[this transcript auto-generated]
Bryce:
[1:06] And we're back hello everybody welcome back to side c of two tusks yeah i'm bryce hi jeff oh.

Jeff:
[1:12] Do we have a name now.

Bryce:
[1:13] Oh yes we have a name legitimate name oh yes i'm calling it two tusks two tusks welcome back we're here for side c we are halfway through fleetwood max 1979 album tusk and today we're gonna be talking about uh the third uh disc the third side everything from angel all the way down to i know i'm not wrong um welcome back jeff oh.

Jeff:
[1:36] Thank you thanks for having me.

Bryce:
[1:37] I i am excited to talk about this because there's a lot of really good stories in these five songs um and also i think there's a a nice little diversity of sounds i think this is a really nice side just to kind of get general impressions and it's.

Jeff:
[1:53] Really interesting i feel like it um i feel like it changed dramatically.

Bryce:
[1:57] I feel like the.

Jeff:
[1:58] Songs we have here are very different than the stuff from the first uh disc entirely.

Bryce:
[2:03] Yeah and all of them feel different and different to each other yeah you want to jump into uh track one yeah.

Jeff:
[2:11] Absolutely let's go.

Bryce:
[2:12] Okay this is the stevie nicks uh single angel this is a uh kind of kind of country dance hall sort of song you want to do a preview of it absolutely here we go.

Bryce:
[3:32] So that's Angel. Very poppy. For all of the Stevie Nicks songs, certainly all the ones that we've gone through, it's the most upbeat. I guess maybe Sisters of the Moon. Man, that's right. We're just coming off of Sisters of the Moon. Oh my gosh.

Jeff:
[3:48] Yeah. What a swerve. What a swerve. When you put on that second disc, you're like, oh, I was in a whole different mood just a minute ago.

Bryce:
[3:56] How do you feel about Angel?

Jeff:
[3:59] Um angel frustrates me uh because i really like 75 to 80 percent of it uh and i have some some issues with it's so pedantic i don't know i what is what i don't know when you listen to one song over and over again and you get really into it you're just like oh i wish this one thing was like a little different yeah and for me it's the uh what it would it be like the bridge um or the, chorus the like the rhyme between good and understood and good and very good it's it's just it's very very good well and the thing is that when i was listening to it last night i pulled up the lyrics the rest of the lyrics are incredible yeah like this the ghosts and the fog and there's all this stuff in it it unlike a lot of the previous db nicks songs we've listened to it's got a good tempo uh a lot of the other musicians are getting to put in these little flourishes especially at the end um and john's bass.

Bryce:
[4:57] Is all over this.

Jeff:
[4:59] Yeah mix.

Bryce:
[4:59] Drumming is there's there's a there's like a little technique that he does.

Jeff:
[5:04] Kind of in.

Bryce:
[5:05] Between each phrase with the high hat where it's like.

Jeff:
[5:08] A little fill like a little flourish yeah and.

Bryce:
[5:13] And i love it because i feel like yeah, I feel like this band likes to have fun. I think they like, I think they do songs that are fun to do. I think there's a fun element to like, this is a fun song to sing.

Jeff:
[5:25] Yeah.

Bryce:
[5:25] You know, like I, I agree that especially those courts, the course lyrics are really simplistic.

Jeff:
[5:31] Right. Especially for a song called angel. The fact that it's like two thirds of the way through the song before we start talking about the angels, you know, that kind of comes in. Like I, at first I was like, shouldn't this be called good? like it shouldn't have called very very good or something.

Bryce:
[5:48] Like um.

Jeff:
[5:50] And then of course i don't know this is a standard jeff complaint it's also like six minutes long i.

Bryce:
[5:55] Think that it is a little bit of a longer one it could.

Jeff:
[5:59] Have it could have probably been trimmed down a little bit and one of the things that i noticed because it doesn't none of these songs have any or a lot of them don't have any really significant musical changes in them like a lot of songs when you.

Bryce:
[6:11] Listen to it.

Jeff:
[6:11] The chorus is like you know a whole other thing it's like you.

Bryce:
[6:15] Kind of have a this one a lot of cv songs are like this yeah right i mean sisters of the moon maybe it's kind of the opposite only because it's so like vocals then music it's very back and forth where you know we talked about with sarah has this progressive style where it just keeps layering and layering and laying on and building up yeah but not necessarily changing like an act you know um i definitely feel that um this is one of the songs that they recorded while um the film crew was in the studio okay so there was like a tusk making of this little mini film and so angel was one of the the songs that they're tracking during that and i believe it's this vocal tick that we're hearing that you they that they capture some of stevie performing along with like there's this very kind of, there's this interesting moment where she and lindsey are at a piano together and they're trying to work out the harmonies um and it's this very like hmm.

Bryce:
[7:17] Kind of contrived setup like like i would have thought that this was a skit almost because it's her and him and they're playing together and he's trying to play out the harmonies right so what you can do on a keyboard on a piano is say okay this this is the note and then play like okay this is the next note up we need this to be here right so when you play them together that they're just the right notes for the harmony you don't because sometimes people can do it in their by ear or in their head um but so anyway so they're doing this together just them at the piano, and they're just kind of having this back and forth of like well i need to know what you're gonna sing so if you're gonna give me a part and she's like well i just changed it it's this very like kind of upfront like oh how do you do well.

Jeff:
[8:03] It's funny because i didn't know if this was a good place to bring it up but that actually works well it's again i mentioned this last time where It's very strange to listen to this album where I'm only listening to like five songs at a time. And I feel like that blocks those songs together. And with this side, I felt like the last side, everybody was, you know, putting their laundry out on the table and really being up front with how they felt.

Bryce:
[8:28] Yeah.

Jeff:
[8:28] This side to me feels an awful lot like kind of the period of a relationship where you're starting to really actually get over the strong feelings and things are settling into.

Bryce:
[8:38] Past the honeymoon phase.

Jeff:
[8:39] Yeah. Well, well, more past the breakup phase where you're a little less hurt and a little bit more kind of coming back.

Bryce:
[8:46] I see. There's a funny story with Angel in the Get Tusked book. This was the memoir by Ken Calais and Hernan Rojas about Angel. And so they were tracking Angel in early April. April Fool's Day comes around. And they talk about the band playing little tricks on each other. And Hernan, the co-author of the book, he, the band, I guess, gets him to join in on the fun and play a prank on his girlfriend. And so his girlfriend, I want to say her name was, I don't remember it, sorry. Okay but she's gonna come into the studio and the idea was she would walk into the room and see oh ernan is like working with stevie on angel and uh so she walks in and uh and what stevie does is this kind of like oh ernan i'm i'm writing this song about you don't you get it you know like it's you and there's it's a big laugh and you know all of the band and even the girlfriend and get like oh ha ha that is how the brief relationship with ernan and stevie nix began oh yes okay it went from oh i'm joking about having a relationship with you i'm joking.

Jeff:
[10:04] Unless you unless you're.

Bryce:
[10:05] Unless you're into it i don't know that.

Jeff:
[10:06] I'm not joking but i'm totally.

Bryce:
[10:08] Okay for srs and um to kind of cut to the end of that by the time when tusk is done and the band is getting ready to perform stevie and ernan kind of go their own ways okay but um it's just a very funny a funny piece of the story that this song which is like stevie's kind of up song she even talks she talks about it in in that documentary like i wanted to have an up song i wanted to have something a little positive even though the lyrics are still pretty not necessarily positive they're kind of, witchy you know yeah like it goes through a fog right yeah like a haunted hour um so angel you know i think um kind of feels a little we we when we talked about uh think about me you know it's like it's like it's a rocking fleetwood back you kind of don't need to do too much with that this.

Jeff:
[11:06] Is what this is what i would have imagined a fleetwood max song would sound like before we started this this kind of uh strange experimental album.

Bryce:
[11:14] And also another we haven't talked about this too much but a very big brushstroke on this album of the country influence like this is definitely a western country dance hall style song yeah.

Jeff:
[11:26] What was the was it in the first side where there was a kind of the jug band ish.

Bryce:
[11:33] Kind of song was that uh the ledge was that the ledge The ledge is kind of like that. Oh, and, oh, no, never mind. Okay, I almost spoiled something. We'll just cut that. I almost spoiled something, and I'm glad I caught myself.

Jeff:
[11:46] Excellent, excellent.

Bryce:
[11:48] Yeah, the ledge kind of had some of that jug sound, and even like Save Me a Place, which is kind of that guitar ballad, has kind of that country twang to it.

Jeff:
[12:01] Yep.

Bryce:
[12:02] And so I think that's a really strong influence here in Angel, that after Tusk kind of goes away, there's not as much country in the rock and roll.

Jeff:
[12:11] Is it a thing where all musicians have one country phase in them and they just have to get it? Some of them stay there.

Bryce:
[12:19] I mean, this is an album from 1979. So their previous albums definitely have some country influence. But this one probably is stronger here, even.

Jeff:
[12:29] Is that kind of what the balance of folk rock is sitting in the middle of country and rock, and sometimes it swings one way and sometimes it swings the other kind of thing.

Bryce:
[12:38] Yeah, I think that's a good nail on it. You want to listen to the alternate version of Angel?

Jeff:
[12:44] Absolutely.

Bryce:
[12:44] From the alternate Tusk?

Jeff:
[12:45] Yes.

Bryce:
[12:46] All right, here we go. Well, there we go. The alternate angel. Most notably, a new vocal take from Stevie.

Jeff:
[17:48] Yeah.

Bryce:
[17:49] That is, I would say, in a lower register, it's definitely breathier. In a lot of cases, it sounds more sensual. Sometimes it's sensual. Sometimes it's very sentimental or sweet.

Jeff:
[18:05] Okay.

Bryce:
[18:05] Kind of, I don't know. the the thing i felt the other day listening to this take is that if this wasn't on.

Bryce:
[18:14] A release called the alternate tusk i think that this take would be completely inappropriate to release i i feel like it's there are parts of it that are really good of the vocal take and some of it that make me feel like this is embarrassed and this this is embarrassing to put out in this state like you there you probably could have done some dubs done some of these a little better and so with these we don't always know exactly the story it could be that this was one specific take um for some reason that wasn't spliced together with other takes or or what have you um and then there are some other little things that we've seen kind of across the board already the backup vocals are not finalized in a lot of cases they're wrong or out of time um the guitar on this is... Almost a little more like default there just is guitar on this song yeah where in the original it's again kind of addition by subtraction with the guitar like in the uh this kind of comes up in that tusk documentary as uh on the line uh i still look up when you come into the room you have the same white eyes the guitar is completely stopped at the start of that phrase and at the end in the studio version it just starts it comes in a little bit and they even saying like that's me seeing your eyes that's me online that's a scene um you.

Jeff:
[19:40] Always have to ask yourself like how much of this stuff is intentional and how much am i just ascribing uh.

Bryce:
[19:45] A great deal of.

Jeff:
[19:46] Intention to something that may have just been how it went.

Bryce:
[19:49] I posit that there's a good amount of intentionality okay on this level i mean i'm not here to say that like the guitar strings are her dad but but they did say that that that was something right um what else about angel i.

Jeff:
[20:05] Uh i think it would have been incredibly striking for this project if i had listened to that version.

Bryce:
[20:11] And then listen to the album version as the other one.

Jeff:
[20:14] Because i'm like oh my god what a revelation it feels like there's just you know the stevie knob was turned down to like.

Bryce:
[20:23] Five here.

Jeff:
[20:24] Where on the A lot of times it didn't... I think it's just because I've heard the other version. It didn't sound like she was singing as much. Like, it just sounded like, let's sing. Yeah.

Bryce:
[20:36] The angel. Yeah.

Jeff:
[20:38] And then on the musical side, when I was listening to it, it sounded very... It sounded very separated like everything kind of felt the image that came to my mind is it's like you know you get a burrito bowl and everything has been just put one off to the other you know it's like very discrete layers you need to mix it up and then like on the other one it was all mixed up it kind of had a a noisy chaos where it all kind of in the studio or the in the studio version where it uh it all comes together and blends together like it kind of overlaps a little bit more and especially where you've got you know the little guitar stuff the little drum stuff happening over here and the bass stuff and things changing i think that that kind of that kind of mix really keeps everything moving forward whereas here it just felt like everybody had to be on their best behavior because you could hear every single track like individually yeah um it.

Bryce:
[21:33] Definitely does feel the mix feels a little less unpolished feels more.

Jeff:
[21:38] Unpolished yeah in.

Bryce:
[21:39] In this alternate version for sure.

Jeff:
[21:41] Even though i did think that there were a few more guitar flourishes that i like in the alternate alternate version um i heard the guitar more yeah for sure i do i do kind of wish even going back to the studio version towards the end they really everybody really like kind of goes off the hook and just kind of really is going for it and i kind of wish that more of that energy had been present earlier earlier oh yeah.

Bryce:
[22:07] There is a lot of these songs on this album follow that same trajectory where it almost starts with a song we mentioned this a little bit where it almost seems like the band did realize they were starting to play.

Jeff:
[22:19] And they all.

Bryce:
[22:19] Kind of start at a different at different times um i and i definitely see that in.

Jeff:
[22:25] Like they all start cold and then as they play the song they kind of warm up and by the end sometimes you're getting some of the best parts, but it's like, why is this at the end? Put this in the middle.

Bryce:
[22:34] Because I feel like the studio version of Angel, for some reason, and maybe it's because of the age that I came up in, but, But Stevie's vocals, maybe, I think it's just the, I think it's that very first note. It's just that, is something about that done sound right. And it makes it feel jokey. It makes it feel like, oh, I'm doing country as a joke. But I was born in 1990 and that was when you were doing country as a joke and not just like as the thing you were doing.

Jeff:
[23:07] You could probably, I mean, for this entire album, as I think back to the songs that we've talked about, you could probably make a case with this album that Fleetwood Mac knows neither how to start or end a song very well. A lot of them kind of just drifted and a lot of them kind of just fade out at the end. And, you know, you think about stuff that has, I don't know, the first example that came to me was like Bohemian Rhapsody. It's just like, the song is starting, like, you know, where a lot of these are just this very kind of traditional, I'm going to start playing a guitar with little drums behind it. And then a few, everybody kind of joins in at their, at their leisure.

Bryce:
[23:44] Yeah.

Jeff:
[23:44] But.

Bryce:
[23:45] I, if I can have just a little bit of a side, Jack, here briefly.

Jeff:
[23:49] It's your podcast.

Bryce:
[23:51] Um in in like the art world um if you look at things like the dadaist movement or the fluxist movement you don't need to know what they are specifically but basically they were kind of counterculture movements against the way art was being platformed right it was why i did go to art college for like five years may not have a bfa okay we might not have a bfa and uh the idea of like okay well screw you art does not just have to be the things in a museum it's not just the things in a gallery it can be a pisser that i take off the wall it can be the painting that we made at a party and we all splash stuff on it um and that is a lot of what i feel in tusk the idea of we're going to upend capital N norms to push this music into another dimension. We're going to make this so weird because if we do it right, we'll find something a thousand times better than anything we could have planned.

Jeff:
[25:01] Interesting.

Bryce:
[25:02] Now I'm reading Tealy. Now I'm really reading into the guitar link.

Jeff:
[25:05] No, it's funny because... OK, this is going to sound just a little bit mean. OK, so I just want to preface this. I think that that very well could be the case. But I think if that is the case, that Fleetwood Mac is not talented enough because most of these songs, you know, we're not looking at a tonal chord progressions. We're not looking at like, you know, rhythm changes from four, four to three, five or like even three, three and kind of jazz.

Bryce:
[25:35] You kind of just get the sense of like a pop band gone mediocre.

Jeff:
[25:39] Right. Or it's like what it feels like to me. And I feel like I can say this because I personally have done this when I went to art school is sometimes you push yourself to be a creative genius and you learn that you're a journeyman workman. Like that you can do the thing very well, but that you're never going to be.

Bryce:
[25:58] You're not going to come up with E equals MC squared.

Jeff:
[26:00] Putting a dot on a white canvas and then having talking about the, you know, the importance of it in the universe.

Bryce:
[26:07] I mean, for what was technically the biggest pop band in the world.

Jeff:
[26:12] Yeah.

Bryce:
[26:12] Like, yeah, of course, you're not going to be able to do that. You motherfuckers did dreams. Like, what do you think is going to happen?

Jeff:
[26:18] Right. Again, I think I mentioned this in the first episode, but like when I think of that sort of thing, I think of a band like Captain Beefheart. Right. where it's just like going crazy and doing very, very strange things. And even some of the times that we've talked about like found sounds and instruments and stuff, you can kind of hear that, but it's never so much different than a traditional pop instrument or it's used in such a way that it, you know that something is different, but it's still just the backing of a track. Like last time we were talking about Not That Funny And you were telling me about how it was recorded in a prone position in this very, you know, and you can kind of hear that, but it's not so much different. Like, I don't think that when you first hear that song that you go, what is wrong with this man? Like you can imagine him standing at a microphone, singing that song in that.

Bryce:
[27:13] Tone so okay so my response to that is because i agree yeah absolutely it doesn't really sound like you don't listen to it completely unprompted and go why is he singing it like this he just sounds like he's singing it angry but i am and maybe this is my own vocal limitation but i feel like it's actually kind of tough to sing that song the way he sung it to sing it in that kind of angry, tone where you're not just shouting like i i i i'm i'm on i'm on board i'm just on the ship saying like there was land on the other side though sure there there might have been something over there sure um any other thoughts here as we round out angel just because i know like a lot i have a lot to talk about this week yeah.

Jeff:
[27:57] Absolutely let's move on i i like this song quite a bit it's just It's that

Jeff:
[28:01] one little chorus thing that keeps it from being like my favorite thing on the album or on this side.

Bryce:
[28:06] So, all right, well, let's move on to track number two. This is That's Enough for Me from Tusk. How about that for an ending?

Jeff:
[29:01] Yeah, there you go.

Bryce:
[29:02] Dun, dun, dun, dun.

Jeff:
[29:03] Even though as we started it, I was like, oh, here we go again. Wandered in.

Bryce:
[29:09] Very fuzzy. Very fuzzy guitar back. Also, it's a pretty full track, but arrangement-wise, it's pretty simple. It seems to be just guitar and bass and drum.

Jeff:
[29:20] Is there a banjo? Is that a banjo or is that a guitar in there? Sounds like a banjo.

Bryce:
[29:25] That's a great question. I want to say with the techniques that they were using then, it would have been a guitar played and then sped up to get that higher sound. It could have been a banjo. I know that Lindsey did have skills playing a banjo. He plays banjo in the 90s. But I think at the time it was kind of more just recorded and then shrink it up because it's a really nice sound. It does sound like a banjo but it almost sounds like a like a lute or something like a yeah like almost like an orchestral signed a sort of like high stringed guitar um and i love i i really love that that high guitar on it like it because there's no hi-hat there's no ride or cymbal really to keep you going that's like to me that's a little like eighth beat you know um kind of yeah i don't know and even the chorus of this where it's like just shout yeah yeah yeah like you know it's not easy to shout like that but to do it you have to put your whole fucking ass into it yep and they.

Jeff:
[30:36] Had to hang upside down.

Bryce:
[30:37] Uh on.

Jeff:
[30:38] A trapeze in order to do it.

Bryce:
[30:40] I am the buck, Um, how do you feel about that? That's enough for me.

Jeff:
[30:46] Um, now, traditionally, I'm not the biggest fan of when the, the folk needle swings too far towards country.

Bryce:
[30:52] Yeah.

Jeff:
[30:53] And the first few times I listened to the song, I was like, oh, this is another one of those kind of jug band, hoot nanny, uh, songs. But what's strange about this song is that, and it's, it's probably the length and it probably has something to do with the way that that guitar is. This song refused to to be disliked by me the more i listened to it the more it was like it's short it's snappy i like the kind of the the lyrical content is very kind of like, dark uh you know uh but in a way that i i can kind of identify with it's something i wish i saw more of on this album of these kind of like um like a vignette lyrics that are more abstract about feelings where maybe these two sentences don't actually make sense if you were to read them out loud in a TED talk. But as a like a signal of how you're like, oh, no, I know. I know that feeling. I've had that feeling before. So I ended up really liking it, even though I think the first few times I was like, oh, another one of these. And part of that too is probably the length because it's very snappy.

Bryce:
[31:58] It is. It's I mean, it's under two minutes. We just listen to the whole thing again. I think there's something in my head where I really want to connect this for some reason to a song that they did on Rumors, Never Going Back Again, which is just Lindsay singing and playing a guitar. And he does the finger picking, so it sounds like there are fucking three guitars playing at the same time.

Jeff:
[32:23] Sure.

Bryce:
[32:24] And for some reason, I feel that this song is like an inverse... Kin to to to that's enough for me like never going back again lyrically is like.

Bryce:
[32:37] I mean it's kind of what's said what's said on the tin like i had a bad time i'm not going to go do that again and this one is either from the other side of like yep you're coming back or this is what it feels like to give into the pressure of going back to the thing that hurt you yeah and yeah and i i you know it's not a lot of lyrics it's pretty it's pretty sparse but i think this is one of the times where lindsey's writing can shine on that on that critical level you know i think they say and get tusked that lindsey's like the weakest songwriter of the band and i wouldn't disagree if you they they couch it in certainly in terms of lyrics in terms of how his lyrics are put together i think they definitely can be kind of one note um he's a he's great at production i i love his his second uh solo album go insane but guess what go insane is about a lonely man who's really lonely and have you heard that he's lonely he's lonely oh oh and so that's that's we're like okay just play the guitar give me some fuzz yeah um and let us think about it you know um do you want to hear the alternate.

Bryce:
[34:00] For that's enough for me sure it is about as short as this one okay um here we go, That's enough for me with more jug band. An interesting one on the alternate tusk where the vocal track seems to pretty much be identical to the studio track.

Jeff:
[36:09] Yeah.

Bryce:
[36:10] There are not a lot of those or the times that there have been. It's not been particularly noticeable, but this one, it kind of sticks out given how different the backing arrangement becomes. You have gotten rid of all of the fuzz on the on the guitar. The bass. Yeah. Either it's like the unprocessed bass or it's like, but it sounds almost like a standup bass.

Jeff:
[36:33] Okay.

Bryce:
[36:34] We definitely hear the keyboards. You can hear kind of that, that kind of high guitar sounds like it's in there, but now it's not so high. Now it's just kind of like at normal speed.

Jeff:
[36:46] Yeah.

Bryce:
[36:46] And we even have the, a little extra little flavor in it, the intro of Christine going, i thought it for a long time i thought it was stevie saying shoot that's fast and in get tusked they say it's christine saying shit that's fast yeah but i hear shoot that's fast and i definitely hear it in stevie's voice okay so i heard shit.

Jeff:
[37:10] That's fast when.

Bryce:
[37:11] We're listening to it okay it may just.

Jeff:
[37:13] Be that my mind uh.

Bryce:
[37:15] They put it they put it hear profanity they put it in the lyrics and maybe that's what i was maybe that's why i'm thinking it's shoot but how do you feel about the defuzzed, that's enough for me.

Jeff:
[37:25] I think it loses something. It sounds... It's interesting out of all the songs that we've listened to alternate versions for. This one to me probably sounds the most like what I would consider a demo. Like when you hear unreleased... You used to get albums of unreleased stuff and you would hear like, oh, here's the demo version of this popular song. And what always strikes me is it feels like... I don't know how to say this because I don't do as much audio production but um uh maybe this works when it sounds like there's more like room tone in there like you would maybe compress the the waveform so that you didn't have anything but the music so there was you were just focusing on the music so what fills your ears is just music and lyrics yeah whereas in here it sounded like emptier it sounded like it was in a big room um and it was distracting i.

Bryce:
[38:20] Think that's pretty likely i mean the studio version is so is so compressed.

Jeff:
[38:26] Yeah and.

Bryce:
[38:26] Is so you know all of the dynamic ranges so squeezed out um, but i think across the board i mean i've tried not to look at like the waveforms or match things up you know or anything but the one thing i have noticed in editing this podcast is that the alternate tracks are definitely they're definitely less compressed there's way more dynamic range you could just fucking see it right you know and so i think that's part of it and some of it just has to come from the the changed arrangements with with the instruments on that Well.

Jeff:
[39:01] And for the song like this, I don't think it does it any favors. I think that having everything compressed into this like ultra flavorful, like form, like it's enough to just, I feel like this particular song, you just get swept away by it. Like you don't have any, you don't have any choice in it. You're going along for the ride for two minutes. And with the other one, it's like, it just felt sort of watered down and, you know, it was kind of hard to, to, I don't think I would have liked it nearly as much. like the when talking about how i didn't want to like it then i ended up like i don't think i would have liked.

Bryce:
[39:33] That alternate.

Jeff:
[39:34] Take as much.

Bryce:
[39:35] Yeah um also i think um the drums on this are pretty different i knew that elsewhere on this album they've done things where they've taken drums and processed them a lot to make them sound different or fuller or bigger and this is one where i i have to assume that this it's so weird because the voice track is the same and you they don't always do that if they have a new voice track to use but this one does have like harmonies and has double vocals so then maybe it's good enough to solve it i'm just trying to figure out, where it sits with the drums because that alternate version the drums are super light it sounds like it's on a little kit with brushes or something and then the studio version is bam bam bam bam bam bam a hundred percent and i think that's just a little bit of a question mark i guess i've got on that because, it's it's really it is so different but i can see a world where where they could say yeah like this alternate version is just the clean version of the studio or there's just less process we turn the processing on we threw the keyboards back in yeah maybe this was an early you know some of these it's like uh maybe this is what it looked the song looked like an early phase of an early an earlier stage but maybe not a different demo or.

Jeff:
[40:59] It's just an alternate take that didn't have any of the work that went into making the the final version sound like it actually did.

Bryce:
[41:06] Like maybe this.

Jeff:
[41:06] Is what that version sounded like when it first was recorded and then you go

Jeff:
[41:10] in and you work with it you work with it you work with it what you get out is that kind of processed.

Bryce:
[41:14] Yeah version so that's certainly um the story of a lot of the other songs here including some of the other songs on this album yep including uh number three you want to move on to broad eyes let's do it all right this is another christine mcvee joint and um right before we get in i we're going to listen to the preview here um my recommendation for listening is listen for the guitar listen for the electric guitar and where it is exactly where along the arrangement of the song is it in the intro or is it there in the bridge is it in the verse chorus etc okay.

Bryce:
[41:46] All right brown eyes from fleetwood mac, Alright, that's Brown Eyes. I like that song a lot. How do you feel about Brown Eyes?

Jeff:
[43:48] This song frustrates me to do that.

Bryce:
[43:49] Oh, really?

Jeff:
[43:53] This is going to be one of those ones I think we're doing our opposite of the spectrum. No, it's funny. I listen to this song a number of times, and every time I listen to it, I think the same thing. This feels like the 90 second intro before the song before the drums and in the air tonight come in and it turns into a different song like it feels like uh it feels like it's building to something and then it and then it's sha la la la and then it ends i'm not a big fan of the sha la la's um as a as a lyric i think that um that's.

Bryce:
[44:29] Two songs in a row where the chorus is just shalala shalala yeah.

Jeff:
[44:33] Yeah i mean at least that like in this that's enough for me it's like that's a very spartan song right so yeah it's shorter it's two minutes or is this one just kind of meanders along and then we've got a lot of shalala's uh to meander through and it's one of the reasons that that's frustrating to me is because i have seen evidence that this band could turn out great lyrical content. I have seen that Christine McVie can turn out great lyrical content.

Bryce:
[45:05] I was just talking to her up a minute ago.

Jeff:
[45:07] Put some lyrics, Christine.

Bryce:
[45:09] Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff:
[45:10] And it's not like the background music. It's a very, I don't know, it's a very soothing song if that's what you're into. I'm usually looking for a little bit more. I kind of want the songs to punch me in the face.

Bryce:
[45:22] Sure. This is definitely not a driving rock song.

Jeff:
[45:26] Yeah. It's kind of a warm bath song.

Bryce:
[45:29] Oh, yeah. It is kind of a seductive song with the lyrics. You know, with those brown eyes. What are you doing?

Jeff:
[45:35] Yeah.

Bryce:
[45:36] The guitar, we talked about the guitar just before we listened to it. It is pretty much not there until the chorus.

Jeff:
[45:43] Yep.

Bryce:
[45:44] And even when it's in the chorus, if you go back and listen, it's got a very heavy, like a wah-wah filter type of filter. It would have been a wah-wah back then. Now it's like an auto, we'd call it like an auto filter.

Jeff:
[45:55] Okay.

Bryce:
[45:56] But the, and the speeds are like very high. You can, you can kind of hear not like a guitar solo, but some sort of melody during that bridge. But the wah-wahs are also kind of happening in time. Okay. So you get this very like, I'm moving my hand because I don't have like, there's just a, it's, I don't know how to describe this.

Jeff:
[46:21] Yeah.

Bryce:
[46:21] It's, it's. So like with a wah-wah okay what a wah very quickly what a wah-wah is it's like a low-pass filter it's a filter basically yeah and it uh moves how much of the eq is filtered from very little to where you hear the whole thing all the way down to very uh almost all of it where you hear warm you're just just the lowest frequency you don't hear anything and if you go back and forth like that you do that in time then you get a very interesting like it's similar to like a it's similar to a tremolo it's similar to a vibrato but where those are pitch and volume this is the eq anyway that's your music lesson for the song um but another song where uh the guitars are addition by subtraction this is not really a tar song it's another funky bass song And it gives plenty of space for John to hit every single note. I mean, he doesn't really like get crazy with the bass, but that's not what he's doing in the song. He is here to be as much as like the metronome of the drums are to be on time. And because it's it's so big how how the bass guitar and the keys play off of each other.

Jeff:
[47:45] Um yeah i mean i guess that with with with so much with so few lyrics to get in the way i wish that there was a little bit more a little bit more complexity a little bit more letting people off the hook a little bit to do a little bit more fun stuff oh i see that yeah um like if the sha la la laws were like a on every other line and then you had a kind of a conversation between a guitar solo that goes back to sha la la or whatever like you can i can think of a few ways that you could maybe, jazz it up a little bit um.

Bryce:
[48:18] Some other things uh about brown eyes before we go to the alternate and they double tracked the rim click so that you the click that you hear through the whole track basically um so they double tracked it basically they recorded a take and then they had mick go and do just another take of just the click just that rim click oh.

Jeff:
[48:37] The uh where you're hitting the stick on the side.

Bryce:
[48:39] Yes yeah yeah okay and um mick didn't love doing that he was pretty much just click click click click for an hour yeah and uh that was really not a fun part of the recording it's.

Jeff:
[48:50] Not very fun unless you get to go back to you get to do some a few rim rim shots and then you get to go back to doing the actual drums.

Bryce:
[48:57] Yeah um another thing this is from get tusked but uh we talked previously christine was uh seeing dennis wilson at the time uh of the of the beach boys and um an interesting thing that they don't go into more detail in the book is that Dennis Wilson has green eyes, not brown eyes.

Jeff:
[49:16] Oh. Well, who are you talking about.

Bryce:
[49:18] Christine? Who are we talking about?

Jeff:
[49:20] Maybe she's just trying to throw everybody off the set. It's like, oh, I'd love those men with those brown eyes.

Bryce:
[49:25] Yeah. Well, I mean, the album is called Tusk. We can also take brown eyes to mean other things as well.

Jeff:
[49:33] Sure. I can actually see, I mean, now that you mention it, I forgot about the Beach Boys connection, but the Sha La La's do have a lot of Beach Boys.

Bryce:
[49:40] Kind of DNA.

Jeff:
[49:42] But it usually works better when you have like a five-part harmony.

Bryce:
[49:46] We're going to listen to, at the closing of this, we're going to listen to the live, a live version of Brown Eyes. And when you hear the shalalas, guess what? They're shalalas. It's Christine and Stevie and Lindsay.

Jeff:
[50:01] Oh, okay.

Bryce:
[50:02] And it sounds different. It's different, but it works really, really well on stage.

Jeff:
[50:07] There is something appealing to hearing multiple people singing together. Like, I don't know what it is, but it just, it makes it, I don't think I've ever heard a chorus where I've been like, ooh, no, get rid of the other two and let's just have the one.

Bryce:
[50:21] Yeah. It definitely makes the song feel a little different as well. It's maybe not as seductive, but still kind of cool. I think it's a cool song. It's a cool song. Maybe not seductive.

Jeff:
[50:32] Popping its collar.

Bryce:
[50:33] On the live one. Before we listen to the alternate version of Brown Eyes, I do want to play just a little bit. I want to play the end of the regular Brown Eyes for you.

Jeff:
[50:41] Okay.

Bryce:
[50:41] Because like other Fleetwood Mac songs, this one has a fade out. And like other Fleetwood Mac songs, there's stuff in the fade out.

Bryce:
[50:48] There's stuff in the fade out. All right. Here's that fade out.

Jeff:
[50:51] Like a ghost in fog.

Bryce:
[51:36] You want a little bit of guitar?

Jeff:
[51:37] I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's so funny because when you said that, it just made me think that all of these songs, a lot of these songs have been very just like, okay, just play the drums. You just play the beat. And then it's like, okay, we're getting ready to fade out. It's like, all right, I can just do whatever I want to. I can have a little solo right here. I can finally get out some of the creativity that I wanted to do.

Bryce:
[51:59] Put it in that.

Jeff:
[52:00] Okay.

Bryce:
[52:00] All right.

Jeff:
[52:01] All right.

Bryce:
[52:02] Now, it's time for the alternate, Brown Eyes.

Jeff:
[52:04] Okay.

Bryce:
[57:10] That's the alternate brown eyes.

Jeff:
[57:12] Well, where was this energy the whole time? That was amazing.

Bryce:
[57:16] Okay, let's play a quick game.

Jeff:
[57:17] Okay.

Bryce:
[57:18] There are three broad, general differences that I found that I think you could spot between that and the studio brown eyes.

Jeff:
[57:28] Okay.

Bryce:
[57:28] Could you, can you take a crack at what those three things probably are? They will be pretty obvious.

Jeff:
[57:34] Okay well obviously there's like four times as many lyrics as there are in the the the studio version brand new lyrics yeah a.

Bryce:
[57:45] Couple of lines in the chorus now yep some vamps at the end.

Jeff:
[57:48] Okay yes feels a lot fuller absolutely um uh i would definitely say that i mean because you pointed it out the guitar is much more present here uh a lot of guitar in it with a lot more kind of like improvisation and stuff that feels like it's it's really kind of filling in some of the gaps or some of the i don't want to say monotony but some of the more simplistic parts of the original yeah where there's like a lot more kind of guitar brought up to the front it's kind of what i've been wanting james lindsey to do this entire time is like come up in here with some of them high notes give me some little solos and stuff like show me your chops um also i noticed a lot more i don't know just had a lot more everything i don't remember because i'll be honest with you this was the song that i listened to least to on the album sure i'm not as familiar with it but, um there was a lot more drums and i don't know in the original version i think that there were parts where we went from the the kind of the rim hits to full-on snare drums but yeah i don't know just everything in here was just a lot there's a lot more there's a lot more of it yeah yeah um Yeah.

Bryce:
[58:59] I mean, you basically got it. In fact, the only thing, the only kind of difference would be that for some reason, Brown Eyes, the studio version of Brown Eyes, ends, I think it ends the same way as this alternate version does in that it has some shalala's and then there's a small phrase of just clicks to kind of wrap things up. But I think the fade out is so heavy on Brown Eyes, the studio version, you don't hear it. Whereas here you basically don't have that fade and i think you hear it all the way to the end so, good good catch on on all of those things um i've got a lot of story behind brown eyes that you would never have known okay so i'm not going to hang that over your head so back when fleetwood mac was first formed uh the original members uh included mick fleetwood and john mcphee But the guitarist at the time was Peter Green. He leaves the band in the early 70s. He has a bad LSD trip.

Jeff:
[59:59] This is during the jazz, the kind of the jazzy, funky times.

Bryce:
[1:00:03] Yeah. Yeah. And he has a bad LSD trip in somewhere in like Munich or Germany. And he's kind of overboard at that point. And so that leads to Fleetwood Mac looking for new guitarists, ultimately getting us to Lindsay and Stevie, joining the band. At some point when they're recording to us, they're recording it in L.A. At the Village Recorder, Studio D. And I guess word has kind of got out that Fleetwood Mac is in town and is recording. And hey, they're a bunch of hooligans. And so at one point, one Peter Green shows up and says, like, hey, what are you guys working on? And on the alternate tusk, most of the tracks are, they don't say, like, alternate version. They have a date on them. Brown Eyes doesn't have a date. Instead, it says, with Lindsay and Peter Green.

Jeff:
[1:00:52] Oh.

Bryce:
[1:00:53] This take is Lindsay and Peter Green playing together.

Jeff:
[1:00:56] Oh.

Bryce:
[1:00:57] So there is more guitar.

Jeff:
[1:00:59] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:00:59] There's fucking twice in it.

Jeff:
[1:01:02] And that would explain why it feels so different it feels so fucking different it's more like a blues song, more like a jazz song.

Bryce:
[1:01:11] There's a little technique that I presume Peter Green does a lot in this version where it's like going back and forth between two notes, and it's all over this alternate version and it's only in the fade out of the studio version oh see peter green came in and they recorded stuff with peter green yeah oh my god the original fleetwood mac guitarist but addition by subtraction and what the band has said is the only part that peter green is playing in the studio album is that lick in the fade out wow everything else oh yes what.

Jeff:
[1:01:52] A what a nice what a nice little homage a little easter egg for people Oh.

Bryce:
[1:01:58] I don't think I, I, I genuinely, I don't listen to, I mean, this, there's cool stuff in this alternate version, but I think it makes me like the studio version better. I like it. Than the negative space in the track i like kind of how cleared it is of guitars i mean don't get me wrong it's great and i think um what the guitar does in this alternate version, throw it in the live version do it in something else but i i don't know i i really sold more on the studio version with less guitar interesting you know but i i i'm gonna guess you disagree Well.

Jeff:
[1:02:42] Oh, yeah, yeah. I like the alternate version better, but I'm a more. Give me more. I'm a maximalist. I'm a hedonist. I'm a maximalist. Just give it to me. But, you know, it's funny when you tell that story, because, again, with all this stuff, you can never be sure whether you're a scribe meeting where there is none, right? But it feels like that alternate version, knowing that is like these three people that know each other slipping back into their old ways of just like, you know, we're noodling around and we're having fun and we know how to play with each other, especially. And again, you've read the book and I haven't, but like, there's a lot of Lindsay control stories that we've heard before. So the idea of just having the guitarist that, you know, come in and especially with a song like this, where, you know, the structure of the song is mostly bass and drums. I mean, like the, the lyrics can, can come in, but there's not so many of them. It's not like a Stevie Nicks song where you, you're really booing up the lyrics, right?

Bryce:
[1:03:44] Right.

Jeff:
[1:03:44] You just need to leave space for that.

Bryce:
[1:03:46] Even this alternate version where the lyrics are totally different.

Jeff:
[1:03:49] Right.

Bryce:
[1:03:49] There's still only so many lines.

Jeff:
[1:03:51] Right. There's a lot of shalala's. You can get away with doing stuff with the, you know, with and around the shalala's. So, I mean, again, I may be just putting my own thing out there, but it does sound that version sounded like everybody was having a little bit better time, which I maybe, maybe.

Bryce:
[1:04:09] Which.

Jeff:
[1:04:10] Again you know if you if you like the the more subdued version right that's a more kind of controlled edit of like we're being very intentional with what's going on whereas that one did give off more like jam vibes to.

Bryce:
[1:04:24] Me um and the studio version kind of reminds me a little bit of um from the rumors album uh gold dust woman a little bit the one where it's uh uh the the cowbell and instead of the snare and it's a it's a stevie nicks song just because it's another kind of darker kind of undersold song it's just being cool it's just doing its thing it's just being a mood yeah just the mood of a song sure um i think what happens is they record this version of brown eyes with some early version of lyrics and as it gets pared down and down, I presume there's a change, you know, rewrite the lyrics, rewrite them a different, because also the vocal treatment for Christine on this alternate version is completely different.

Jeff:
[1:05:14] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:05:15] In the studio version, it's like doubled. So it almost sounds like a chorus. Like it doesn't sound like there's a distinct first person voice.

Jeff:
[1:05:22] Sure.

Bryce:
[1:05:22] It sounds like two or three voices where here it's definitely Christine singing without really any doubling.

Jeff:
[1:05:27] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:05:27] Like backups. Hey everyone, just a quick intermission and we'll get back to the music. If you're enjoying Side C, Side D will be released in two weeks, but why wait? Listen to all four sides right now by subscribing on Patreon, patreon.com slash lfgx. Get the podcast feed for full-length previews and enhanced audio quality for the biggest, best Two Tusks experience. My name is Bryce Castillo. Check out the Marbles racing streams I do at the website marbles.win or follow me on Twitch at Brycas, B-R-Y-C-A-S to join in on the fun every Thursday night. My co-host is Jeff S. Thank you to him for joining me and please show him some love over on Rage Select, where he's been covering new video game releases for over a decade. That's Rage Select on YouTube or RageSelect.com. You're listening to Two Tusks, hosted by Bryce C. and Jeff S., produced by Bryce Castillo. Fleetwood Mac's music, including Tusk Deluxe and Live Deluxe, are available everywhere from Warner Records. Now, back to the Tusks. Got our own baby, won't you check it and see? You got a favor, it's 103.

Bryce:
[1:06:32] All right, three down, two more to go. Why don't we jump into Never Make Me Cry? This is another Christine song. Oh, a beautiful Christine McVie ballad. How do you feel about Never Make Me Cry?

Jeff:
[1:07:35] It's not my favorite, but it's a good song. It's just it's not necessarily my speed. While I was listening to it, I thought, I think Christine McVie might have written the world's greatest eighth grade dance, slow dance, let's slow it down song. Because it's not too long.

Bryce:
[1:07:51] It's not too long.

Jeff:
[1:07:51] I don't want people slow dancing for too long. It doesn't have any really objectionable lyrical content.

Bryce:
[1:07:58] She's even kind of crooning. Another sort of example of like kind of country, almost a little with her, just a little bit of her vocal lilt. This was, it's another short track. It's only like two verses. The ending is pretty quick. It does have like a interlude in the middle of it. Not exactly like a bridge or solo. No. um uh from get tusked the backing of this is about is like nine different guitars and each of them have been processed and handled in different ways okay um to give them a lot of character um this was a song that was written by christine apparently she wrote it on a yacht, for Dennis with Dennis, and this is like her love song to Dennis.

Jeff:
[1:08:49] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:08:49] Dennis is a bit of a party boy. He passed away a few years after Tusk came out, doing a lot of drinking and drugging.

Jeff:
[1:08:58] Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense because there is a I mean this is kind of a melancholy song as well with this this kind of strange like I'm going to love you no matter what do what you want.

Bryce:
[1:09:11] Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:09:11] You know.

Bryce:
[1:09:11] We talked about Was it Think About Me? You mentioned kind of the passivity of love in there. And I think that's very similar here. I think in the book, they describe it as it's her saying she's not going to clip his wings, basically. And another thing of them described, they described like the soundscape of this as Christine singing this from the bottom of the ocean.

Jeff:
[1:09:38] Okay, I can kind of see that.

Bryce:
[1:09:39] Right?

Jeff:
[1:09:40] It's kind of got some, you can kind of see the light coming through from way up above.

Bryce:
[1:09:44] Buoys and the seagulls. Yeah, absolutely. And... I think that just, I don't want to say that that makes this song better, but I really like that image that doesn't necessarily come across just in the music. But I think if you give someone enough to be like, oh, the bottom of the sea, and you're like, oh, you can kind of imagine the water ripples, and you can imagine, oh, okay.

Jeff:
[1:10:13] They did a 90s music video with some cheap CGI. Yeah the strong spotlight yeah just on christine yeah it also kind of reminds me just a little bit of um the emotional content of that's enough for me of this kind of there's like a pain but the pain is okay kind of vibe yeah i don't know i felt some kinship kind of between those was what contributed to me to this side being this kind of like post the bombastic breakup the more kind of just kind of sucks but you're getting better a little bit at a time type of thing.

Bryce:
[1:10:49] The perspective of this the lyrics on this song are I mean it starts with go and do what you want.

Jeff:
[1:10:55] Right.

Bryce:
[1:10:55] Which is is very passive it's very it's a little subservient like go ahead fuck around drink and drug whatever, but that is its own form of love I guess.

Jeff:
[1:11:11] I mean it's the it's experience experience of of of having accepted that you are emotionally connected to a mess right yeah is that like i i'm not going to be able to fix them i don't know how long this is going to last but i'm just going to never make me cry yeah yeah.

Bryce:
[1:11:27] It's almost a little easy come easy go with that like thinking about like the statement like you'll never make me cry.

Jeff:
[1:11:34] Someone.

Bryce:
[1:11:35] Who's cried before i, i i wouldn't throw that around willing willy nilly.

Jeff:
[1:11:43] Sure you.

Bryce:
[1:11:44] Could make people could make me fucking cry.

Jeff:
[1:11:46] Um well we have an internet now bryce it's easier it's happening way faster than ever before no i mean but i guess you know that does bring up that it is a sweet song but there is a sense of separation there right it's it's it's less i can't give you everything intimate And then, you know, when people are really into each other, that's when you get the throwing things and singing from the prone position in the bathroom. Yeah. You know, that kind of intense emotion, whereas this is it's kind of a reminds me a little bit of the band Morphine. I don't know. Just the overall sentiment.

Bryce:
[1:12:25] All right. Let's jump into the I'm excited to play the alternate for you.

Jeff:
[1:12:28] OK.

Bryce:
[1:12:29] So here we go. This is from the alternate task. Never make me cry. The alternate never make me cry.

Jeff:
[1:14:44] Interesting. That's really interesting.

Bryce:
[1:14:47] Yes!

Jeff:
[1:14:48] Yes!

Bryce:
[1:14:48] I think that's... That's the reaction.

Jeff:
[1:14:51] I've got a lot of thoughts about that. In the beginning... Okay, so I'm not entirely sure, because I listened to it this first time. At the end, it felt like, what, about halfway through, we started getting what sounded like a cello or something. That was kind of... In the beginning, it just seemed like it was vocals and piano.

Bryce:
[1:15:11] Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:15:11] And then we got that. And at the very end, there was like kind of a little bit of string.

Bryce:
[1:15:14] A little bit of string at the end.

Jeff:
[1:15:17] Before any of that came in, my first thought was like, this is what was written on the yacht in front of the piano, right? It didn't have all this other stuff. It was just this person singing. I think that I appreciate the piano here more than I've appreciated anything that Christine has done on the piano. And I think it's because this is so much less of a sedate version of this song. This song, this version has a lot more feeling in it and it's subtle, but it's definitely there. It feels like the other one was kind of, again, compressed into a smooth song, whereas this feels a little bit more raw. And I think that part of that is because you can really feel the a lot of the emotion comes through in the piano, not in a keyboard, but an actual like where the when.

Bryce:
[1:16:15] That low note starts.

Jeff:
[1:16:16] To come in.

Bryce:
[1:16:17] Like it's sweeping. Yes, it's very sweeping. The story is pretty similar to how you called it. Like she had written that and had gotten the piano part down pretty, pretty well. I mean, it sounds so, that was maybe a strange thing I had with it, too, is that the piano part is so fleshed out and so done that I'm surprised we still went to the studio album level. Like because there's a world in rumors there's a piano ballad that christine does it's songbird and i could totally see someone saying like songbird 2 this is your big ballad for the album yeah it's your big christine ballad but i i really do appreciate and, taking the vocals out of that piano accompaniment and just highlighting them because now now when i go back and listen to the original sorry when i go back and look at the original i start to hear the piano kind of call and response sometimes i'll be like i i kind of hear it and i don't know, i don't know that you would have gotten to that point if you wrote just a vocal line for a guitar-y soundscape song.

Jeff:
[1:17:41] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:17:42] What were you going to say?

Jeff:
[1:17:43] What I was going to say is, I don't know, again, this was really striking because I don't know that I've had such a reaction to one of, Christian McVie's songs just kind of whole cloth, is that there was like a kind of aggression in the piano in some of the ways that some of the hits were a little bit harder and you could hear them. That to me, in some ways, recontextualized the song of like as the impression that i got was that this is a lie like.

Bryce:
[1:18:14] That i.

Jeff:
[1:18:15] Do care but i know what i have to say to keep this going and you hear the feelings in the piano even if the words are everything's going to be all right that there's a kind of a there's more roiling in the musical background of the piano.

Bryce:
[1:18:32] But you know what's so funny is you say that but i agree in the opposite direction okay i think highlighting just a single vocal take, like really shows well granted you hear more of these like not vocal errors but just vocal strains where whatever for this scratch track that they recorded of her singing was not it correctly in time this bit was not correctly on pitch x y or z and, Even though the studio version's vocals are probably a little more perfect, all of just the very tiny ways it's imperfect are, like, magnified.

Jeff:
[1:19:16] I don't know that I have as much of a sense for that as you do. So, it's very possible that I'm just not hearing it, you know?

Bryce:
[1:19:22] Yeah. Like, hearing this alternate version made me completely come around to liking the studio version.

Jeff:
[1:19:31] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:19:31] Only because i think i was initially turned off a little by how slow and how kind of droning it is i mean i i want to know what it would have been like to hear this at the time because hearing the studio version now feels the aesthetic of the studio version today i would, i would my first impression would be oh okay this is kind of an easier production to do kind of just easier to drone some guitars and layer them and make them seem like a soundscape right but i wonder what it would have felt like back in in 79 only because that idea would not have been as prevalent mm-hmm.

Jeff:
[1:20:19] Interesting. I think it'd be really interesting to take this version because it is so sparse. And then if you could get like a karaoke track of the original version to put this with just the, you know, the vocals and the piano over the actual musical backing and see what you ended up with. If like the droning that you talked about got a little bit more broken up with the more imperfect emotional piano parts to give it a little bit more, a little bit oomphier of a hit.

Bryce:
[1:20:50] Yeah so i i really well i don't have an answer for this this isn't really talked about much in the get tusked book but i i would love to have been a fly on the wall for the conversation of going from the alternate version to the studio version yeah of hey let me i know we've been working on this song and you have a piano accompaniment and we were doing strings, um at one point they were recording timpanis with mick fleetwood that's not in that alternate track sure um and then to say hey let's try it a different way and and they make it sound like you know it it's not like lindsey shows up one day with this backing track like they do work on it for a good bit so i i i want to know how you get there yeah um i.

Jeff:
[1:21:45] Mean the other thing that's striking about it is i don't know maybe maybe you put this on the album and you've got this alternate track where you're like when we play this live this that's when you can do.

Bryce:
[1:21:55] That you do this one where.

Jeff:
[1:21:57] You know everybody gets to take a break and the spotlight is on christine and.

Bryce:
[1:22:00] Yeah the.

Jeff:
[1:22:01] Piano and just like kind of rocks it out.

Bryce:
[1:22:03] Uh for three minutes i believe this is one that did not get played live.

Jeff:
[1:22:08] Oh, okay.

Bryce:
[1:22:09] So it's... And I... Um i talked about go go insane a little bit earlier from lindsey buckingham but um i feel like a very similar thing happened with this and with that album which is he never he didn't really tour that album live much of it um partly because like the synths and the production stuff he was doing you couldn't you couldn't do live without a bunch of extra people right manning a bunch of big synths and shit three.

Jeff:
[1:22:36] Drum kits and.

Bryce:
[1:22:37] Yeah four.

Jeff:
[1:22:38] Four keyboard players.

Bryce:
[1:22:39] And so i could see that happening here where they're like well you know we could do a piano version but when people come to see fleetwood mac they want to they want to see songbird anyway they don't want never make me cry on the piano so maybe maybe i don't.

Jeff:
[1:22:56] Know the thing is i think that it sometimes when we talk about these it's like i do feel that you could maybe get more about you could you could dig into the song more if there were live versions because you could kind of see when you're not in this controlled studio environment like what does it look like what's your finished product kind of look like and i would i would love to hear this live.

Bryce:
[1:23:19] Yeah it's.

Jeff:
[1:23:19] The sort of thing that would be great because it's just you know she's got a great voice she's got a great piano.

Bryce:
[1:23:24] You can take.

Jeff:
[1:23:25] Out the the cello stuff or leave it in but um yeah kind of a shame.

Bryce:
[1:23:30] Yeah it's.

Jeff:
[1:23:31] Not a live version.

Bryce:
[1:23:31] All right it's in for track number five our final one here from sightsee i know i'm not wrong uh you ready to dive in let's go, There we go. The last song on the side. I'm not wrong.

Jeff:
[1:24:45] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:24:45] Pop a poppy song from Lindsay kind of, uh, is that full length? It's about three minutes.

Jeff:
[1:24:50] Yep.

Bryce:
[1:24:51] Um, how do you feel about? I know I'm not wrong.

Jeff:
[1:24:54] Finally, my favorite thing on this entire album. So far, really so far.

Bryce:
[1:24:58] Wow. Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:24:59] And it, it took me a little while to figure out why, like I was listening to it and I was like, I really like this. And I was like, is the lyrics. And I was like, the lyrics are, are okay. I mean, you know, he's having himself a time again.

Bryce:
[1:25:11] Yeah. Hey, guess what? He's lonely.

Jeff:
[1:25:13] That's right. Well, I guess he's not wrong. At first when I listened to this, I was like, oh, it's not funny too. That's interesting. We've got a second it's not funny song. Yeah. But the thing is that when I went and listened to it over and over again, and I started listening to the way that the whole musical kind of soundscape was set up and the structure of the song, this is like a 90s college rock song. It reminds me of The music that I love from my teenage years, sometimes I was thinking this could be a They Might Be Giants song. Sometimes I was thinking this could be an alt-rock college 120 minutes on MTV song. This could have been from a lot of different bands. And it's so different because it's got like all the problems that I have with a lot of the other songs aren't here. Where musically it's really interesting. You've got that, it sounds like almost like a harmonica, that keyboard part that comes in. The drums are like dynamic, but they're not jazz drums where they're doing like fills or anything. They're just solid. The lyrical content is kind of abstract, but catchy.

Bryce:
[1:26:19] You have a lot of guitar on this?

Jeff:
[1:26:20] A lot of guitar, yeah.

Bryce:
[1:26:22] Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:26:23] I really like it. I really, really, really dig it.

Bryce:
[1:26:26] So, so I know I'm not wrong was one of the earliest songs written for Tusk and it was one of the last songs finished and finalized.

Jeff:
[1:26:35] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:26:36] Um, I guess it was kind of a frustrating process for Lindsay to figure out what the song would sound like. Um, when they re-released Tusk with a demos disc, that demo disc has, you know, it's got, you know, different versions of a lot of the songs.

Jeff:
[1:26:52] Sure.

Bryce:
[1:26:52] And then about six different versions of, I know I'm not wrong. but it if you have 30 minutes it's a fun little it's a fun little journey because it starts you from the demo which is all instrumental yeah and it's got um you know kind of a little like a almost like a chintzy little guitar and that harmonica bit is played on like a toy piano okay um and you you go through a few different versions you hear some pretty different takes some of the lyrics change a bit, but it's a really fascinating process and, I think it's it's really interesting that you have that reaction to the song, not because you've done anything wrong.

Jeff:
[1:27:36] Well, I know I'm not wrong.

Bryce:
[1:27:38] And it's not that funny.

Jeff:
[1:27:39] It's not that funny.

Bryce:
[1:27:42] But I got the sense that, like, this was kind of sent over the finish line, like just wrap it. I don't know. I've spent a year and a half on this one. It's not fart, not say farted out, but let's please wrap this up.

Jeff:
[1:27:57] Yeah. And if that's the case, then I think that you'd stumble into something good because I mean, I would think I'm interested to know what you think. I think this sounds radically different than even the more pop centric stuff on this album. Yeah, that strange keyboard and just like the way that the whole band is mixed. It feels to me a lot more modern than some of the other stuff that's on here. Like more experimental, more of something that you got from a later era of music than some of the other stuff.

Bryce:
[1:28:30] We talked about that harmonica a little bit, and it is a harmonica.

Jeff:
[1:28:33] It is a harmonica, okay.

Bryce:
[1:28:34] But it sounds fucking weird, right?

Jeff:
[1:28:37] Like a distorted harmonica.

Bryce:
[1:28:38] So in Get Tusk, they talk a little bit about it is a harmonica. It was recorded right onto a ribbon microphone. It's a style of microphone. And then they played that out through headphones and an amp. They like recorded it. They wanted it to sound bad. they had a musical like kind of flag that like no make it kind of sound bad but it sounds kind of great like if you maybe you can get a sense that it's a harmonica from a vet in a vacuum, um but i think it sounds for a long time i wasn't sure if it was a harmonica i thought like is it a synth is it a guitar that they're playing somehow weird i.

Jeff:
[1:29:22] Thought it was at the beginning but then i thought well surely not it's got to just be like a synthesizer or a keyboard of some sort.

Bryce:
[1:29:28] Yeah, but it's not. The other interesting thing about, I know I'm not wrong, so that melody that the harmonica plays in the studio version, in all of those versions on the demo disc side, they have that melody. It's somewhere in there. It's usually an instrument, but some of them it's like Lindsay's singing. It's in all of them. Except for The Alternate Tusk.

Jeff:
[1:29:56] Oh, interesting.

Bryce:
[1:29:58] It's fascinating. But I don't, I'm saying that now because I don't think, I don't think that's planned. I don't think that's a dig to like, ah, we're going to get rid of this thing that was in your song. Because to hear it described in Get Tusked, they speculate that it was probably Lindsay's favorite song for having worked on it for so long. But at the same time it was rehearsed even for the tusk live tour but was not played live interesting um and i don't think they played it live until the aughts was.

Jeff:
[1:30:31] That i mean lindsey was playing that harmonica i assume.

Bryce:
[1:30:34] I don't know i i would have to go back and check that rehearse footage i think in the when he doesn't play the harmonica in the more recent concert footage of it so either i think it was a he was saying it i think it was that maybe at the time there would have been a a piano thing um and then i know at one point sorry that this is like not as much detailed but i know that didn't get test they talk about one song where they were actually going to have one of their uh road crew play a synth so that there was like just an extra accompaniment interesting but they couldn't make it work because he had other things he had to do during the show.

Jeff:
[1:31:15] When is, when can Gary get here? We've been waiting for three hours.

Bryce:
[1:31:20] Okay, so it's time for, I know I'm not wrong, the alternate version.

Jeff:
[1:31:25] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:31:25] Let's just enjoy this one.

Jeff:
[1:31:27] All right.

Bryce:
[1:31:27] Here we go. The alternate i know i'm not wrong very interesting right yeah and part so, so when talking about the no harm harmonica in this i think it's because they weren't know they weren't sure what to do with the song and they talked briefly and get tusk that there was a take where they tried having stevie on it to see if she could if she is she is she the missing ingredient right um it seems like maybe not but i do like her her vocals on this her little vamps yeah it does make me.

Jeff:
[1:35:04] Curious because the big thing that stood out to me was that i think that the lyrical content changes a little bit without the don't blame me.

Bryce:
[1:35:12] Before i know i'm not wrong yeah and.

Jeff:
[1:35:14] I wonder what it would sound like if you had stevie singing the don't blame me.

Bryce:
[1:35:19] Parts um.

Jeff:
[1:35:22] I don't know. Generally speaking, I think that this is a little bit looser. This tends a little bit more towards some of the production stuff that where I just I want more.

Bryce:
[1:35:33] Yeah. And and I chalk that up to being not finished.

Jeff:
[1:35:37] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:35:37] Right. Like even the don't blame me part, like maybe they just knew that that would be something they dubbed in.

Jeff:
[1:35:43] Right.

Bryce:
[1:35:43] Right. Because there is that other there is an extra lot or the different line of I could be strong. You know and like, Cut that.

Jeff:
[1:35:55] Mm-hmm.

Bryce:
[1:35:55] Get it out of here.

Jeff:
[1:35:57] Yeah, if I've got a... For this song, I'll trade Stevie for that harmonica. I love the harmonica. It's such a specific sound that you don't hear in any of the other songs that really just kind of pegs this one as different, so.

Bryce:
[1:36:11] I Know I'm Not Wrong is also a bit of a fraternal twin song.

Jeff:
[1:36:18] Mm-hmm.

Bryce:
[1:36:18] Fraternal? Fraternal? The not identical ones with Not That Funny. From side b uh both of them originally started as a demo called pins and needles and then they sort of split into their own songs but they both have a uh a here comes the night time sort of line um as well as somebody at the oh no don't blame me the don't blame me part is also not that funny um the somebody outside the door have we talked about this the the line somebody outside the door I think we did.

Jeff:
[1:36:52] I think we did last time.

Bryce:
[1:36:53] Yeah. Lindsay and Carol, his girlfriend at the time, their home got invaded.

Jeff:
[1:37:01] Right.

Bryce:
[1:37:01] And he had some agoraphobia about that. So that's interesting that that bled into both of these two very different songs.

Jeff:
[1:37:11] Um i don't know that i i have a lot of um i may not want to but i have a lot of, uh i sympathize a lot with lindsey about getting focused on specific concepts or specific ideas and then just kind of running them running around them just constantly you know in different iterations um for better or worse sometimes you get a hold of something and it's a it's a great topic that fulfills you and sometimes you kind of get manically attached to something and you can't let it go, so.

Bryce:
[1:37:39] Yeah. And I almost wonder if, like, that, uh is directly on top of the theme of this of the song right like, the the one thing i i will say about lindsey's writing despite being pretty simple is it's really straightforward and it will cut to the meaning even if cutting to the meaning is i think embarrassing or maybe a little bit of conflict right to say i know i'm not wrong is again kind of a bold statement like hear me out trust me i'm doing this we're we're flying let's go louise yep and um especially.

Jeff:
[1:38:19] When it comes right after don't blame me i know i'm not wrong this is a it's a strong statement right there.

Bryce:
[1:38:26] And then it it begs a further question of well what is it that you're not wrong about right because is it the album because the album is obviously temperamental it's obviously a wild card at best is.

Jeff:
[1:38:40] This is i know i'm not wrong the song a defense of tusk as an album of lindsey being like i did all this and it was my vision and i am not wrong you're wrong shut up.

Bryce:
[1:38:50] Or or potentially it could be i know i'm not wrong with the decisions that i made i know i'm not wrong to break up with stevie or to You work through XYZ issue with Carol. And then in that case, like, okay, actually, maybe there's it's a little more abstract. I'm emotionally not wrong. You know, I, you know, hey, we're not together anymore, but that's the right call.

Jeff:
[1:39:17] Right.

Bryce:
[1:39:18] That I'm not wrong. I know I'm not wrong. I'm not right, but I know I'm not wrong.

Jeff:
[1:39:23] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:39:23] You know. Any other thoughts here on I know I'm not wrong? I think, uh, and another end of the, another disc side end.

Jeff:
[1:39:33] Yeah. Um, it's, it's, I think this is the first time that my favorite song from one of these sides has been the last one. So I think it's fun. I was just waiting, chomping at the bit to, to talk about this one. Cause I really like it. Like I, I, I'm interested once we get done to make a six, a six song EP of like my favorites from Tusk.

Bryce:
[1:39:55] Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:39:55] See how I feel about that as opposed to just the whole odyssey hour and 30 minutes of all four sides.

Bryce:
[1:40:03] Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to close out with a special cut. We're going to go with a live version of Brown Eyes. This was on Fleetwood Mac Live Deluxe. And then it was also included in their most recent Mirage Tour 82 live album. So it's on both of those. Here is brown eyes from live. A live fade out difficult to pull off but this is one where it kind of works yeah um kind of fun little flavor on the live version there absolutely um the shalala's feel different i think you can granted this is from uh when would this been 82 so it's a few years later lindsey's voice is a little more mature uh stevie's voice is settled in a little bit more but it's great i think if it's it's it's interesting as a live song it's not it's not a live classic or a staple of theirs, but it's just moody this is good mood i.

Jeff:
[1:41:04] Think a lot of the songs that i i've been less than enthusiastic about i would always be really interested in listening to them live because i.

Bryce:
[1:41:11] Think that.

Jeff:
[1:41:11] Sometimes too much production can get in the way of feeling it and when you're live that's kind of the ultimate you're feeling it like.

Bryce:
[1:41:19] They're standing there they're doing it and it really wasn't until it probably wasn't until the nineties or I guess the late later eighties when Lindsay left that up until that point, it was a pretty much a five piece band on stage. And so I think like, that's why a lot of Lindsay's songs from Tusk play really well on stage because they get equalized a bit. And yeah, I don't know. Some people don't like live versions of stuff, but maybe it's just Fleetwood Mac. Maybe just Fleetwood Mac is a great live band. We'll do a live band podcast next.

Jeff:
[1:41:51] Possibly.

Bryce:
[1:41:52] All right. We're going to take you out here with a live version of Brown Eyes. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff:
[1:41:56] Thank you.