce: Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it's kind of a Sarah situation.
Bryce: So Lindsay held a lot of control over his songs, would go and record,
Bryce: do a lot of recordings at his home.
Bryce: Some of the final tracks on Tusk are just straight recordings from Lindsay's home.
Bryce: Um this song uh mick fleetwood was very annoyed at the drumming that lindsey
Bryce: did on the song oh because he was really obsessed with this kind of military
Bryce: style march drum pattern that he learned,
Bryce: when i.
Jeff: When i took drum lessons like we started with like this would be the sort of
Jeff: thing that you would practice to like in year one because it's so just like
Jeff: and it just it's very basic it's the sort of.
Bryce: Thing that.
Jeff: I think anybody that's starting out on trap kit could be able to do.
Bryce: But that that fill that is in in this whole thing i think lindsey was really into that fill and,
Bryce: liked his drumming and mick
Bryce: didn't like it and so the uh this
Bryce: is not actually covered in get tusked but is part
Bryce: of the story of this so i don't know if this comes from mick's biography
Bryce: um from the 80s which i skimmed through but
Bryce: i didn't actually look into for this podcast um but
Bryce: uh mick did not like how much um lindsey's drum playing was like out of time
Bryce: and said like hey if we put this out it's gonna make me look bad yeah people
Bryce: are gonna think i did the drumming right so the drums on And this studio track are actually doubled.
Bryce: One is Lindsay.
Jeff: Oh.
Bryce: One is Mick.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: Playing the fixed drums.
Jeff: Okay. It works. There's doubled? Okay. Listen again. Yeah, yeah.
Bryce: We'll go back and listen to that same thing.
Jeff: Let me just see here.
Bryce: Left and right.
Jeff: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Bryce: Left and right.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: No, just like the Sarah pianos. Actually.
Jeff: I think that, I think that the reason it didn't stand out is because when you
Jeff: do that kind of double up, what it just sounds like is it sounds a little echoey, right?
Jeff: When you have two tracks that are similar right on top of each other,
Jeff: it can just make it sound like it's in, it was recorded in a larger room,
Jeff: you know? Uh, so I wasn't getting that at first.
Bryce: But, but you listen closely and they're not the same. They're not the same recording.
Jeff: Um, well, I don't know. So I've maintained through this entire project that
Jeff: I think that I don't know what Mick Fleetwood and John McVie did to be relegated
Jeff: to these studio musicians for a lot of this album.
Jeff: Like, I was so happy and tusked to hear Mick Fleetwood just get to go crazy on the drums.
Jeff: Like, wow. Okay.
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: Wow.
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: Lindsay, come on. And you get, if you want to, you know, sounds like people
Jeff: wanted to walk that thin line with you, Lindsay, and that you didn't want to.
Bryce: Well, before we get into the alternate for walk a thin line, just briefly.
Bryce: So I guess they tracked a version of walk a thin line. And then over a period
Bryce: of months, Lindsay would go in and overdub more and more into it.
Bryce: He would go and add something or replace a track.
Bryce: Um so there's some talk of like the
Bryce: the the version that we listen to the studio version doesn't
Bryce: have any hi-hats um it's again another kind of kick and snare as far as the
Bryce: drumming goes um there's some instances where like acoustic guitar has been
Bryce: put in to kind of replace the hi-hat um and so what we'll get here is a little
Bryce: truer to an i guess an early version of this slower,
Bryce: the still, you know, pre-slowdown, or post-slowdown walk-out-thin line.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: All right, here we go. The alternate. Walk-out-thin line.
Bryce: The alternate walk a thin line wow very different
Bryce: yeah um there uh i
Bryce: talked a bit just before about that a lot of this got overdubbed
Bryce: um and a lot of what's on here uh
Bryce: is what got overdubbed things like the toy piano in
Bryce: the second half okay the uh the hi-hat the
Bryce: rhythm guitar um a lot of pieces from this to the studio album kind of ship
Bryce: a theseist got changed right um and then of course all those backing backing
Bryce: vocals and interplay is not here yeah um how do you feel about this alternate version um.
Jeff: I love it when we were able to get to this point on this.
Bryce: Podcast where.
Jeff: Uh i i think i like the vocal track from the studio album better i don't like
Jeff: it being it's a little more ethereal here i think i like it being a little bit
Jeff: more grounded um but musically,
Jeff: uh i love this this is.
Bryce: What like.
Jeff: I'm looking for more.
Bryce: Really you know uh.
Jeff: I i did want to ask do we know if these are lindsey drums are these mick drums.
Bryce: That's a good question i would because.
Jeff: There's a lot of interesting stuff going on with the drums i mean the most of
Jeff: the hi-hat like it's in the right channel uh there's a lot of times where the
Jeff: hi-hat is being dropped like for a beat there's points where it's being opened and then closed.
Bryce: There's points.
Jeff: We're going to like a ride cymbal or something like that for.
Bryce: Like two.
Jeff: Beats and then back it sounds like we got brushes in play that are doing some
Jeff: of the i mean i don't know if that's the case or not but there's just a there
Jeff: was a lot more complexity.
Bryce: Yeah and.
Jeff: It's something that i've been yearning for is like if you're going to do something
Jeff: experimental wow this sounds like a ride on a ufo.
Bryce: Like give.
Jeff: Me the experiment.
Bryce: And so with this one i don't exactly know um because yeah this drum track,
Bryce: doesn't totally doesn't totally seem to follow the
Bryce: track on the studio album but this
Bryce: is also a way less compressed track i could
Bryce: totally see a world where if you especially with in
Bryce: a recording studio where you've got all of the different microphones micing
Bryce: a drum kit where you just took the
Bryce: drum and kick and then um you
Bryce: kind of went with the timing on those and maybe those
Bryce: were the sloppiness that we see in the studio album but again like you said
Bryce: there's a lot of technique in here that may have been mick so i don't i don't
Bryce: know the answer to that well but that it does it there are some things in there
Bryce: that do sound interesting like
Bryce: the hi-hat one One thing they talk about is that they would process...
Bryce: How they would process the vocal different tracks and i think what they did with a hi-hat.
Bryce: Is you it's just that hi-hat but you hear it
Bryce: have that um kind of not phasing
Bryce: but sort of this in and out effect um it
Bryce: sounds like the hi-hat is being fed through like
Bryce: a leslie speaker um if if your
Bryce: listeners are not aware a leslie speaker often used
Bryce: with an organ um like a hammond organ um
Bryce: it's a little speaker box that has a
Bryce: speaker in it but that speaker cone is on like
Bryce: a lazy susan it's on a rotating platform okay and it spins you turn it on and
Bryce: you run and it has to spin up and when it gets to speed it's all of the sound
Bryce: is coming out of that speaker but because it's changing direction and the microphone
Bryce: that's recording it is not you get this in and out um,
Bryce: hmm it's it's not phasing it's not doppler effect but you hear it kind of going
Bryce: the like like it's being swung around like on a rope almost like that's what
Bryce: that hi-hat sound is in this where it's like see.
Jeff: Now what i what i thought was it sounded like so it's interesting because there's
Jeff: a lot of different ways that you could take.
Bryce: This right.
Jeff: To me what it sounded like is is somebody hitting the hi-hat and then letting it open a little.
Bryce: Bit.
Jeff: Because when you have it clamped shut, it's a very tight sound.
Jeff: But you can just release it a little bit and get a little bit more of that,
Jeff: a little bit more of the dis-like part of it, as opposed to being a real quick
Jeff: snap and having it open and then close, which is why I was asking,
Jeff: there's a lot of this stuff that, in my mind, sounds like a jazz drummer doing
Jeff: interesting improvisational, not necessarily fills,
Jeff: but more like, you know, like I said, dropping things, switching for two beats
Jeff: to something else and then coming back.
Jeff: But that could also be what you were talking about,
Jeff: James Lindsay adding like track after track after track,
Jeff: like continuing to layer on individually recorded drum tracks that have been
Jeff: very specifically created to make that same style of effect so it's hard to
Jeff: say whether this is like a.
Bryce: Man or a machine that's like
Bryce: um to kind of go back to what you were talking about earlier that you prefer
Bryce: the i guess you know the instrumentation of this alternate version yeah more
Bryce: than the studio one um i i think i disagree there's something about the toy piano So...
Bryce: That I'm glad is not in the final studio mix. Like, I don't think I have anything against Toy Piano.
Bryce: But I think by this part of the album, even though it's not everywhere on here,
Bryce: I hear and I go like, oh, okay.
Jeff: I don't know. So after the kind of simplistic tracks on Honey High and Beautiful
Jeff: Child, and then given how interesting Tusk is, I think that it would have made
Jeff: for an interesting kind of transition up.
Jeff: We're moving between the kind of static or the kind of just basic arrangements
Jeff: in something a little bit more experimental than, OK, here's something that's very different.
Bryce: Hey, everyone, just a quick intermission and we'll get back to the music.
Bryce: Thanks for listening to Two Tusks. This mini-series was made possible by all
Bryce: of the support over at patreon.com slash lfgx.
Bryce: They got all of Two Tusks before anyone else with full song previews and enhanced audio quality.
Bryce: If you're interested in what's next, visit patreon.com slash lfgx.
Bryce: My name is Bryce Castillo. Check out the Marbles racing streams I do at the
Bryce: website marbles.win, or follow me on Twitch at brycas, B-R-Y-C-A-S,
Bryce: to join in on the fun every Thursday night.
Bryce: My co-host is Jeff S. Thank you to him for joining me, and please show him some
Bryce: love over on Rage Select on YouTube, where he's been covering new video game
Bryce: releases for over a decade.
Bryce: That's Rage Select on YouTube, or go to rageselect.com. You're listening to
Bryce: Two Tusks, hosted by Bryce C. and Jeff S., produced by Bryce Castillo.
Bryce: Fleetwood Mac's music, including Tusk Deluxe, The Dance, and Fleetwood Mac Live
Bryce: in Boston, are available everywhere from Warner Records. Now, back to the Tusks.
Bryce: All right, let's jump into song number four on Side D, the titular Tusk.
Jeff: Finally.
Bryce: Finally, we're here.
Jeff: Finally.
Bryce: It feels so weird talking about the song Tusk, 19 songs into Tusk.
Jeff: The title track?
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: Like one song from the end of the entire album. I know.
Bryce: Let's listen to the preview of Tusk because there's a lot to talk about Tusk.
Jeff: Sure.
Bryce: Okay. TUSK!
Jeff: TUSK!
Bryce: TUSK!
Bryce: It's wholly different than most everything else on the album.
Jeff: Absolutely.
Bryce: The very experimental song, TUSK.
Bryce: There's so many places to start, but I'd like to start on your impressions,
Bryce: because I have to imagine that if you listen to 18 of the songs on TUSK and
Bryce: then TUSK starts playing, you might go, what the fuck is this.
Jeff: Um yeah it
Jeff: it should come as no surprise that of these
Jeff: songs i don't know this this is
Jeff: definitely in like the top songs that i've heard on this album um it's definitely
Jeff: my favorite of this side okay it's what i've kind of wanted this entire time
Jeff: of something that's really out there it sounds completely different than everything
Jeff: else um more than anything i just to come to the end of the song.
Jeff: And I'm like, I want more of this.
Jeff: Like, I wish that there had been, there's been a longer song that it had a little bit more to it.
Bryce: Because after the drum solo, there's nothing.
Jeff: Yep.
Bryce: There's just shouting tusk and kind of jamming and some little vocal vamps and
Bryce: different like percussion additions.
Bryce: Like there's enough production-wise going on that from that point to the end
Bryce: of the song, like it's kind of changing and keeping things alive.
Bryce: But yeah, it's not like there's...
Bryce: A chorus to this fucking thing.
Jeff: Right is.
Bryce: That like what.
Jeff: It sounds like it's from a completely different band like it
Jeff: really does um it doesn't have any of the
Jeff: uh simple uh uh christine or lindsey kind of stuff and it's not lyrical like
Jeff: stevie song like it's it's very much a music forward track in a way that a lot
Jeff: of this has been lyrical focused and i think that's what i like so much about it.
Jeff: I love the, I love the drum solo of the marching band.
Jeff: You know, um, I love the fact that even before the marching band starts to come
Jeff: in, there's just like a, like a kind of a crowd noise behind the entire track
Jeff: that just makes it feel, I don't know, more like, like you're dirty and alive.
Bryce: You're filing into the arena and the gladiators are about to take their place.
Jeff: Right. It just, it just, it gives it an entirely different different tone.
Bryce: And i.
Jeff: Love it i love it.
Bryce: Um tusk is has
Bryce: a lot of interesting stories okay we'll start from where tusk
Bryce: starts which was on stage tusk
Bryce: actually started off as a stage riff so uh
Bryce: the touring element of fleetwood mac
Bryce: was uh it's kind
Bryce: of described as a paramilitary operation you get
Bryce: in get to the place we perform the songs and
Bryce: we go um you know fleetwood
Bryce: mac has been a band for a long time touring is something that they've done for
Bryce: a long time um and so uh that's that's part of it and to tell the to hear the
Bryce: story that occasionally in the few times where the band couldn't get a proper
Bryce: sound check in they would play a stage riff,
Bryce: as the audience was starting to come in or before the show would start.
Bryce: That way they could get levels and the stage riff that they would do,
Bryce: was dusk okay or was uh kind
Bryce: of a a drum a kind of a sure um
Bryce: and then a little bit of guitar strumming and so like in the original demo that
Bryce: they cut it really only just had the why don't you ask him if he's gonna stay
Bryce: or if he's going away line right and it would there wasn't even really the like
Bryce: big tusk moment it was just kind of that and then kind of that lindsey thing.
Bryce: And you're just kind of like, and you're just filling the words for something later.
Jeff: I mean, it does seem like a song, especially if you take the marching band aspect
Jeff: out of it, that could just go as long as you want it to.
Jeff: Right. Like it could just kind of keep repeating over and over again.
Bryce: If you listen to the on the re-release for Rumors, they're one of the discs is live, live tracks.
Bryce: And the intro to that, you can hear the stage riff.
Jeff: Just.
Bryce: A little it's still it doesn't sound like tusk.
Jeff: Yeah but.
Bryce: You hear that riff in this little like rock ditty rock jingle that they're doing.
Jeff: So that's.
Bryce: Kind of a funny uh funny little bit of providence there.
Jeff: Can i ask you a question about the song yes okay i don't know if you have any
Jeff: background information maybe uh i like um i like just screaming tusk but it
Jeff: also doesn't really have any context and it's also the name of the album and
Jeff: i'm curious if there's some kind of story about what Tusk, like,
Jeff: were we at the Natural History Museum and he had an idea for Fleetwood Mac album
Jeff: or go to the aquarium? Like, was there a...
Bryce: So, so, so they're, they're tracking the song and they're messing with the stage
Bryce: riff. It's still just kind of called stage riff at this point.
Bryce: And Lindsay realizes that every time he says Tusk, it gets a giggle out of the
Bryce: people who are listening.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: Because back then...
Bryce: Tusk, the word, tusk, the song, tusk, the meaning behind the song is penis.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: It's very penile.
Jeff: Good job, Lindsay. I would expect no less.
Bryce: And so, TURUS!
Jeff: I'm trying to think of a version of this song where it's just like...
Bryce: And so that uh with tusk
Bryce: becoming the title track it was
Bryce: uh it was slightly contentious choosing
Bryce: tusk to be the title track to be the image for the visual for it yeah um apparently
Bryce: before tusk was decided on the band had told stevie you were going to be on
Bryce: that cover they we fought we shot
Bryce: a photo of you like twirling a baton or something yeah it's gonna beat you,
Bryce: and then as they're making tusk the either the band or the record label hires someone to,
Bryce: like take photos and um there
Bryce: are multiple people working on photo photography projects around this album but
Bryce: one of them is to like take these photos for some sort
Bryce: of like african inspired like a collage of images
Bryce: which leads to the photo
Bryce: of scooter the dog biting at
Bryce: ken clay's leg his owner and uh that ended up being the task you can see his
Bryce: teeth bearing as he bites on the pant leg and uh bob was your uncle from that
Bryce: point on wow that decision uh,
Bryce: stevie was not a fan of oh i can imagine.
Jeff: That that most of the women in this band given the contentious nature of the
Jeff: songs and everything and then it's like you kind of have these back and forth
Jeff: so people kind of tell on their side of the story and expressing their emotions and then.
Bryce: They're just.
Jeff: Like i'm gonna call this album.
Bryce: Penis yeah we're gonna call this one penis and i.
Jeff: Can imagine everybody just going like oh god really.
Bryce: Yeah um stevie was very against
Bryce: it at the time um i don't
Bryce: know if this is apocryphal but i placed a
Bryce: curse on scooter oh no scooter or
Bryce: little scooter um and also
Bryce: ken posits a little more seriously in the
Bryce: book that probably the mixture of like of
Bryce: this action of calling the album tusk going with
Bryce: the picture of the dog alongside what happened
Bryce: at the end of rumors which was one of stevie's songs got cut
Bryce: at kind of the last second and it was a
Bryce: very meaningful song for her it comes back
Bryce: in their career later but um ken kind
Bryce: of posits that okay this is probably where stevie
Bryce: really kind of the straw
Bryce: broke the camel's back of like no i'm i'm going to really
Bryce: put in the effort to do a solo career right
Bryce: and then as we'll talk about later but that that
Bryce: would be pretty uh successful for stevie
Bryce: yeah where here um she's
Bryce: kind of noodling around and kind of stuck in this band where she uh seemingly
Bryce: was like not able to advocate for her songs in in a particularly healthy environment
Bryce: yeah um well that sucks it it does kind of suck um,
Bryce: But it's not Stevie's song, so we kind of have to move on.
Jeff: Sure.
Bryce: We talked a little bit, two episodes ago, about comedy and about smash cuts.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: About the smash cut as a technique. And this is the track with the smash cut
Bryce: with the drum solo in the middle of it from Mick Fleetwood.
Bryce: This is where we get into the part where I am questioning a little bit of Gip Tusk to the book.
Bryce: Because it was written in the in the in the
Bryce: 20s fuck me it was it was written after the
Bryce: pandemic hit um and so you
Bryce: know 40 some years after the events occurred
Bryce: so i i think that there are some pieces um that don't
Bryce: that may not track for example the story
Bryce: that i understood before reading get
Bryce: tussed was that that drum solo that they
Bryce: use from mick was a drum solo that was
Bryce: intended for a different song which is why this which is
Bryce: why it is at a different speed okay um but
Bryce: in get tusk ken uh says that uh that was all intentional and that that drum
Bryce: solo was like intentionally recorded at 167 bpm and then spliced in and then
Bryce: spliced in in intentionally for this track okay Okay.
Bryce: And there are a few other little things, little quibbles that just make, just remind me.
Bryce: And I guess it's worth reminding the audience that this is a prior,
Bryce: this is a quotation marks primary source.
Jeff: Sure.
Bryce: This is an air quotes primary source.
Jeff: So wait, I'm sorry. Do you, are you, are you saying that you don't quite believe
Jeff: that, that it was intentional?
Bryce: I don't.
Bryce: I just am not sure which story it is, whether it was a drum solo for another
Bryce: song or whether it was written for this song.
Jeff: Because I can see, I mean, just what occurs to me is that by the point where
Jeff: that comes in, you've got the marching band that you can hear very clearly.
Jeff: And unlike a lot of other types of music, the marching band is like very rhythmic in their own right.
Jeff: So it's almost like an inversion of what you would normally have instead of
Jeff: a steady drum and a more freeform instrument. You have these very regimented
Jeff: instruments with a big freeform drum solo over the top of it.
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: And I really wouldn't be surprised. Again, this is just my drummer blood coming
Jeff: up of just having McFleet going like, well, you've done this entire damn album
Jeff: and you got me playing on Kleenex boxes and you got me playing in a closet.
Jeff: You're playing your own drums over me.
Jeff: I want one damn second to just do something.
Bryce: Kill it. Yeah.
Jeff: And that wouldn't surprise me in the least if that was the case.
Bryce: Yeah. So we did talk about it. This has the USC marching marching band,
Bryce: the University of Southern California marching band.
Bryce: This was a whole ordeal to include this marching band. So they track Tusk, they record Tusk.
Bryce: And I think there's a short holiday break over the winter.
Bryce: And I think that this is when this moment happens where Mick is on vacation
Bryce: in like northern France.
Bryce: He's like sitting at a cafe and all of a sudden a big,
Bryce: village band starts parading down the street and it's this fertility festival
Bryce: and everyone's involved and it's this big beautiful thing and Mick's idea is
Bryce: we're going to do that no we're going to do that,
Bryce: so there we'll come back to that briefly So they contact the USC marching band,
Bryce: and they record it at Dodger Stadium.
Bryce: If you see the music video for Tusk, that is documenting this process.
Jeff: Mm-hmm.
Bryce: Looking at this process it's.
Jeff: A variety of scenes from the process.
Bryce: It's a whole first off john mcphee is not there he is on his boat in like the
Bryce: fucking atlantic ocean and so they have a cardboard cutout of john oh that's.
Jeff: What that was okay.
Bryce: And they're just carrying around his cardboard cutout doing his little smirky
Bryce: grin yeah because he wasn't there for that um,
Bryce: did you know that when you hire a marching band they probably won't tell you
Bryce: until the day of that the band must march oh.
Jeff: That makes a lot more sense that makes a lot more.
Bryce: Sense so yeah so the band like they
Bryce: have to march that's how they keep time right and
Bryce: everyone's like what the fuck you should have said something and so
Bryce: there is dodger stadium and already
Bryce: they're having this trouble there's 112 musicians on
Bryce: the field okay and at one
Bryce: point they're like how are they gonna hear if we play it over the speakers it's
Bryce: gonna have too much bleed on the microphones they're just gonna hear the the
Bryce: drum so how do we even do that well just get headphones just rent 120 headphones
Bryce: and we'll make it work which they were going to do yeah until the band had to march,
Bryce: And so ultimately they say, OK, I'm the I'm the conductor. Give me headphones.
Bryce: And then I think there's some there's some small speaker system that they set
Bryce: up where some people can hear something, but they ultimately have it kind of going to the conductor.
Bryce: OK, like I'm the conductor. I will do it fine.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: Then they record it. And actually they end up coming back. Do you know a VSO?
Jeff: No, I don't know what that is.
Bryce: So it comes up a lot in the talking about this album and a good bit in rumors
Bryce: because it was used to kind of save rumors.
Bryce: But a VSO is a variable speed oscillator.
Bryce: Goodness. I'm going to cut this way short.
Bryce: If you wanted to change the speed of something, you would use a VSO for this.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: And think of it like when you're watching a movie and let's say you had a button
Bryce: to kind of offset the sync.
Bryce: This is kind of like that imagine you had a knob and you could kind of change the timing,
Bryce: very kind of on the fly okay um that's
Bryce: kind of what the vso is i i
Bryce: recommend going and looking up what it actually is because
Bryce: i in my head i can see how it works i
Bryce: know how it works it you're tweening it's tweening
Bryce: it's just tweening but i can't describe it technically
Bryce: so i'm not going to but uh apparently they record the brass band and then have
Bryce: to vso the whole recording because they're not in time okay they're almost in
Bryce: time but they're not in time um but i think that also leads to a characteristic
Bryce: where the horns maybe are,
Bryce: maybe a little perfect i mean you talked uh you're not on the stand counselor
Bryce: but um But you said earlier that the horns are very clean and that the drums
Bryce: and all the other pieces around it are a little sloppier.
Bryce: And so that VSO process may have ironed it out.
Bryce: Ironed that out i guess to just get the what they got the
Bryce: hand to make the horns like really solid in fact um another
Bryce: thing on the tusk re-release if you go
Bryce: and listen to the b disc of demos and sessions uh
Bryce: we talked about how i know i'm not wrong has
Bryce: a lot of takes yeah on that disc tusk also has
Bryce: a lot of takes that kind of track like okay here is a recording of it as a stage
Bryce: riff here are a few different like in the processes and then one of the last
Bryce: ones there is an instrumental version just with presumably just the marching
Bryce: band and so it's just it's you got the horns wait a minute.
Jeff: You told me they taken they took out the hooga haga.
Bryce: But the hooga haga the best part
Bryce: so they record the the
Bryce: brass and they get in the song very cool we're not
Bryce: done there okay mick was so taken
Bryce: in france that let's keep
Bryce: doing it when this is
Bryce: this is mick speaking on our upcoming tour let's
Bryce: go and reach out to the local high school bands and have
Bryce: them learn the song and they'll come in during tusk
Bryce: and it'll be this huge moment it'll
Bryce: be this this gigantic moment for us right when
Bryce: the brass comes in and suddenly you have the the people of the
Bryce: town right you know so when
Bryce: i talked earlier about the accuracy of the get tusked book okay this is one
Bryce: of my quibbles see ken says that fleetwood mac would go and look at local marching
Bryce: bands and get them to to uh be a part of the concerts and he asserts that they actually did that.
Bryce: And i don't believe that's true
Bryce: okay rather i think there are a
Bryce: few instances where fleetwood mac did perform with them with a band usually
Bryce: the usc marching band um but not on tour i have not seen any evidence that actually
Bryce: it uh there was a marching band on tour on any of these dates well.
Jeff: No matter no matter how you slice it up it sounds like a logistical nightmare you're.
Bryce: Either taking an entire uh.
Jeff: Uh you're taking an entire band with you on tour you're gonna get like four
Jeff: more buses or you're trying to get the local high schools at every place that
Jeff: you go to to learn this song.
Bryce: Right well.
Jeff: Enough to play.
Bryce: On to just walk in for one song right yeah so i don't think that happened but
Bryce: ken is like ken is kind of confident that that it does happen mm-hmm,
Bryce: I'm not saying he's wrong, but there are many instances, including the one that
Bryce: we'll talk about at the end of the show, where a band does come on stage and perform with them.
Bryce: And so I'm not saying he's wrong, but I'm saying just little,
Bryce: little, little inconsistency.
Jeff: It's very possible that it could have happened once or twice.
Bryce: Right.
Jeff: But probably you would have a lot more documentation if it was a thing that
Jeff: happened through the entire tour.
Bryce: If it happened ever.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: Honestly like the only times that i
Bryce: am really aware of them playing is with the
Bryce: usc band in california so um that's
Bryce: that's tusk um it's
Bryce: there's even a longer story we that i
Bryce: don't even technically can't entirely wrap my head around
Bryce: but when they're recording this the drum beat
Bryce: that they're using is actually a loop but loop
Bryce: again there's not digital technology at the
Bryce: time to make a loop and so it was
Bryce: it was some duct tape
Bryce: sort of solution where they had a magnetic tape that they
Bryce: had able they were able to dub with this like
Bryce: same like measure or four measures
Bryce: of a drum uh recording and then
Bryce: that tape like winds around the
Bryce: room and it has to stay taut so
Bryce: it will get read and dubbed on the machines but
Bryce: then like it's confusing i kind of don't get it but tusk um before we jump into
Bryce: the alternate yeah just to kind of prime you i guess for the alternate here
Bryce: this is a just a different mix of tusk okay um so.
Jeff: It's not going to be significantly different than what we heard on the album.
Bryce: I'd like to see if you can you i'd like to see you point out the things that
Bryce: are different because i think you will um but yeah in general it is the same
Bryce: takes i believe it's pretty much the same audio information yeah but it's a
Bryce: slightly different remix okay all right well let's jump into that alternate tusk,
Bryce: the alternate task definitely.
Jeff: More uh definitely more silliness uh.
Bryce: In the alternate task for
Bryce: some reason that's the version that they put
Bryce: on this is one that is almost the almost
Bryce: exactly the final cut but with a little bit more of those vocals in the in the
Bryce: second half yeah and then like the brass you can hear it a little earlier you
Bryce: can hear like a phrase or two earlier other than that it's pretty similar you know maybe there's,
Bryce: slight you know maybe the compression's different maybe there are some smaller
Bryce: mixing things here but in general tusk is tusk yeah um but it may also speak to,
Bryce: the the way that that song was made you
Bryce: know like we think about the recording process for it right where they had to
Bryce: record it and then they had to go you know record it with the band and then
Bryce: with the bro the marching band and then mix it all together and versus something
Bryce: like you know we talked about like think about me which was they get in the
Bryce: studio and they play the second song,
Bryce: and bob is your uncle because it's just a rock song um and so maybe that's why,
Bryce: what we get here is so close to the final product just because um Hmm...
Bryce: There aren't a lot of like alternate takes right you know this is it well.
Jeff: I mean yeah once you add that that marching band component in it's like you're
Jeff: kind of locked in with that like.
Bryce: Yeah i.
Jeff: It's it's actually i don't know if uh in those other versions i would be interested
Jeff: because i can't really imagine this song as without that.
Bryce: Marching band.
Jeff: Like it sounds like it'd be very simple and kind of just sort of a loop without that i don't know.
Bryce: Yeah it leans a lot on that drum loop yeah um when
Bryce: you listen to the to the to those demos you know
Bryce: it's definitely drum loop forward um there's
Bryce: also not the the album there
Bryce: the i guess both of these versions of tusk have a lot of like percussion
Bryce: overdubs right like even if this
Bryce: is a song that is centered around this drum loop there are other percussive
Bryce: things that go on top of it yeah that make it not just be a loop you know there's
Bryce: a lot of like yeah you know or there but i mean more than just like the vocal
Bryce: bits there's a lot of bits where they kind of are improvising and changing it up without,
Bryce: always making it sound different um tusk tusk well.
Jeff: I i'm glad that mick uh got to see that band because, again,
Jeff: I think this is one of the more singular, like this one stands out from a lot
Jeff: of the other stuff around it.
Bryce: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we're going to wrap up the album here with another softer
Bryce: jam. Let's never forget.
Bryce: Let's listen to a little preview here of The Christine Closer.
Bryce: Never forget kind of a sweet little
Bryce: damn like more fucking whiplash yeah
Bryce: after tusk though yes um like
Bryce: tusk not being the closer and instead of being never forget and i think maybe
Bryce: alluded it alluded to it inside a but um there's a bit of it feels like continuity
Bryce: between never forget and over and over.
Bryce: Aesthetically, they're both kind of softer. They both are a little rambly,
Bryce: or maybe they're kind of, a little repetitive.
Bryce: I don't know. What do you feel about Never Forget?
Jeff: I, this is the most challenging song for me on this entire album,
Jeff: because this is such a, I don't know.
Jeff: This just seems like it was, this seems like it was,
Jeff: okay say it okay i don't want to i don't want to be mean but like this seems
Jeff: like uh you know killer you you went to chat gpt you typed in write me the lyrics
Jeff: to a soft rock song that could be that no one could find offensive ever in the
Jeff: history of all mankind and then you listen to it,
Jeff: musically you go is there anything to talk about no what's going on musically no and listening.
Bryce: To it even just now i was like oh this doesn't nothing changed.
Jeff: Yep like.
Bryce: There's a slight chord change.
Jeff: But it has a you know it has a chorus but
Jeff: like this is sometimes um
Jeff: a nice pop song my nice
Jeff: inoffensive pop song yeah is catchy and
Jeff: it works and there's a lot of christine songs that i like i can't
Jeff: find anything to grab onto with this it's not like
Jeff: yeah it's it's just it's so kind of
Jeff: a nothing burger you know come on baby let's
Jeff: get you know don't you be cold don't you be cold love
Jeff: is gold like i i could see this in the hands of a
Jeff: um like a blues band who could
Jeff: who could lyrically or musically oomph it up even with the same lyrics even
Jeff: with some of the same stuff but the way it is here it's just it's such a vanilla
Jeff: cake with buttercream frosting that i'm just like okay do i eat it no i don't
Jeff: have anything to say about it's like.
Bryce: I think it's a I think it's catchy in a way that I think...
Bryce: Pop songs have to be bad to be catchy hold on hold on uh i don't think katie
Bryce: perry is a good singer i think her voice is not particularly good sure for singing
Bryce: yeah her timbers not my preference,
Bryce: and i think that's partly why she's successful because it's not bad i just don't like it.
Jeff: I i don't know.
Bryce: And and and so i i guess where what i'm getting at it
Bryce: here is like i think this is fine and there are a few like almost like uncanny
Bryce: valley bits like the way she says stroll and the like two different ways she
Bryce: says it are like strange yeah we don't say stroll in America to begin with.
Bryce: We definitely don't say stutroll. I don't know.
Bryce: But it is catchy.
Jeff: I don't know.
Bryce: Never forget.
Jeff: The thing is that I go to Katy Perry. I've been known when doing projects to
Jeff: sometimes listen to the exact same song on repeat, like just for six hours at
Jeff: a time as just like a kind of a something to keep my motor running.
Jeff: And I have done that with specifically Hot and Cold by Katy Perry which is a
Jeff: much more dynamic song like is it the best song no but it's really catchy I mean with this it's like,
Jeff: the tempo is just low enough that it's a foot tapper but not like a getting
Jeff: you going foot tapper it's a it's a warm bath yeah on a mild afternoon I.
Bryce: Think I think if this song was on Rumors or the White Flea with Mac album,
Bryce: I think it would fit really well because I think there's a folk,
Bryce: a folk genre element to this that...
Bryce: Across the rest of the album i think is more succumbed to like country influence
Bryce: and i think between this and like honey high i feel like there's enough of a folky element to it.
Jeff: That.
Bryce: Like that's why i didn't feel any tropical elements to honey high because to
Bryce: me that's like a folk song.
Jeff: Yeah um.
Bryce: And the folks don't have palm trees are you kidding me no they would never in this economy.
Jeff: Also i i i think that i'm also just i'm judging this song harshly because like,
Jeff: tusk was the perfect end to this album of
Jeff: being the title track and the way that it kind of fades out
Jeff: and the way that it's so different it's such an excellent it's like an exclamation
Jeff: point tusk exclamation point yeah and then you have this come along and it's
Jeff: just like like i don't think i would be as irritated with this if it was pushed
Jeff: back into some of the other places that we were yeah But it doesn't seem to
Jeff: have the raw emotional element of some of the other songs.
Jeff: It's not lyrically as interesting as even some of the other Christine songs.
Jeff: Again, it's not that I hate it. It's just that it doesn't evoke much to me at all.
Bryce: So I feel like I'm going to look at the Christine songs on this album over and over. Think about me.
Jeff: I really did like think about me.
Bryce: Brown eyes. Never make me cry. Oh.
Bryce: I think this is a song where I think Christine needed to be challenged more.
Bryce: Like, I think Never Make Me Cry, we heard, you know, a huge shift between its
Bryce: earlier version, which would have been like a very piano forward,
Bryce: like Songbird 2 type song.
Bryce: And that song got challenged into being this very vocal forward kind of soundscape. Yeah.
Bryce: And for like Never Forget or over and over, I don't think there was as much
Bryce: challenging of like, can't this...
Bryce: I'm not gonna imagine i had a better word than this but can't this be better
Bryce: like can't we do more can't we do more with this because hit.
Jeff: It with the spice weasel.
Bryce: You would you would think that
Bryce: would be what you would find in this band that is defined by the way it,
Bryce: collaborates yeah and maybe this is part of the excess kind of coming back full
Bryce: circle of this was christine's song this is what she wanted and what she wanted
Bryce: was this very basic sense of a song there's.
Jeff: Also i mean i i again this could be me reading into stuff but you do i mean
Jeff: the one thing i like about a lot of the christine songs is that there's a lot
Jeff: of like emotional tumult between.
Bryce: The stevie nicks.
Jeff: Songs and uh lindsey's songs and so the idea of like giving the entire band
Jeff: just to sort of a little bit of a.
Bryce: Break let's just have.
Jeff: A let's just have some little basic let's just have a chicken and potatoes dinner
Jeff: and then we can go back to freebasing jalapenos tomorrow like.
Bryce: I mean yeah I mean that's the story about Think About Me right is like the band
Bryce: kind of came together and it was like oh yeah we're a fucking rock band we can
Bryce: just do this yeah I see that I it's also another track,
Bryce: with kind of a rim click that's been double tracked was it Brown Eyes Yeah,
Bryce: it was brown eyes. That's also got that click, that rim click.
Bryce: So I'm sure that was fun.
Jeff: I didn't really get that. But as I said, this song kept just flowing over my brain.
Bryce: I didn't get it to go inside.
Bryce: One... I have two more things here on Never Forget. One of them...
Bryce: There's a sound that you hear near the end of Never Forget.
Bryce: This like kind of whooshing, warbling sort of sound.
Jeff: Okay. Okay.
Bryce: I'm kind of stuck on this because it's in the alternate, but it's such a weird
Bryce: warbling sound that you would have to do a lot of work to make that sound.
Bryce: But it's also in the demo I don't it's just it's strange it's one of those things where I feel like,
Bryce: part of the idea of
Bryce: this album was to make strange sounds to make new sounds that people may not
Bryce: be used to hearing before I mean there are sounds that you hear in a studio
Bryce: all the time that are not interesting when you're in a studio but if you're
Bryce: not in a studio all the time then,
Bryce: holding down pressing down on a turntable to make it stop and go right is is
Bryce: something that people is novel to people especially in 1979 and so there's like
Bryce: this warbling effect with i it sounds like it's with a guitar but i don't know
Bryce: how else to describe it other than this like,
Bryce: wind whooshing sort of sound um but i but i i can't describe it any better than
Bryce: that and i I don't know how you would make that sound.
Jeff: Yeah. Maybe the air conditioning was on. Maybe there was a fan.
Bryce: Yeah, this grand studio, there's like a little window unit.
Jeff: Yep, yep.
Bryce: The last thing on Never Forget, I want to say this was probably a slightly earlier
Bryce: song that they recorded.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: I think the original title of it was Come On Baby.
Bryce: Um and come on baby they
Bryce: saw beautiful china said no we gotta
Bryce: change it um but the kind of what we talked about is like tusk probably should
Bryce: have been the closer for this album yeah and it was an intentional choice by
Bryce: the group to quote stifle expectations um the album was about the ups and downs of relationships.
Bryce: So by ending on never forget, you were ending on a more positive,
Bryce: slightly optimistic tone.
Jeff: I had thought of that when I first listened to this, of the idea of doing that. I don't know.
Bryce: I mean, it's there, but...
Jeff: I mean, but then you go back to this question of like, are you trying to challenge me or not?
Jeff: Like, if you're trying to challenge me, then get me out of my comfort space
Jeff: and let's go through this raw emotional journey that you've got going on and
Jeff: let's end with the lead singer of your band screaming penis into a microphone
Jeff: while the marching band is behind him.
Jeff: Like, you know, let's challenge it.
Bryce: Because so much of the rest of this album is challenging.
Jeff: Right.
Bryce: It is intentionally like being kind of a...
Jeff: A contrarian yeah a little bit of like.
Bryce: Just fuck you i'm gonna record in my bathroom.
Jeff: And we're.
Bryce: Gonna make a replica of my bathroom fuck you i'm gonna be on record saying that
Bryce: 1927 bathrooms are better than what we've got now.
Jeff: I mean fuck you i guess it's just a question because i think that the second
Jeff: time i listened to the song i thought of it as like i don't know this kind of
Jeff: feels like a like a nice gender neutral hug from somebody that you trust and
Jeff: it was like oh that's nice But then the more I thought about it,
Jeff: the more I started to get mad at it, where I was like, no,
Jeff: like you dragged me through all of your emotional turmoil and all of these weird
Jeff: songs full of all these strange ideas.
Jeff: You know, you're prone in the bathroom screaming.
Bryce: Fuck you!
Jeff: Screaming at me about this stuff. Don't give me a cookie and a pat on the back. But maybe.
Bryce: Maybe we're still human. Maybe we're not animals.
Jeff: Like, march off into the sunset with your crazy-ass band after you've had this
Jeff: frenetic drum solo and screamed the word Tusk at me inexplicably several times.
Jeff: Like, I think that that would be a more fitting end. And again,
Jeff: I want to say that it's not that I dislike this song, and I think that it might
Jeff: have worked in a different place.
Jeff: But I think that there is weight to how do you end the story,
Jeff: you know? It's like you can end a story in an interesting way,
Jeff: or you can make sure that when you get to the end of the story,
Jeff: it's all wrapped up in a nice bow and everybody feels fine. And those are two different things.
Jeff: And for this one, I think I just would have preferred the whole album was messy.
Jeff: Take your messiest song and your most experimental song and leave me with that
Jeff: to go like, wow, what a way to go out. because i.
Bryce: Mean i and i hear what you're saying too like it's an it's it's an interesting
Bryce: concept on paper but there's not a lot of other concepts that it sits next to
Bryce: that are that intentional.
Jeff: Yeah it feels like like mentally i'm sorry i don't want to keep
Jeff: harping on this but mentally in my head it's like the idea you talked about
Jeff: the concert thing of going through all of these songs which are all these different
Jeff: things and imagine if you're watching this as an audience and then tusk comes
Jeff: on and they're they're you know why don't you tell me that you won't go away
Jeff: And then suddenly a marching band streams down the hallways of the concert,
Jeff: playing this incredible thing.
Jeff: And then they stream up onto the stage and everybody screams Tusk.
Jeff: And then they all kind of wander off.
Jeff: And then the house lights come up, right? It just totally makes more sense to me.
Bryce: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean...
Jeff: I'm belaboring a little bit at this point.
Bryce: Well, we talked previously that it seemed like there was an idea going around
Bryce: through a lot of the recording sessions that this might be two projects.
Jeff: Right.
Bryce: Or this might be two separate disks or two separate products.
Bryce: And maybe that's a consequence of that, of we didn't really have anywhere else
Bryce: to put Never Forget, or we had to change tack so late in the project that nothing
Bryce: else can respond except the track listing.
Bryce: But then like either way you have to take that on the chin.
Jeff: Yeah because i don't know in looking at this last side it's like if we just
Jeff: try to find a place for never forget on this last side i don't think that it
Jeff: works well after beautiful child because that's such an impactful song and i
Jeff: don't know that it would work after walk a thin line um because it would just
Jeff: be kind of too much of the same back to back so and.
Bryce: Then what do you put on this side if you're replacing never forget to make room for it.
Jeff: I don't know i mean i would have to go it's.
Bryce: A longer it's a longer conversation.
Jeff: Like you would you could probably you could probably
Jeff: make a case for taking never forget somewhere back in like side one and then
Jeff: taking another one of christine's songs like think about me that is that does
Jeff: contrast more with what's on this last side and swap them out but then i feel
Jeff: like putting never forget on side one takes away that nice little uplifting
Jeff: pop song that you get after the first two kind of experimental things.
Jeff: So anyway, I mean.
Bryce: It's it's it's obviously not an easy problem to solve, you know,
Bryce: tracking out, you know, one album that is kind of three little albums,
Bryce: but then making everyone feel good.
Jeff: Right.
Bryce: You know, at the end of the day, you actually have to make the band feel good.
Bryce: Otherwise, they're not going to want to do it.
Bryce: Well, let's jump into the alternate. Never forget here. Not much to say about it.
Bryce: There we go. A little bit of organ.
Jeff: Yeah.
Bryce: Got a tambourine instead of the click.
Jeff: Yep.
Jeff: Better. Yeah. I mean, I thought musically a little bit more interesting.
Jeff: It had a little bit more character.
Jeff: I'm still not the biggest fan of the lyrics, but they were even sung in a little
Jeff: bit more expressive. Yeah, a little bit looser.
Jeff: I would be less. it's another slight yeah like.
Bryce: It does sound different enough compared to the studio cut.
Jeff: Yes but.
Bryce: Out of all of them it's like i don't even know they don't even talk about this
Bryce: one in the book um no they do talk about just briefly but like it's like yeah it's.
Jeff: It's a basic song it's a very basic song yeah like i i it kind of goes back to some of the,
Jeff: when i've talked in the past about lindsey's guitar where
Jeff: i'm like if you know if you guys are
Jeff: artists that like give it to me give it to me like full throttle yeah and so
Jeff: again the christine stuff is kind of hit or miss for me because sometimes it
Jeff: feels real out of place sometimes it seems like a nice respite um this one just
Jeff: doesn't seem to have as much to grab onto as a lot of the other ones yeah.
Bryce: Yeah um yeah i mean i don't even really have whatever.
Jeff: Like you know i.
Bryce: Think i don't like this song.
Jeff: I'm not coming around i think i'm not liking this song yeah well i mean it seems
Jeff: like the thing that you're most focused on is like what is that aquarium noise
Jeff: like that's all you've got what is it because it's not like there's anything
Jeff: about the lyrical content that's worth talking about. I mean, it's fine.
Bryce: It's fine.
Jeff: It's fine. My mom could listen to this song. It would be fine.
Bryce: Your mom probably did listen to this song.
Jeff: I probably did listen to this song. It was fine.
Bryce: And I think if you're in the band and this is one of the Christine songs that she's got, well...
Bryce: That's how Christine made her hits, writing simple songs.
Bryce: So I think, yeah, there probably just isn't, there's just not as much challenging going on of this track.
Jeff: And I mean, there's another thought that I've had about this,
Jeff: but it might be better saved if we're going to do like kind of end thoughts about the entire album.
Bryce: Yeah, we will.
Jeff: Because I did have a thought that I'd like to put in there that's kind of about.
Bryce: Well, let's jump into that because I don't fucking want to talk about Never Forget anymore.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: How did you feel now that we are at the end of this experience, Jeff?
Jeff: It was interesting. I don't think, like, I think that if I had just come to
Jeff: this album, if I just said, I'm going to listen to this Tusk album,
Jeff: I don't think I would have liked it.
Jeff: I think that it was one of those things where, like, I think that there's some
Jeff: music you like right away and some music you're ambivalent about and you don't like it.
Jeff: And some music you're ambivalent about, and then as you listen to it more,
Jeff: you start to appreciate it.
Jeff: And I think that I've appreciated this, especially with your insight and the
Jeff: alternate tracks. I didn't know anything about Fleetwood Mac coming into this.
Bryce: We have to do a follow-up episode where you just listen to rumors.
Bryce: Just you reacting to listening to rumors.
Bryce: Like, where is this guy been?
Jeff: But, you know, one of the things that I did think about that I think is worth
Jeff: pointing out is that I think that I've been a little bit of a harsher critic
Jeff: on this throughout this process, because a lot of these aren't really for me.
Jeff: But yesterday when I was thinking about this side, I was desperately trying
Jeff: to kind of dig into it. Yeah.
Jeff: I had to something that I think a lot of times we forget is that I'm listening
Jeff: to this from 2025 perspective.
Jeff: I came up and for the first time and for the first time, a lot of the music
Jeff: that I like tends to be more complex. It tends to be more produced.
Jeff: It tends to be faster. But all of that is a result of the evolution of music over the years.
Jeff: Like this could have an entirely different effect listening to it at the time.
Jeff: Like it may have come off as very experimental when it came out.
Jeff: Whereas nowadays, having heard the results of that experiment and then seen
Jeff: people iterate and iterate and iterate that, like, I guess I just want to give
Jeff: the band credit for, like, they wanted to try something and they did.
Jeff: And that's going out on a limb is a hard thing, especially, I mean,
Jeff: like what you just said, like, if their previous albums were a lot easier to
Jeff: digest, and this is more complex and challenging,
Jeff: like, it may not be my thing, but that's okay.
Jeff: Like um because it
Jeff: probably i don't know i don't know if this one of those albums where
Jeff: you know you hear about that stuff from time to time where there
Jeff: are less popular albums that then become like major influences like people talk
Jeff: about like oh the first time i listened to tusk it just changed my whole thoughts
Jeff: about how music could be created yeah um so there's a very good possibility
Jeff: that i'm missing out a little bit of that just because of where i'm coming from.
Jeff: But I just I guess I wanted to temper a little bit of my my harsh critiques
Jeff: of this album by saying that, like, you know, I'm coming to this from an entirely different viewpoint.
Bryce: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's part of what I want to do with this is to say like, hey, what?
Bryce: I mean, it doesn't help the listener much, I guess, if we are able to like perfectly
Bryce: replicate what people would have reacted to in the late 70s.
Bryce: But, yeah, I have felt kind of that way about this album,
Bryce: similar to how I feel about almost like the individual tracks of like,
Bryce: it doesn't leave a good first impression and it's tough to make it through.
Bryce: But if you get to the end of it what
Bryce: you'll find is a thought that
Bryce: has been like executed on
Bryce: well you know a lot of these songs like
Bryce: don't have good beginnings and so i think that's something i'm i'm
Bryce: like constantly having this friction with of like if
Bryce: you just did this today you would have just done this and you
Bryce: wouldn't have even needed to change much of anything just do this do you know
Bryce: you this thing that I really actually don't like when other people do I'm trying
Bryce: not to do it of like oh this movie would have been good if you just cut this
Bryce: scene sure and it's and so it is it's.
Jeff: I mean, it's a difference between taking it as it is, right?
Jeff: And I mean, you know, in my other stuff where I get into video games,
Jeff: a lot of times people will judge a product based on something that that product
Jeff: never said that it was going to do, never gave me an impression it was going
Jeff: to do, and yet it's being judged harshly for not doing something.
Jeff: And that is irritating. But by the same token, there's also,
Jeff: I think, an instinct in a lot of people who make art and who have been in production,
Jeff: especially editing, which I've both done a lot where you say,
Jeff: oh, man, I can just see some places where if you just had just.
Bryce: Do this and move this.
Jeff: Up and you just move this down here, you put this course over here,
Jeff: it would have it would have been a lot more.
Jeff: And those two things are hard to square.
Bryce: Absolutely.
Bryce: I hope that the listeners at least can take away some sense of the thought process at the time.
Bryce: I think that's probably the most objective goal I can try to have on this.
Bryce: It's like, I hope we can at least create some sort of a line between point A
Bryce: and point B of how these people thought, how they acted,
Bryce: and what their headspace was when making this music.
Bryce: Because i don't i don't think that it represents it doesn't represent a modern,
Bryce: sensibility this is not the way you make an album now but it also wasn't really the way you made an,
Bryce: So I just want to try to understand why I'm getting away from being objective. But why did you do this?
Jeff: Well, that's okay, too, because this is, I mean, music is about taste,
Jeff: right? Everybody has a different taste. There's just such thing as like an objectively perfect song.
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: Like, you know, you can probably play this entire album at 1.5x for me,
Jeff: and I would have maybe enjoyed it more.
Bryce: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jeff: Just because I like hierarchy.
Bryce: That would have made you like the ledge, just a little bit. yeah i um i just
Bryce: think it's it's so fascinating and with all of the stories i mean there are i i,
Bryce: think it's kind of also self-evident like why
Bryce: this band is attracts attention just
Bryce: because these stories are not primal
Bryce: but they do feel primary like
Bryce: rumors is about you know people who broke
Bryce: up and it's about your headspace and if you could say something to the person
Bryce: who broke up with you yeah and that's so enticing you know i mean it's no i
Bryce: don't think it's a mistake that the band even...
Bryce: The image of the band and even the band will accept the image that they are
Bryce: the musical soap opera. But you know what? They are.
Bryce: And they made some good songs.
Bryce: And...
Bryce: End of thought process, I guess. And I would like to make content.
Jeff: No, I definitely, that is something that's unique about this.
Jeff: And in thinking about it while you were just talking, it was like,
Jeff: I don't necessarily think that I, like, listening to Sgt.
Jeff: Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I don't feel like I know anything about what
Jeff: was going on in, you know, John Lennon's personal life based on those tracks.
Jeff: Whereas this is like a reality TV show where we're throwing drinks at people's faces.
Jeff: We got, we're going back and forth.
Jeff: We've got, you said, we got, she said, um, and there is, there is an attraction there.
Jeff: I think that it would be interesting to get the impression of somebody who had
Jeff: never listened to this before, who knows about the personal lives of the band,
Jeff: but then hasn't listened to this album.
Jeff: And then what did, what is their impression from just listening to this with
Jeff: a deeper, uh understanding of those.
Bryce: Relationships so i mean and i think that's
Bryce: another place where like this band is really poised
Bryce: to look flea
Bryce: and mac charted a few years ago yeah because of like a tiktok trend that went
Bryce: viral like there's still some magic in that old top hat sure sure even if lindsey's
Bryce: not even in the band anymore like there's something about it that that,
Bryce: attracts attention and i think it's very noble that the music is also good yeah you know um,
Bryce: in high school i listened to
Bryce: a lot of japanese pop music and a lot of these like
Bryce: girly girl groups like idol groups yeah and i
Bryce: look back at that time now and maybe
Bryce: maybe i'm finding some shades here that most people won't
Bryce: but um the the groups that like the big group that i liked there's a big like
Bryce: umbrella group around it part of why i liked them was because the guy who made
Bryce: their music was a rock star he like legitimately wrote tons of songs he wrote
Bryce: hundreds of songs for these bands um.
Bryce: And whatever you felt about the singers or the outfits or the like the end of
Bryce: the day, there was also so good music under there.
Jeff: Sure.
Bryce: You know, this is the guy who does the music for Rhythm Heaven, by the way.
Jeff: OK.
Bryce: It's that like, oh, like, like there's something there.
Bryce: And so I feel strangely, just to go from like the fucking purity of Japanese
Bryce: idols to fucking 79 Fleetwood Mac, I feel a similar sense of like the music is here and it's whole.
Bryce: Even if the music itself isn't experimental, this is a five-piece band that gave it their whole.
Bryce: I um when when i was looking up um like what to name this album i almost called
Bryce: this um a noble failure because there's like a whole thing about like what a noble failure is and,
Bryce: i think potentially tusk falls
Bryce: under that of like uh this band trying to make the most of their opportunity
Bryce: fully committing to everything that they do um and even if the results are relatively
Bryce: only 4 million copies oh only 4 million only 4.
Jeff: Million copies geez why even bother at that point.
Bryce: Um any other thoughts on tusk as a whole piece of text before we go into some other stuff no.
Jeff: I think that that kind of wraps it up an interesting i i think an interesting mess is maybe how i.
Bryce: Would say.
Jeff: There's a lot of ups and downs and some of it is great and some of it bored me to tears but uh.
Bryce: That's music yeah.
Jeff: That's how it is.
Bryce: So so after tusk comes out in 1979
Bryce: um the band ends up going on the
Bryce: tusk tour okay um the video that making
Bryce: of comes out even later they were like
Bryce: technical issues or something so it doesn't come out
Bryce: around the same time um and that
Bryce: tour i suppose really um
Bryce: really maybe permanent
Bryce: finalizes some of the the frustrations
Bryce: in the band some of the resentment or
Bryce: anger um they've members
Bryce: of the band have talked after the fact later that you know
Bryce: recording the albums is really difficult and
Bryce: going on tour is like five times as difficult um and i absolutely see why you're
Bryce: constantly in a new place you you're in the band that has as much drugs and
Bryce: drink as they want at all times um,
Bryce: Not to mention, there's probably a good amount of fucking going on in a band
Bryce: with people who fucking hate each other.
Jeff: Right.
Bryce: So, like, that's also really stressful.
Jeff: Also, I can't, I mean, interject, I can't imagine what it's like to then have
Jeff: to get up night after night and sing some of these emotionally raw songs.
Jeff: And there's got to be, I don't know, but there's got to be some kind of emotional
Jeff: calculus about like, do I keep poking at this wound to get a good rendition of this emotional song?
Jeff: Or do I let it become this degraded version because I've squeezed all the emotion
Jeff: out of it and we're just kind of going through the motions?
Jeff: Like, how do you sing what makes you think you're the one like three times a
Jeff: week with the with with the emotion of what's going on on this album?
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: And not like and then like those wounds that begat these songs that never heal
Jeff: because you just keep opening them up night after night for a big group of people
Jeff: screaming and cheering.
Jeff: And then, yeah, then go back and do a bunch of drugs and have weird sex or whatever.
Bryce: Yeah, I mean, because you go through all of this and the reward is you continue
Bryce: to have your lavish lifestyle of excess.
Bryce: People tell you that you're still geniuses, even when you make like the funky weird art album.
Jeff: Yep.
Bryce: So that kind of happens.
Bryce: A lot of the recording during the Tusk tour becomes Fleetwood Mac Live,
Bryce: which we've heard pieces of.
Bryce: Um tusk and sarah are
Bryce: singles and they are moderately successful i
Bryce: think there's a small fun fact that in the uk tusk at
Bryce: the time maybe still but at the time because
Bryce: it charted in the uk it was like the
Bryce: song with the most number of musicians in it to chart okay because there's 120
Bryce: 20 some people sure um after tusk the band doesn't put out another album until
Bryce: 1982's barrage um but in that meantime,
Bryce: uh stevie nicks goes and has her solo career bella donna comes out and is a
Bryce: pretty big hit lindsey releases an album called law and order um and those are
Bryce: more tepidly received yeah,
Bryce: lindsey's got um this song called trouble which is kind of a kind of a hit but
Bryce: it's also this very like kind of watery song so whatever um the band would get
Bryce: together to do mirage they,
Bryce: they got back to do like a pop album we're going to get richard dash it back
Bryce: from rumors he's going we're going to make a pop album and we're going to do
Bryce: it in france for some reason i'm.
Jeff: Going to recapture the magic of our youth.
Bryce: It's going to be great.
Jeff: It's going to be just exactly like it was.
Bryce: And mirage is a fine album yeah it's a fine album um then eventually uh uh you know it'd be a few
Bryce: years and they the band would be working on tango in the
Bryce: night after tango is done lindsey ends
Bryce: up leaving the band right before they go on tour like two
Bryce: weeks before they go on like they're the band have gotten together to
Bryce: sign the contracts to go on tour and he
Bryce: says i'm not going to go on tour i'm leaving the band which leads
Bryce: to like a a fucking brawl like stevie
Bryce: attacks him and chases him outside it's a it's a
Bryce: fucking wow whole thing um
Bryce: and so he doesn't go on that tour they
Bryce: end up getting these other two guitarists to replace him um the band goes on
Bryce: tour the band tries to cover without him then 1994 or 93 bill clinton is on
Bryce: the campaign trail and is using Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop as his campaign song,
Bryce: which leads to a small reunion in 94 of the band performing Don't Stop.
Bryce: And then their big reunion would be in 1997 for The Dance, where Lindsay would come back.
Bryce: They produced this live video and album.
Bryce: You may have seen it, honestly, for some of the ubiquity of it at the time.
Bryce: Um and then they end up going on tour again kind
Bryce: of in this new reunited uh mac okay
Bryce: um christine leaves a little bit after that um and
Bryce: then and then say you will comes out in 2003 and then
Bryce: that's kind of the fleetwood mac story um there's there's i mean i gave that
Bryce: was even longer than i expected that to go but um this is a band with a lot
Bryce: of story and it is a musical soap opera but I just wish there were better words
Bryce: to describe it like that,
Bryce: because it just feels unfortunately cheap.
Jeff: If you call it that. I guess maybe something to just, as we talk about this chaotic period,
Jeff: I don't really, you know, of Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks is really the only
Jeff: person I was familiar with before we started this.
Jeff: Was Lindsay Buckingham considered...
Jeff: Talented, like a, like a, like a talented, cause I mean like,
Jeff: yeah, he seems experimental, but he doesn't seem as experimental as some of
Jeff: the other acts that I've been able to think of.
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: Um, and then when he does the kind of basic stuff, he seems fine at it,
Jeff: but at no point does his guitar seem as good as some of the big notable guitarists that are out there.
Jeff: His vocals aren't, are fine, but they're not like, you know, something.
Bryce: That a.
Jeff: World-class musician that everybody knows like i be honest with you there's
Jeff: a lot of these songs where it was like christine and lindsey i could i had a
Jeff: hard time telling between the two of them so.
Bryce: I would say that he uh
Bryce: i would say that lindsey's like saddest right now
Bryce: is like as an underappreciated guitarist okay
Bryce: um that said like i
Bryce: think if you look at this this whole resume
Bryce: of his time in fleetwood mac that there's
Bryce: probably enough points where you go like that does
Bryce: seem questionable that maybe on a technique on technical reasons you would like
Bryce: not have him be you know some sort of like mount rushmore type figure like i
Bryce: think tusk probably does a lot of damage to the idea that he's a great guitar player well.
Jeff: And then also it seems like i mean just from the chronology that you laid out
Jeff: that like i again i don't know if i'm just making stuff up but what it sounds
Jeff: like is that he thought he was a genius himself and.
Bryce: You know oh.
Jeff: You guys are just holding me back and then you go out and don't actually manage
Jeff: to put anything out that that manages to wow people that.
Bryce: His strength.
Jeff: Was more as a part of this band.
Bryce: And not necessarily.
Jeff: As a solo entity in the way that like stevie nicks um.
Bryce: I could see that i mean it's definitely his assertion here
Bryce: by the time they're making tusk that what he can bring to the band is not just
Bryce: guitar playing but is in studio skills you know i don't just play the guitar
Bryce: i help everyone finish their songs i help make sure the albums sound good now.
Jeff: Build my bathroom.
Bryce: And and i don't i don't think that that's,
Bryce: even inherently wrong i don't think that there's anything that says that that's
Bryce: not true you know i think it's very possible that lindsey had a very big help
Bryce: a big hand in the production of rumors and parlayed that into a stronger hand in Tusk. Um...
Bryce: But I think he also has to be the one to take all of the response on the chin. Right.
Jeff: If you're going to be in charge, then when the plane comes down,
Jeff: it's going to come to you.
Bryce: So much so that on Tusk, on the actual printing of Tusk, it's on the vinyls.
Bryce: And I think you probably have it on the CD if I'm thinking about it.
Bryce: But um so they're you know uh tusk by fleetwood mac and every copy of tusk i've
Bryce: seen including the alternate tusk has another line says special thanks from
Bryce: the band to lindsey buckingham my goodness yeah wow yeah uh.
Jeff: I i'm starting to uh i'm starting to uh empathize with stevie dicks chasing
Jeff: him out in the parking lot.
Bryce: The ego.
Jeff: On this guy which i mean i don't know the the problem with this is that like
Jeff: it would be interesting to get into the you know the what if machine and.
Bryce: Be like.
Jeff: What what would tusk sound like without lindsey right.
Bryce: Oh may there there are
Bryce: what ifs maybe not the tusk one though um
Bryce: this one is a wild hair i'll leave to the audience yeah
Bryce: um in some point in get tusked
Bryce: i only caught this today but um the studio
Bryce: or i don't know if the record label or someone went back in and
Bryce: made a like 5.1 surround sound mix
Bryce: of tusk and i it sounded like there was
Bryce: a good amount of work from the engineering team
Bryce: to kind of maybe re-smooth tusk
Bryce: again in those 5.1 mixes okay
Bryce: but i don't i don't know enough about those
Bryce: to say to say more um just fascinating
Bryce: just because i mean
Bryce: not i i also
Bryce: think that like i've worked in plenty of collaborative
Bryce: and creative scenarios and i
Bryce: think i feel a certain amount of kinship to
Bryce: the scenarios and the stories of tusk of
Bryce: dealing with personalities dealing with outside
Bryce: voices dealing with technology and outside
Bryce: influences um and even uh you know at the time they had the they had the run
Bryce: of the land because they you know they had all this huge success yeah and even then.
Bryce: All that huge success was not an indicator that if you do it your way,
Bryce: it will be even more of the same.
Jeff: Sure.
Bryce: You know, it's complicated. Like this album, there's not necessarily one moral.
Bryce: It's just a lot of vignettes of what it's like to be dealing with a relationship.
Jeff: It's like life.
Bryce: It's like life.
Bryce: Before we head out, I want to do one last quick thing. We're going to send people
Bryce: out with a performance of Tusk from 1997 from The Dance.
Bryce: This is that big reunion where Lindsay came back and they're touring again.
Jeff: All right.
Bryce: So we're going to listen to a little bit of the live Tusk.
Jeff: Okay.
Bryce: Now imagine that in every city across America.
Jeff: It's very impressive. It's very impressive. And was that Lindsay?
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: Oh, okay.
Bryce: Yeah. So that was 1997, about 18 years after Tusk.
Jeff: Okay. I like that, Lindsay, more than what I heard on this album.
Jeff: Yeah. Even though I did miss a little bit of the kind of everybody's singing
Jeff: together, but I did appreciate the accordion.
Bryce: Yeah.
Jeff: And then I felt bad for Stevie because she didn't really have anything to do with it.
Bryce: She was going to shake, she was going to shake, and then her tambourine is not being picked up at all.
Jeff: Yep.
Bryce: Yeah. So that's a clip from The Dance, which they got a Grammy for that.
Jeff: Oh, okay.
Bryce: So like, hey, you know what? Maybe there's some magic in that hat.
Jeff: Sure.
Bryce: All right. Well, that's going to do it here for PsyD. And I think that'll do it here for Two Tusks.
Jeff: Cool.
Bryce: Unless we find some reason to come back again. But thank you,
Bryce: Jeff, for joining me on this journey.
Jeff: Yeah, no problem.
Bryce: Thank you to the listeners for joining us. And we are going to send you out
Bryce: with the dance version of Tusk. Thank you. Have a good one.