[this transcript auto-generated]
Bryce:
[1:04] Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Two Tusks podcast. I'm Bryce. Hello, Jeff.

Jeff:
[1:09] Hello.

Bryce:
[1:09] Welcome back.

Jeff:
[1:10] Yes.

Bryce:
[1:11] It is side D. We are here on the fourth side of- Final side. Tusk. It's our final side.

Jeff:
[1:16] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:16] How do you feel after this, like, two-month project?

Jeff:
[1:21] I was actually thinking the other day about how I really want to take Tusk and make the Jeff.

Bryce:
[1:28] Version of.

Jeff:
[1:29] Tusk that only is like 10 songs.

Bryce:
[1:31] And mostly.

Jeff:
[1:32] Just the ones that I really like because there was there been some real bangers on here that i've enjoyed.

Bryce:
[1:36] Yeah but.

Jeff:
[1:37] I will say that side d is not it probably only has one song.

Bryce:
[1:41] I feel you on both of both counts yeah like i've been thinking over the past few weeks like what if you rearranged this into its three pieces among the three songwriters as three solo albums like three lps or something um but i also think that they might be they would each be too lopsided yeah i think there's something about all of them being really different and weird that's good and also yeah this is definitely the miscellaneous side of this album um but it also has some of my favorite musical moments there you.

Bryce:
[2:14] Go so there we go uh you want to jump into our first track here honey high jump right in honey high honey high honey hi honey hi let's uh listen to a little preview of honey high sure how could you forget honey high i couldn't, Honey High.

Jeff:
[4:03] Honey High.

Bryce:
[4:04] The first track off of Side D. How do we feel about Honey High? It's kind of slight.

Jeff:
[4:10] I listened to this one, and there was something that was, like, pulling at my brain, saying, what is it about this song? And I finally realized what it was today, the last time that I listened to it. You talked before about the Beach Boys influence. This sounds like a Beach Boys song.

Bryce:
[4:28] Like.

Jeff:
[4:29] Between the bongos and the—.

Bryce:
[4:31] The little wood— wood um wood blocks yep.

Jeff:
[4:34] It's got a very light kind of yacht rock tropical kind of vibe to it.

Bryce:
[4:39] Yeah um in that way it sits alongside um never make me cry right kind of the watery beachy imagery of it sure um in uh in get tusked the uh memoir about recording this by ken calais and ernan rojas they uh described this as uh christine actually christine had described it at the time as the island love groove song and when i found that quote earlier today i had to write it down because at no point did i think it was an island groove song that.

Jeff:
[5:13] That lines up perfectly with.

Bryce:
[5:14] My impression and.

Jeff:
[5:15] This was a christine joint okay.

Bryce:
[5:17] Yeah i.

Jeff:
[5:17] Thought that it was so sweet and saccharine i was like i'm pretty sure this is christine.

Bryce:
[5:24] Yeah though i do think you can piece out the the other voices and backup voices here. I think you can hear Stevie a good bit and a little bit of Lindsay in the backing vocals. This is kind of a strange song. I didn't get the island-y thing until I saw that. I legitimately didn't. I think I have... Paint a lot of this album as country.

Jeff:
[5:49] And i.

Bryce:
[5:50] Think in my head this was a this is a country song.

Jeff:
[5:53] You know it it possibly could be but i think that it was like the third time that listened to it that the the bongos i think that's what really like leans it more into that like kokomo kind of and you know i.

Bryce:
[6:08] Think i was stuck on um there's a little uh ding sound uh right after.

Jeff:
[6:14] That Yeah.

Bryce:
[6:16] And for some reason, yeah, I thought like, oh, it's kind of triangly. It's kind of giving farm triangle. But I, I have, I have like a really hot and cold relationship with the song. I think it's super catchy. Yeah, I think this is another song where by the time you get to the end of it, where it's doing this three or four part canon, basically, you're kind of locked in like, honey, honey, hi, daddy, I'm here to tell. Oh, I'm far away from like it's it's it's it that vocal interplay is so good. You just need all of this warm-up to get into it between a really strangely structured song yeah there's a lot of like um six measure phrases almost you know a lot of beats like why do you have this line here when you could just go right into the second chorus like a lot of little things like that it's.

Jeff:
[7:11] Kind of awkward i mean that's the thing that differentiates to me between this and a beach boy song is that beach boy songs are usually very smooth right.

Bryce:
[7:19] They're Very easy.

Jeff:
[7:20] To listen to. Whereas this one is a little bit disjointed.

Bryce:
[7:25] You're caught flat-footed when those structures are not in four measures. When there's six measures, I don't know. I think in other pop songs when there's a six-measure phrase, it's usually like, it sounds good.

Jeff:
[7:45] You.

Bryce:
[7:46] Don't it's rather rather you don't get this like like starting and stopping almost.

Jeff:
[7:52] Yeah of.

Bryce:
[7:53] Like wait are we nope okay now we're going into.

Jeff:
[7:55] There's a i mean this and i think this whole side like has a lot of this to it i think it's somewhat endemic of how a lot of this album has some really interesting ideas that i almost want to see yet another pass over yeah because like this one like a lot of the songs on this album i also feel like it doesn't have enough of a change like where a lot of these songs end up kind of just oozing together into one big verse right even if they do have chorus type of stuff that there's not much of a musical change or anything to signal that we're moving to a different part of the song. It's kind of this one droning tale.

Bryce:
[8:35] Yeah, that's a lot, especially on this side, for sure.

Jeff:
[8:39] Yeah. Also, this one might have the longest fade in.

Bryce:
[8:43] It's so long.

Jeff:
[8:44] I don't know, Tusk might have a longer fade in.

Bryce:
[8:46] It's so long, and it sounds really bad. I think it sounds so—they don't need it, because the instruments don't start at the same time fucking either.

Jeff:
[8:55] Yep. When I got in my car and I was driving over here, and I turned on, I usually listen to the side right before we record. And my phone was connected to my Bluetooth and I was like, did I not hit play? Did I not start? And then I heard it like really faintly.

Bryce:
[9:10] I felt the same thing when we were playing it here. I was like, I hit play, right? I don't want to like, oh my gosh. Yeah.

Jeff:
[9:17] Also, can we talk a little bit about daddy?

Bryce:
[9:20] Daddy, all I'm trying to tell you. This is... The third, if you look at the Fleetwood Mac's discography, so we're here on Tusk.

Jeff:
[9:30] Yeah.

Bryce:
[9:30] But Christina V has two other daddy songs up to this point. Fleetwood, on Fleetwood Mac, she has Sugar Daddy.

Jeff:
[9:37] Okay.

Bryce:
[9:37] Which is, you know, if he wants to pour me whiskey, he can pour it neat, but he can't love me.

Jeff:
[9:44] Yeah.

Bryce:
[9:45] And then Rumors, which had Oh Daddy.

Jeff:
[9:47] Okay.

Bryce:
[9:47] Which was kind of about Mick Fleetwood going through his own divorce. And so we also get daddy here in Honey High.

Jeff:
[9:56] Yeah, I think it's.

Bryce:
[9:57] So it's a part of this that like really has aged poorly or really weirdly for me, because I'm not into daddy imagery at all. I'm not for it.

Jeff:
[10:06] Well, yeah, I was I was thinking about like I was actually thinking a lot about this when I listened to this side because I was just kind of trying to find something to hang on to. But a lot of it was the idea that like this is from a different time and there probably has been an evolution of the way that that word is treated in popular culture that now makes it like stand out like a big bright light to me when I hear it in a song. And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, hello, daddy. Hello, daddy. Yeah.

Bryce:
[10:32] That's why. Go listen to Oh, daddy. From rumors. Oh, daddy. You know, you make me cry.

Jeff:
[10:39] Oh, goodness. Daddy. No. Oh, boy.

Bryce:
[10:44] Um another fun story from the get test book about this uh at one point they are they recorded a fencing match in the studio okay, for honey hot percussion yeah uh they recorded a fencing match that was in time with the song okay i don't know what that means they.

Jeff:
[11:06] Invented beat saber so early.

Bryce:
[11:08] They were the first stomp The first Beat Saber. A quote from Irnan, it was a lot of fun and it sounded great, but eventually we had to erase it when we ran out of tracks while recording the background vocals.

Jeff:
[11:21] What a weird reason to remove something so interesting and experimental.

Bryce:
[11:26] It sounded good, but, you know, the suits made us get ruined.

Jeff:
[11:31] Do we have another tape anywhere in here? Do we have any more?

Bryce:
[11:35] Now, granted, at the time, that's a real excuse.

Jeff:
[11:38] Sure.

Bryce:
[11:39] You know, mixing consoles, I think, that they were using in that studio was probably 24 tracks. And then I think they had like a 16 track second guy. They had a little fella over in the corner. That's the quickest way for me to describe it.

Jeff:
[11:54] I'm trying to imagine what that would sound like. Because this song is so chill. And having this kind of like, it might have been the spice that I needed to jazz it up a little bit.

Bryce:
[12:06] Well, let's listen to the alternate version of Honey High. This one is going to be different.

Jeff:
[12:14] Okay.

Bryce:
[12:15] Here we go. The alternate Honey High. It sounds more like a demo. Just guitar, keyboard, and Christine's vocal track. Probably a scratch vocal from the actual recording of it. And so you don't get the canon part at the end with the multiple voices. No background vocals. Something about this version of this song makes Honey High catchier to me. Something about just the Honey Honey High... At the end is all i need.

Jeff:
[15:54] Like that's.

Bryce:
[15:55] That's such enough of a hook that it kind of outperforms the studio that portion of the studio version.

Jeff:
[16:04] Well i did notice that daddy isn't with us anymore no daddy um no i agree that uh the thing is that i think that that the lyrics seem like they've been simplified in a way that that does just kind of cut to the heart of the sweet little song that we've got here um i think that though it loses a lot by simplifying the the music right by only having the couple of instruments yeah like i mean you know maybe adding add the fencing back in or it definitely.

Bryce:
[16:33] Goes from feeling like a band's song to christine's song.

Jeff:
[16:39] Yes in.

Bryce:
[16:40] In in so many words um i, I think it's interesting also in those last honey, honey highs at the end is you hear without the backing vocals and without, you know, the the the sheen of getting a perfect take. You hear her voice cracking as she's trying to hit those high notes and kind of similar to what we talked about in in the earlier Lindsay song. Uh and i know i'm not wrong i think where uh you just have where you he where that cracking as kind of the voice shifts along the windpipe it cracks um it feels like that's here too the intention almost the intentionality of it but instead of leaving it so raw yeah in invisible i I guess, and I know I'm not wrong. It gets kind of smoothed out by having a nicer take, multiple background tracks.

Jeff:
[17:41] Well, it's kind of strange because this version seems more like something, the arrangement seems like it was made for a more impactful song. Like not to insult Christine, I like pop songs or stuff, but this seems like the sort of thing where if you took this and you put in a bass line and a normal drums, not even the bongos, this would be the sort of song I wanted to hear really smoothed out really produced really because then it would be very just very catchy earworm i don't need to really be zoned in on the lyrics when most of them are just the word words honey high like i don't need to hear every intonation of your voice as you soulfully channel the honey high because because.

Bryce:
[18:22] Unlike um never make me cry which is a like a vocal showcase.

Jeff:
[18:27] Right this is not yeah um.

Bryce:
[18:29] And even maybe those two songs are similar in like the depth of their lyrics but but at the same time never make me cry is much more read read readable.

Jeff:
[18:42] You can read into it yeah more.

Bryce:
[18:43] Than lord i really love you love you love you honey honey honey.

Jeff:
[18:48] You know like it's it's like a reminiscent the lyrical content is reminiscent of like a like a 60s song like a doo-wop song or like early Beatles of just like very simple.

Bryce:
[19:02] Love you, baby. Yeah.

Jeff:
[19:04] Uh, candy with one flavor.

Bryce:
[19:07] Um, a funny bit in get tusked so get tusked is written by ken and ernan and uh when ken is talking about honey high they don't talk about honey high very much in in the book other than like the whole band put it together they use a lot of little instruments and they had a fun time jamming it out but um so ernan kind of talks about that process and in ken's uh short section talking about it instead of talking anything about like the recording of the song he mentions that uh.

Bryce:
[19:37] Christine gets dropped off by dennis wilson who she's dating at the time sure the beach boy who he likes to party he's drinking and drugging yep and he drops her off in his new uh shelby cobra a sports car and uh ken uh kind of sees you know sees her get out and dennis ends up giving him a ride offers like hey do you want to take a ride in my fucking shelby cobra uh and he does yeah and uh he realizes that the jug of orange juice that dennis is drinking in the car is not just orange juice and that dennis really likes this car yeah and the streets of los angeles do not okay so just a fun little a fun little uh side journey there uh in honey high i i i honestly don't have too anything else to say about this because it does feel like a pretty big departure from where the studio version ended up but at the same time i see a straight line between these two things it's.

Jeff:
[20:42] Also i mean just i mean and because of the time between us recording these i you know kind of wipe my memory of some.

Bryce:
[20:49] Of the previous.

Jeff:
[20:49] Stuff and dig back in but the one thing i think that this side and this just goes for everything is that the the previous sides have had at least a few places where we've had some really raw emotional.

Bryce:
[21:02] Content and.

Jeff:
[21:03] This being more of kind of a just an easy going you know.

Bryce:
[21:07] Yeah you're great song uh is.

Jeff:
[21:11] Is very much a departure from that i could i could see it being i don't know i could see somebody turning that disc over and being like Wait, where am I now?

Bryce:
[21:19] When is it going to start? When is it starting?

Jeff:
[21:21] That's right.

Bryce:
[21:24] Well, why don't we take a real hard dog leg left and move on to the second song, why don't we?

Jeff:
[21:30] Okay.

Bryce:
[21:31] Let's listen to a little bit of Beautiful Child before we talk about it.

Jeff:
[21:34] All right.

Bryce:
[23:50] Beautiful Child. That's maybe my favorite song on the album.

Jeff:
[23:56] Yum.

Bryce:
[23:56] Beautiful Child. It's really, it's great to sing to. I mean, that's going to be my number one with a bullet. It's amazing to sing to. If this is in your vocal range and you have a car with a sound speaker system, you should try singing Beautiful Child.

Jeff:
[24:13] Okay.

Bryce:
[24:13] Because you will go 95 miles per hour in your car.

Jeff:
[24:16] Oh, this makes you go really fast.

Bryce:
[24:17] It makes you go very fast.

Jeff:
[24:18] Okay.

Bryce:
[24:18] I'm not a child! How do you feel about Beautiful Child?

Jeff:
[24:24] I'm very confused by this song. Like, I think that when I first listened to it.

Bryce:
[24:28] Oh, yes, I forgot.

Jeff:
[24:30] No, continue. Yeah, when I first listened to it, I thought it was, like, you know, it's a Stevie Nicks, like, showcase, right? We're hearing her kind of do another one of these big kind of tone poem songs. The musically speaking, there's not a lot here. It's mostly just kind of backing her up. Um, and then I started kind of catching these snippets of the lyrics and I, I really, I think that I may not have the proper framework to, because there's a lot in here, you know, there's a part at the beginning about how you fell in love with me when I was 10 and, like, there's a read of this song that I don't know if this is like, like a, a person talking about getting into a relationship with somebody with a big age difference or something i don't know um i know that there are some a lot of the lyrics i really like i really like the your eyes say yes but you don't say don't say yes yeah because you know you you that common phrase is like your eyes say yes but your ankles say no way buddy uh but having that kind of inversion of that.

Bryce:
[25:41] Yeah.

Jeff:
[25:41] But I don't really know. I listened to this song like four or five times reading the lyrics trying to be like, what is this about? Because the vibes that I was getting, it was like, this could be a song about, about, um, falling in love young. You know, there's nothing that says there's an age difference in the song, but.

Bryce:
[26:00] Sure.

Jeff:
[26:00] I don't know. I was hoping that you might have some insight for me on this.

Bryce:
[26:03] I do, I do. So. This is one where, because of the sensitivity of the lyrics, the band did not really ask Stevie to explain it at the time. Though, as described in Get Tusk, it did come out later what the song was about. So the song was about Stevie's relationship with Derek Taylor. He was the press officer for the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Birds, and some other folks. And he was indeed much older than her. And so I think that's probably where most of that comes from, is that he was just significantly older. You could maybe add a reading of. Of maybe she's addressing Lindsay because they were like, I want to say like high school sweethearts, they they knew they were together for a long time.

Jeff:
[27:03] Yeah.

Bryce:
[27:03] Since they were children, though, maybe not 10 years old.

Jeff:
[27:07] Right.

Bryce:
[27:08] Um, cause it, I mean.

Jeff:
[27:10] The, the read, I mean, I don't really know, but the read that I get when I hear this is that it's almost like a song about somebody who is younger that is dating somebody older, but who wants to do that. And that like, then as the song goes on, we kind of get into the second love you from afar stuff where it's almost like, well, this was something that happened and everybody was on board with it, but it was so tumultuous that it ended up kind of falling apart. And that the singer has made their peace with that sort of thing. And I don't know if that's right, but that was just what I got after listening to it a bunch of times.

Bryce:
[27:48] Yeah. I think the other thing that I picked up is that I think if you were to think of a time and place for the lyrics, I believe that they're meant to represent maybe their last day together.

Jeff:
[28:02] Yeah.

Bryce:
[28:04] And I think you see that in some of the lyrics, right? You say it'll be harder in the morning. I wait for you to say just go. Like, those are very much like the morning after sort of messages.

Jeff:
[28:20] I think it's interesting because I do think that there's just like, there's like four lines in here that if you changed them would make this an entirely different. Like the, the, the very specific age call out at the beginning, I think does some strange, like it kind of, it, it points the song in a different direction that I think, um, a lot of the CB songs are a little bit more poetic and nebulous and stuff, but I think that kind of like having that lyric in there, I don't know. And it could just be like we were talking about the time difference of different social mores and stuff like that.

Bryce:
[28:55] Yeah.

Jeff:
[28:56] That it could just be that it comes off differently to me here in 2025 than it did when it came out.

Bryce:
[29:01] Absolutely. And I think we talked about this a little bit where Stevie's, the writing of Stevie's songs is intentionally. There's an.

Jeff:
[29:16] Ethereal airy.

Bryce:
[29:18] She writes about a lot of things.

Jeff:
[29:20] Right.

Bryce:
[29:20] She writes about a lot of things. And I think there's even a word where you can read Beautiful Child similarly to Sarah of like, okay, maybe this is also about like a lost child. And... And I'm putting some silence there. Apparently, when UNESCO, UNESCO and UNICEF in 1979, they called it the year of the child or the year of the international year of the child or something.

Jeff:
[29:53] Interesting. Okay.

Bryce:
[29:54] And apparently Stevie donated the royalties of this song to that foundation, to that campaign. And so I don't think you're far afield to say that it also might actually just be about a child, about losing a child or a child disappearing from your life.

Jeff:
[30:22] It's also, you know.

Bryce:
[30:23] It's many things.

Jeff:
[30:23] I've thought about this too, where like, um, this whole album, a lot of the songs, uh, like we talked about this when we, with going from what makes you think you're the one to storms where like the previous song will prime you in a way. And I think that there's a good possibility. I actually thought about just rearranging my little track list and listening, trying to listen to a song without listening to honey high first, because that's such a romantic song. And then it comes right into this that really starts out with that lyric that it was hard for me to see this as anything but a song about a romance. And it's very possible that it's just that's just happening because my brain is trying to make these sides into a narrative or a story. Yeah.

Jeff:
[31:08] Or the thing before has me thinking about that.

Bryce:
[31:11] And I think we talked about it briefly, but that tonal whiplash was intentional that at least at least on a high level, the idea of creating contrast between these these wildly different sounding songs, wildly different messaging of songs that that was intentional.

Jeff:
[31:33] Yeah.

Bryce:
[31:35] But I think the intentionality was as the opposite, right? I think it was intentional to make a bit of chaos and mess, not necessarily to say, this is the best version of our story that is from here to here to here to here to here.

Jeff:
[31:54] Yeah.

Bryce:
[31:54] It's just, everyone thinks we're going to go here, so we're going to zag on them.

Jeff:
[31:58] Right.

Bryce:
[31:58] You know?

Jeff:
[31:59] Yeah. The contrast.

Bryce:
[32:02] Yeah. Well, before I guess let's get into the alternate beautiful child. Okay. But I will say a few things before it. Similar to some of the other alternates that we've had. This one was also previously released. And so I'm just putting an asterisk here on what the like providence of this take might be. Only only because I think there's a world where they took. I think what we're going to listen to is a slightly earlier take or a slightly earlier mix of this. And I don't know how much from the initial time it was re-released to this current re-release for The Alternate Tusk if it was what that process looked like, right?

Jeff:
[32:51] Oh, okay. What happened between the two?

Bryce:
[32:53] Right. You know, I mean, granted, I don't know enough about the alternate test to say this was the philosophy of this recording either.

Jeff:
[32:59] Right.

Bryce:
[33:00] Or to say that that would be different than what they did with Beautiful Child. Anyway, this version makes me mad.

Jeff:
[33:07] Okay.

Bryce:
[33:08] This version makes me really mad.

Jeff:
[33:10] Makes you drive even faster.

Bryce:
[33:11] I drive 105 miles per hour. Here is the alternate Beautiful Child. It's like an experience. I'm chiming out over here.

Jeff:
[39:01] I thought this was the one that made you mad.

Bryce:
[39:03] It does make me mad.

Jeff:
[39:05] Yeah.

Bryce:
[39:06] I've not approached the alternate versions in a sense of you took this from me. At no point during the other 19 songs do I listen to the alternate task and go like, we were robbed of this. You robbed us of the good version of Sarah. Like, I generally want to be like, this is what they ended up with.

Bryce:
[39:28] These were the decisions, but this alternate version of Beautiful Child with the electric guitars, with just the really soft kick drum, no snare at all. Yeah i i it's not as shined up as the the studio version is but the emotion and the drama in this version are just like a different like a completely different galaxy compared to the original take it's just even the vocals like that is i'm pretty sure that's almost the entire like vocal take from the studio version yeah like the only like the background vocals are different some of the vocals that she doesn't hear are a little different but generally that's the take that they use yeah and um i think it's one where addition by subtraction did not work um compared to pretty much any of the other examples on this album and that's what makes me mad is the sense that like damn you almost hit a perfect game on some level but you made me see your missteps.

Jeff:
[40:39] Uh i was very confused.

Bryce:
[40:40] Because when you told me that this version made you mad i.

Jeff:
[40:43] Thought it was because it was so terrible so i was listening to it i was like i kind of like.

Bryce:
[40:47] The way the guitar kind of comes in like it's good like that there's very little electric guitar in the studio version and it's pulling its weight and then summon this version.

Jeff:
[41:00] Yep.

Bryce:
[41:01] You know, it's not as poppy. It's not as poppy. I'll give it. It's not as poppy of an arrangement as the studio version, but God, like...

Jeff:
[41:10] I think it's, I don't know. I think it's one guitar track away from being like an 80s ballad, like the, you know, the.

Bryce:
[41:17] Some power chords.

Jeff:
[41:18] Right. Well, though, like the, like every rose has its thorn.

Bryce:
[41:24] Right?

Jeff:
[41:24] Like that electric guitar really makes it sound a lot more like an 80s song than something from before. Um no i i really i do think i like that version better the only thing is i i didn't because we didn't get that far down the lyrics i'd forgotten that there's one lyric in this that like there's one line in this thing that drives me up the damn wall is.

Bryce:
[41:46] It too trusting yes but then women usually.

Jeff:
[41:48] Are yes there are like three more words in that in that line than there need to be and it makes it really awkward where it has to all be kind of women usually are like yeah you know why is there yes too trusting but women usually are like that's a lot shorter but then women usually are and then that too trusting yes but then women i'm like no just trim it down because and it would it it wouldn't stick out in my mind except for the fact that like in a in a song where i have a hard time hearing lyrics a lot of times and i can make out just about every lyric to this song but that is like a run on sentence in the middle of a very interesting yes.

Bryce:
[42:29] But yeah it is it does almost have like a musical vibe cadence.

Jeff:
[42:34] Like too trusting yes well like you can a little expository like every line kind of is its own thing so i understand why you wouldn't want to break it into two lines it should be broken into two lines or they should cut out two or three of those words and just squeeze it together a little bit because out of all the lyrics here you know every line is like, very much its own thing. It's all out. It's all stark. You can hear it. You can get it. You know what the idea is. But that one line just like, I don't know, it bugs me grammatically and lyrically and musically.

Bryce:
[43:11] If anything, I think I, yeah, I... I do feel a little bit of a twinge with that line because it does feel, again, I think it's comforative sensibilities.

Jeff:
[43:23] Yeah.

Bryce:
[43:23] Like, I would probably not want to say women are too trusting in the lyrics of a song.

Jeff:
[43:29] Well, then there's that part of it, too. Yes.

Bryce:
[43:33] Um but i um some of the other stuff here on the alternate is by not having that snare.

Bryce:
[43:44] Um going back and listening to the studio version makes you realize how forward that snare is and uh and i think it also creates more space for the bass by having less electric guitar it's another kind of song where the bass is doing a lot of work yeah um for what is another song where it kind of doesn't change the it feels like it doesn't like the lyrics change like there's enough structural change between okay this is a verse and a chorus we've got a verse and like a chorus a and a chorus b like okay there's a lot changing but at the same time musically we're kind of keep bouncing around what feels like some of this just the same couple of chords over and over again um which we'll fucking get into next with walk up in line too um and i also thought it was interesting that uh this has basically the final vocal take um because it's good in fact i I think part of what makes me think that this is an early take of the final cut is that the piano, right in the beginning, there's that bit where the piano is like a little late on a note. And it does that in this one, too.

Jeff:
[45:09] And there would be another one of these things where the piano track kind of got baked into the to the to the hole.

Bryce:
[45:15] Or did that mistake get baked in? There are other songs on tusk where there are bits that seem like a mistake are completely like in uh it's not that funny right we talked about the symbol the muting at the end of right of of not that funny and you know that sounds different in those two takes which to me signals that that's intentional that's written into the song right play a crash and then mute the middle love it for a brief period and and maybe that's just what it is here is like kind of lag on that seventh note maybe just like actually make it seem like oh it you know yeah um it's not perfect it's imperfect okay uh any other thoughts here on beautiful child the alternate.

Jeff:
[46:08] Um, I, there's a, something that I've felt a lot of times and I feel, uh, I feel it a lot on this alternate take, uh, which is that I sometimes wish that there was a version that had kind of even more instrumentation where we kind of, there, there's a, there's an idea in here about using some of the stripped down instrumentation to really like punctuate some of the lyrics. And I think that sometimes with Stevie songs, I can get, they can become a little monotonous because they're long and they're there. You got to really like Stevie Nicks for a lot of these songs. And so I do appreciate that electric guitar. And I kind of wish that we would see more of that, of like the rest of the band getting to to kind of help out, you know, we express some emotions in the background while these things are happening. I think I made a similar was the one about the underbook of the water imagery.

Bryce:
[47:02] Oh, Never Make Me Cry.

Jeff:
[47:03] Yeah, well, thinking about having more, you know, a less stripped down version that had a little bit more production. But then, again, I think that that's, I mean, you know, that's just my personal taste wish casting kind of stuff.

Bryce:
[47:16] But, I mean, that's probably some amount of reaction that people had listening to the original. It's like, why is this so weird? Couldn't you have just made a regular rock song?

Jeff:
[47:28] Right, right.

Bryce:
[47:30] All right, well, let's jump into another track here. Why don't we go to Walk It In Line, huh? This is another Lindsey Buckingham song. Here we go. All right, that's Walk a Thin Line. How do you feel about Walk a Thin Line?

Jeff:
[49:15] Oh, poor Lindsay. Poor Lindsay. He's out there all alone. He's got to walk that line. Nobody's listening. No one wants to listen to his wisdom. It's not.

Bryce:
[49:25] He's not subtle. I like Lindsay, but his songwriting is a little flat.

Jeff:
[49:29] I agree. I like this song. I do. It's very, it's like I like it, but I mean, it's like it does the, I like it, but there's nothing too notable about it. There's nothing that really stands out. It doesn't seem very experimental. It just seems like a very kind of basic song. The lyrics are basic. The instrumentation is very, I don't know, just regular. Like, I liked it, and I kept coming back to it trying to figure out if the only reason I liked it was because I just didn't have anything bad to say about it. Like, there's a difference between being inoffensive and actually being, like, you know, excited about a thing.

Bryce:
[50:08] It feels kind of like the opposite of Save Me a Place from Side A, where Save Me a Place is also kind of slow and tender and accompanied with this big vocal dubbing of multiple voices in the chorus, kind of giving this big pop. Where here on Walk a Thin Line, similarly, you know, it goes from one voices to many in a really interesting, cool interplay, especially on that, like, I walk a thin line, line. And, Because it sounds softer, it's not. I mean, for as like kind of obtuse as the song is, Save Me a Place is even more obtuse. And I think in that case, like the sentimentality to me plays a little stronger on Save Me a Place versus Walk a Thin Line, even though they both are impressive, slower Lindsay songs with impressive tracked vocals.

Jeff:
[51:17] I mean, I will say that this one, again, I don't want to repeat myself too much, but this is another one where it's just like, there's this kind of verse cadence and it's repeated five times and then the song is over. There's not like a appealing guitar solo. There's not even like, I think it would have been nice to have seen like a key change to emphasize like one of these verses or just, it's such a basic song that it's like, boy, put some gravy on this thing, like put some pepper on there.

Bryce:
[51:45] They talk about that in the book too of like it's just kind of two chords back and forth and we try you know we zhuzhed it up and we did all the vocal harmony interplays um uh who is this ken uh talks about this initially um it had started a little bit as a faster demo probably a little over 120 bpm that's always.

Jeff:
[52:09] 70 seconds long.

Bryce:
[52:10] So they slowed it down to about 69 bpm sure uh ken described it as a dreamy trance-like stoner ballad oh that makes a lot of sense yeah i do and i think we talked last time about the beach boys and their um smile album i believe smile is a big influence here on this i can see it um one of the stories about i believe it's this track is the the drumming on it this is this is one this is a drumming story this is yay, you want to let's let's listen back in just for another brief second here of the drums of walk a thin line, Did you catch it?

Jeff:
[53:17] I don't know that I did.

Bryce:
[53:20] Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, it's kind of a Sarah situation. So Lindsay held a lot of control over his songs, would go and record, do a lot of recordings at his home. Some of the final tracks on Tusk are just straight recordings from Lindsay's home. Um this song uh mick fleetwood was very annoyed at the drumming that lindsey did on the song oh because he was really obsessed with this kind of military style march drum pattern that he learned, when i.

Jeff:
[53:59] When i took drum lessons like we started with like this would be the sort of thing that you would practice to like in year one because it's so just like and it just it's very basic it's the sort of.

Bryce:
[54:12] Thing that.

Jeff:
[54:13] I think anybody that's starting out on trap kit could be able to do.

Bryce:
[54:15] But that that fill that is in in this whole thing i think lindsey was really into that fill and, liked his drumming and mick didn't like it and so the uh this is not actually covered in get tusked but is part of the story of this so i don't know if this comes from mick's biography um from the 80s which i skimmed through but i didn't actually look into for this podcast um but uh mick did not like how much um lindsey's drum playing was like out of time and said like hey if we put this out it's gonna make me look bad yeah people are gonna think i did the drumming right so the drums on And this studio track are actually doubled. One is Lindsay.

Jeff:
[55:03] Oh.

Bryce:
[55:04] One is Mick.

Jeff:
[55:05] Okay.

Bryce:
[55:05] Playing the fixed drums.

Jeff:
[55:07] Okay. It works. There's doubled? Okay. Listen again. Yeah, yeah.

Bryce:
[55:13] We'll go back and listen to that same thing.

Jeff:
[55:14] Let me just see here.

Bryce:
[55:18] Left and right.

Jeff:
[55:45] Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Bryce:
[55:47] Left and right.

Jeff:
[55:48] Yeah.

Bryce:
[55:48] No, just like the Sarah pianos. Actually.

Jeff:
[55:50] I think that, I think that the reason it didn't stand out is because when you do that kind of double up, what it just sounds like is it sounds a little echoey, right? When you have two tracks that are similar right on top of each other, it can just make it sound like it's in, it was recorded in a larger room, you know? Uh, so I wasn't getting that at first.

Bryce:
[56:07] But, but you listen closely and they're not the same. They're not the same recording.

Jeff:
[56:11] Um, well, I don't know. So I've maintained through this entire project that I think that I don't know what Mick Fleetwood and John McVie did to be relegated to these studio musicians for a lot of this album. Like, I was so happy and tusked to hear Mick Fleetwood just get to go crazy on the drums. Like, wow. Okay.

Bryce:
[56:35] Yeah.

Jeff:
[56:35] Wow.

Bryce:
[56:36] Yeah.

Jeff:
[56:36] Lindsay, come on. And you get, if you want to, you know, sounds like people wanted to walk that thin line with you, Lindsay, and that you didn't want to.

Bryce:
[56:43] Well, before we get into the alternate for walk a thin line, just briefly. So I guess they tracked a version of walk a thin line. And then over a period of months, Lindsay would go in and overdub more and more into it. He would go and add something or replace a track. Um so there's some talk of like the the the version that we listen to the studio version doesn't have any hi-hats um it's again another kind of kick and snare as far as the drumming goes um there's some instances where like acoustic guitar has been put in to kind of replace the hi-hat um and so what we'll get here is a little truer to an i guess an early version of this slower, the still, you know, pre-slowdown, or post-slowdown walk-out-thin line.

Jeff:
[57:33] Okay.

Bryce:
[57:34] All right, here we go. The alternate. Walk-out-thin line. The alternate walk a thin line wow very different yeah um there uh i talked a bit just before about that a lot of this got overdubbed um and a lot of what's on here uh is what got overdubbed things like the toy piano in the second half okay the uh the hi-hat the rhythm guitar um a lot of pieces from this to the studio album kind of ship a theseist got changed right um and then of course all those backing backing vocals and interplay is not here yeah um how do you feel about this alternate version um.

Jeff:
[1:01:35] I love it when we were able to get to this point on this.

Bryce:
[1:01:39] Podcast where.

Jeff:
[1:01:40] Uh i i think i like the vocal track from the studio album better i don't like it being it's a little more ethereal here i think i like it being a little bit more grounded um but musically, uh i love this this is.

Bryce:
[1:01:55] What like.

Jeff:
[1:01:55] I'm looking for more.

Bryce:
[1:01:57] Really you know uh.

Jeff:
[1:01:58] I i did want to ask do we know if these are lindsey drums are these mick drums.

Bryce:
[1:02:05] That's a good question i would because.

Jeff:
[1:02:09] There's a lot of interesting stuff going on with the drums i mean the most of the hi-hat like it's in the right channel uh there's a lot of times where the hi-hat is being dropped like for a beat there's points where it's being opened and then closed.

Bryce:
[1:02:24] There's points.

Jeff:
[1:02:25] We're going to like a ride cymbal or something like that for.

Bryce:
[1:02:28] Like two.

Jeff:
[1:02:28] Beats and then back it sounds like we got brushes in play that are doing some of the i mean i don't know if that's the case or not but there's just a there was a lot more complexity.

Bryce:
[1:02:37] Yeah and.

Jeff:
[1:02:39] It's something that i've been yearning for is like if you're going to do something experimental wow this sounds like a ride on a ufo.

Bryce:
[1:02:45] Like give.

Jeff:
[1:02:46] Me the experiment.

Bryce:
[1:02:47] And so with this one i don't exactly know um because yeah this drum track, doesn't totally doesn't totally seem to follow the track on the studio album but this is also a way less compressed track i could totally see a world where if you especially with in a recording studio where you've got all of the different microphones micing a drum kit where you just took the drum and kick and then um you kind of went with the timing on those and maybe those were the sloppiness that we see in the studio album but again like you said there's a lot of technique in here that may have been mick so i don't i don't know the answer to that well but that it does it there are some things in there that do sound interesting like the hi-hat one One thing they talk about is that they would process... How they would process the vocal different tracks and i think what they did with a hi-hat.

Bryce:
[1:03:45] Is you it's just that hi-hat but you hear it have that um kind of not phasing but sort of this in and out effect um it sounds like the hi-hat is being fed through like a leslie speaker um if if your listeners are not aware a leslie speaker often used with an organ um like a hammond organ um it's a little speaker box that has a speaker in it but that speaker cone is on like a lazy susan it's on a rotating platform okay and it spins you turn it on and you run and it has to spin up and when it gets to speed it's all of the sound is coming out of that speaker but because it's changing direction and the microphone that's recording it is not you get this in and out um, hmm it's it's not phasing it's not doppler effect but you hear it kind of going the like like it's being swung around like on a rope almost like that's what that hi-hat sound is in this where it's like see.

Jeff:
[1:04:51] Now what i what i thought was it sounded like so it's interesting because there's a lot of different ways that you could take.

Bryce:
[1:04:56] This right.

Jeff:
[1:04:57] To me what it sounded like is is somebody hitting the hi-hat and then letting it open a little.

Bryce:
[1:05:02] Bit.

Jeff:
[1:05:02] Because when you have it clamped shut, it's a very tight sound. But you can just release it a little bit and get a little bit more of that, a little bit more of the dis-like part of it, as opposed to being a real quick snap and having it open and then close, which is why I was asking, there's a lot of this stuff that, in my mind, sounds like a jazz drummer doing interesting improvisational, not necessarily fills, but more like, you know, like I said, dropping things, switching for two beats to something else and then coming back. But that could also be what you were talking about, James Lindsay adding like track after track after track, like continuing to layer on individually recorded drum tracks that have been very specifically created to make that same style of effect so it's hard to say whether this is like a.

Bryce:
[1:05:58] Man or a machine that's like um to kind of go back to what you were talking about earlier that you prefer the i guess you know the instrumentation of this alternate version yeah more than the studio one um i i think i disagree there's something about the toy piano So... That I'm glad is not in the final studio mix. Like, I don't think I have anything against Toy Piano. But I think by this part of the album, even though it's not everywhere on here, I hear and I go like, oh, okay.

Jeff:
[1:06:41] I don't know. So after the kind of simplistic tracks on Honey High and Beautiful Child, and then given how interesting Tusk is, I think that it would have made for an interesting kind of transition up. We're moving between the kind of static or the kind of just basic arrangements in something a little bit more experimental than, OK, here's something that's very different.

Bryce:
[1:07:07] Hey, everyone, just a quick intermission and we'll get back to the music. Thanks for listening to Two Tusks. This mini-series was made possible by all of the support over at patreon.com slash lfgx. They got all of Two Tusks before anyone else with full song previews and enhanced audio quality. If you're interested in what's next, visit patreon.com slash lfgx. 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 on YouTube, where he's been covering new video game releases for over a decade. That's Rage Select on YouTube, or go to 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, The Dance, and Fleetwood Mac Live in Boston, are available everywhere from Warner Records. Now, back to the Tusks.

Bryce:
[1:08:11] All right, let's jump into song number four on Side D, the titular Tusk.

Jeff:
[1:08:18] Finally.

Bryce:
[1:08:18] Finally, we're here.

Jeff:
[1:08:19] Finally.

Bryce:
[1:08:20] It feels so weird talking about the song Tusk, 19 songs into Tusk.

Jeff:
[1:08:25] The title track?

Bryce:
[1:08:26] Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:08:26] Like one song from the end of the entire album. I know.

Bryce:
[1:08:31] Let's listen to the preview of Tusk because there's a lot to talk about Tusk.

Jeff:
[1:08:34] Sure.

Bryce:
[1:11:42] Okay. TUSK!

Jeff:
[1:11:45] TUSK!

Bryce:
[1:11:46] TUSK! It's wholly different than most everything else on the album.

Jeff:
[1:11:53] Absolutely.

Bryce:
[1:11:54] The very experimental song, TUSK. There's so many places to start, but I'd like to start on your impressions, because I have to imagine that if you listen to 18 of the songs on TUSK and then TUSK starts playing, you might go, what the fuck is this.

Jeff:
[1:12:13] Um yeah it it should come as no surprise that of these songs i don't know this this is definitely in like the top songs that i've heard on this album um it's definitely my favorite of this side okay it's what i've kind of wanted this entire time of something that's really out there it sounds completely different than everything else um more than anything i just to come to the end of the song. And I'm like, I want more of this. Like, I wish that there had been, there's been a longer song that it had a little bit more to it.

Bryce:
[1:12:48] Because after the drum solo, there's nothing.

Jeff:
[1:12:52] Yep.

Bryce:
[1:12:53] There's just shouting tusk and kind of jamming and some little vocal vamps and different like percussion additions. Like there's enough production-wise going on that from that point to the end of the song, like it's kind of changing and keeping things alive. But yeah, it's not like there's... A chorus to this fucking thing.

Jeff:
[1:13:11] Right is.

Bryce:
[1:13:12] That like what.

Jeff:
[1:13:13] It sounds like it's from a completely different band like it really does um it doesn't have any of the uh simple uh uh christine or lindsey kind of stuff and it's not lyrical like stevie song like it's it's very much a music forward track in a way that a lot of this has been lyrical focused and i think that's what i like so much about it. I love the, I love the drum solo of the marching band. You know, um, I love the fact that even before the marching band starts to come in, there's just like a, like a kind of a crowd noise behind the entire track that just makes it feel, I don't know, more like, like you're dirty and alive.

Bryce:
[1:13:56] You're filing into the arena and the gladiators are about to take their place.

Jeff:
[1:14:00] Right. It just, it just, it gives it an entirely different different tone.

Bryce:
[1:14:04] And i.

Jeff:
[1:14:05] Love it i love it.

Bryce:
[1:14:06] Um tusk is has a lot of interesting stories okay we'll start from where tusk starts which was on stage tusk actually started off as a stage riff so uh the touring element of fleetwood mac was uh it's kind of described as a paramilitary operation you get in get to the place we perform the songs and we go um you know fleetwood mac has been a band for a long time touring is something that they've done for a long time um and so uh that's that's part of it and to tell the to hear the story that occasionally in the few times where the band couldn't get a proper sound check in they would play a stage riff, as the audience was starting to come in or before the show would start. That way they could get levels and the stage riff that they would do, was dusk okay or was uh kind of a a drum a kind of a sure um and then a little bit of guitar strumming and so like in the original demo that they cut it really only just had the why don't you ask him if he's gonna stay or if he's going away line right and it would there wasn't even really the like big tusk moment it was just kind of that and then kind of that lindsey thing.

Bryce:
[1:15:34] And you're just kind of like, and you're just filling the words for something later.

Jeff:
[1:15:40] I mean, it does seem like a song, especially if you take the marching band aspect out of it, that could just go as long as you want it to. Right. Like it could just kind of keep repeating over and over again.

Bryce:
[1:15:51] If you listen to the on the re-release for Rumors, they're one of the discs is live, live tracks. And the intro to that, you can hear the stage riff.

Jeff:
[1:16:04] Just.

Bryce:
[1:16:04] A little it's still it doesn't sound like tusk.

Jeff:
[1:16:06] Yeah but.

Bryce:
[1:16:07] You hear that riff in this little like rock ditty rock jingle that they're doing.

Jeff:
[1:16:11] So that's.

Bryce:
[1:16:12] Kind of a funny uh funny little bit of providence there.

Jeff:
[1:16:15] Can i ask you a question about the song yes okay i don't know if you have any background information maybe uh i like um i like just screaming tusk but it also doesn't really have any context and it's also the name of the album and i'm curious if there's some kind of story about what Tusk, like, were we at the Natural History Museum and he had an idea for Fleetwood Mac album or go to the aquarium? Like, was there a...

Bryce:
[1:16:44] So, so, so they're, they're tracking the song and they're messing with the stage riff. It's still just kind of called stage riff at this point. And Lindsay realizes that every time he says Tusk, it gets a giggle out of the people who are listening.

Jeff:
[1:16:59] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:17:00] Because back then... Tusk, the word, tusk, the song, tusk, the meaning behind the song is penis.

Jeff:
[1:17:17] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:17:18] It's very penile.

Jeff:
[1:17:20] Good job, Lindsay. I would expect no less.

Bryce:
[1:17:25] And so, TURUS!

Jeff:
[1:17:28] I'm trying to think of a version of this song where it's just like...

Bryce:
[1:17:37] And so that uh with tusk becoming the title track it was uh it was slightly contentious choosing tusk to be the title track to be the image for the visual for it yeah um apparently before tusk was decided on the band had told stevie you were going to be on that cover they we fought we shot a photo of you like twirling a baton or something yeah it's gonna beat you, and then as they're making tusk the either the band or the record label hires someone to, like take photos and um there are multiple people working on photo photography projects around this album but one of them is to like take these photos for some sort of like african inspired like a collage of images which leads to the photo of scooter the dog biting at ken clay's leg his owner and uh that ended up being the task you can see his teeth bearing as he bites on the pant leg and uh bob was your uncle from that point on wow that decision uh, stevie was not a fan of oh i can imagine.

Jeff:
[1:18:54] That that most of the women in this band given the contentious nature of the songs and everything and then it's like you kind of have these back and forth so people kind of tell on their side of the story and expressing their emotions and then.

Bryce:
[1:19:05] They're just.

Jeff:
[1:19:06] Like i'm gonna call this album.

Bryce:
[1:19:08] Penis yeah we're gonna call this one penis and i.

Jeff:
[1:19:12] Can imagine everybody just going like oh god really.

Bryce:
[1:19:16] Yeah um stevie was very against it at the time um i don't know if this is apocryphal but i placed a curse on scooter oh no scooter or little scooter um and also ken posits a little more seriously in the book that probably the mixture of like of this action of calling the album tusk going with the picture of the dog alongside what happened at the end of rumors which was one of stevie's songs got cut at kind of the last second and it was a very meaningful song for her it comes back in their career later but um ken kind of posits that okay this is probably where stevie really kind of the straw broke the camel's back of like no i'm i'm going to really put in the effort to do a solo career right and then as we'll talk about later but that that would be pretty uh successful for stevie yeah where here um she's kind of noodling around and kind of stuck in this band where she uh seemingly was like not able to advocate for her songs in in a particularly healthy environment yeah um well that sucks it it does kind of suck um, But it's not Stevie's song, so we kind of have to move on.

Jeff:
[1:20:41] Sure.

Bryce:
[1:20:42] We talked a little bit, two episodes ago, about comedy and about smash cuts.

Jeff:
[1:20:50] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:20:51] About the smash cut as a technique. And this is the track with the smash cut with the drum solo in the middle of it from Mick Fleetwood.

Bryce:
[1:21:00] This is where we get into the part where I am questioning a little bit of Gip Tusk to the book. Because it was written in the in the in the 20s fuck me it was it was written after the pandemic hit um and so you know 40 some years after the events occurred so i i think that there are some pieces um that don't that may not track for example the story that i understood before reading get tussed was that that drum solo that they use from mick was a drum solo that was intended for a different song which is why this which is why it is at a different speed okay um but in get tusk ken uh says that uh that was all intentional and that that drum solo was like intentionally recorded at 167 bpm and then spliced in and then spliced in in intentionally for this track okay Okay. And there are a few other little things, little quibbles that just make, just remind me. And I guess it's worth reminding the audience that this is a prior, this is a quotation marks primary source.

Jeff:
[1:22:09] Sure.

Bryce:
[1:22:10] This is an air quotes primary source.

Jeff:
[1:22:11] So wait, I'm sorry. Do you, are you, are you saying that you don't quite believe that, that it was intentional?

Bryce:
[1:22:16] I don't. I just am not sure which story it is, whether it was a drum solo for another song or whether it was written for this song.

Jeff:
[1:22:25] Because I can see, I mean, just what occurs to me is that by the point where that comes in, you've got the marching band that you can hear very clearly. And unlike a lot of other types of music, the marching band is like very rhythmic in their own right. So it's almost like an inversion of what you would normally have instead of a steady drum and a more freeform instrument. You have these very regimented instruments with a big freeform drum solo over the top of it.

Bryce:
[1:22:50] Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:22:50] And I really wouldn't be surprised. Again, this is just my drummer blood coming up of just having McFleet going like, well, you've done this entire damn album and you got me playing on Kleenex boxes and you got me playing in a closet. You're playing your own drums over me. I want one damn second to just do something.

Bryce:
[1:23:08] Kill it. Yeah.

Jeff:
[1:23:10] And that wouldn't surprise me in the least if that was the case.

Bryce:
[1:23:14] Yeah. So we did talk about it. This has the USC marching marching band, the University of Southern California marching band. This was a whole ordeal to include this marching band. So they track Tusk, they record Tusk. And I think there's a short holiday break over the winter. And I think that this is when this moment happens where Mick is on vacation in like northern France. He's like sitting at a cafe and all of a sudden a big, village band starts parading down the street and it's this fertility festival and everyone's involved and it's this big beautiful thing and Mick's idea is we're going to do that no we're going to do that, so there we'll come back to that briefly So they contact the USC marching band, and they record it at Dodger Stadium.

Bryce:
[1:24:15] If you see the music video for Tusk, that is documenting this process.

Jeff:
[1:24:19] Mm-hmm.

Bryce:
[1:24:21] Looking at this process it's.

Jeff:
[1:24:23] A variety of scenes from the process.

Bryce:
[1:24:25] It's a whole first off john mcphee is not there he is on his boat in like the fucking atlantic ocean and so they have a cardboard cutout of john oh that's.

Jeff:
[1:24:36] What that was okay.

Bryce:
[1:24:37] And they're just carrying around his cardboard cutout doing his little smirky grin yeah because he wasn't there for that um, did you know that when you hire a marching band they probably won't tell you until the day of that the band must march oh.

Jeff:
[1:24:57] That makes a lot more sense that makes a lot more.

Bryce:
[1:25:02] Sense so yeah so the band like they have to march that's how they keep time right and everyone's like what the fuck you should have said something and so there is dodger stadium and already they're having this trouble there's 112 musicians on the field okay and at one point they're like how are they gonna hear if we play it over the speakers it's gonna have too much bleed on the microphones they're just gonna hear the the drum so how do we even do that well just get headphones just rent 120 headphones and we'll make it work which they were going to do yeah until the band had to march, And so ultimately they say, OK, I'm the I'm the conductor. Give me headphones. And then I think there's some there's some small speaker system that they set up where some people can hear something, but they ultimately have it kind of going to the conductor. OK, like I'm the conductor. I will do it fine.

Jeff:
[1:26:02] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:26:02] Then they record it. And actually they end up coming back. Do you know a VSO?

Jeff:
[1:26:07] No, I don't know what that is.

Bryce:
[1:26:08] So it comes up a lot in the talking about this album and a good bit in rumors because it was used to kind of save rumors. But a VSO is a variable speed oscillator. Goodness. I'm going to cut this way short. If you wanted to change the speed of something, you would use a VSO for this.

Jeff:
[1:26:30] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:26:31] And think of it like when you're watching a movie and let's say you had a button to kind of offset the sync. This is kind of like that imagine you had a knob and you could kind of change the timing, very kind of on the fly okay um that's kind of what the vso is i i recommend going and looking up what it actually is because i in my head i can see how it works i know how it works it you're tweening it's tweening it's just tweening but i can't describe it technically so i'm not going to but uh apparently they record the brass band and then have to vso the whole recording because they're not in time okay they're almost in time but they're not in time um but i think that also leads to a characteristic where the horns maybe are, maybe a little perfect i mean you talked uh you're not on the stand counselor but um But you said earlier that the horns are very clean and that the drums and all the other pieces around it are a little sloppier. And so that VSO process may have ironed it out.

Bryce:
[1:27:44] Ironed that out i guess to just get the what they got the hand to make the horns like really solid in fact um another thing on the tusk re-release if you go and listen to the b disc of demos and sessions uh we talked about how i know i'm not wrong has a lot of takes yeah on that disc tusk also has a lot of takes that kind of track like okay here is a recording of it as a stage riff here are a few different like in the processes and then one of the last ones there is an instrumental version just with presumably just the marching

Bryce:
[1:28:18] band and so it's just it's you got the horns wait a minute.

Jeff:
[1:28:22] You told me they taken they took out the hooga haga.

Bryce:
[1:28:24] But the hooga haga the best part so they record the the brass and they get in the song very cool we're not done there okay mick was so taken in france that let's keep doing it when this is this is mick speaking on our upcoming tour let's go and reach out to the local high school bands and have them learn the song and they'll come in during tusk and it'll be this huge moment it'll be this this gigantic moment for us right when the brass comes in and suddenly you have the the people of the town right you know so when i talked earlier about the accuracy of the get tusked book okay this is one of my quibbles see ken says that fleetwood mac would go and look at local marching bands and get them to to uh be a part of the concerts and he asserts that they actually did that.

Bryce:
[1:29:32] And i don't believe that's true okay rather i think there are a few instances where fleetwood mac did perform with them with a band usually the usc marching band um but not on tour i have not seen any evidence that actually it uh there was a marching band on tour on any of these dates well.

Jeff:
[1:29:55] No matter no matter how you slice it up it sounds like a logistical nightmare you're.

Bryce:
[1:29:58] Either taking an entire uh.

Jeff:
[1:30:00] Uh you're taking an entire band with you on tour you're gonna get like four more buses or you're trying to get the local high schools at every place that you go to to learn this song.

Bryce:
[1:30:10] Right well.

Jeff:
[1:30:11] Enough to play.

Bryce:
[1:30:12] On to just walk in for one song right yeah so i don't think that happened but ken is like ken is kind of confident that that it does happen mm-hmm, I'm not saying he's wrong, but there are many instances, including the one that we'll talk about at the end of the show, where a band does come on stage and perform with them. And so I'm not saying he's wrong, but I'm saying just little, little, little inconsistency.

Jeff:
[1:30:39] It's very possible that it could have happened once or twice.

Bryce:
[1:30:42] Right.

Jeff:
[1:30:42] But probably you would have a lot more documentation if it was a thing that happened through the entire tour.

Bryce:
[1:30:48] If it happened ever.

Jeff:
[1:30:50] Yeah.

Bryce:
[1:30:50] Honestly like the only times that i am really aware of them playing is with the usc band in california so um that's that's tusk um it's there's even a longer story we that i don't even technically can't entirely wrap my head around but when they're recording this the drum beat that they're using is actually a loop but loop again there's not digital technology at the time to make a loop and so it was it was some duct tape sort of solution where they had a magnetic tape that they had able they were able to dub with this like same like measure or four measures of a drum uh recording and then that tape like winds around the room and it has to stay taut so it will get read and dubbed on the machines but then like it's confusing i kind of don't get it but tusk um before we jump into the alternate yeah just to kind of prime you i guess for the alternate here this is a just a different mix of tusk okay um so.

Jeff:
[1:32:05] It's not going to be significantly different than what we heard on the album.

Bryce:
[1:32:08] I'd like to see if you can you i'd like to see you point out the things that are different because i think you will um but yeah in general it is the same takes i believe it's pretty much the same audio information yeah but it's a slightly different remix okay all right well let's jump into that alternate tusk, the alternate task definitely.

Jeff:
[1:35:53] More uh definitely more silliness uh.

Bryce:
[1:35:56] In the alternate task for some reason that's the version that they put on this is one that is almost the almost exactly the final cut but with a little bit more of those vocals in the in the second half yeah and then like the brass you can hear it a little earlier you can hear like a phrase or two earlier other than that it's pretty similar you know maybe there's, slight you know maybe the compression's different maybe there are some smaller mixing things here but in general tusk is tusk yeah um but it may also speak to, the the way that that song was made you know like we think about the recording process for it right where they had to record it and then they had to go you know record it with the band and then with the bro the marching band and then mix it all together and versus something like you know we talked about like think about me which was they get in the studio and they play the second song, and bob is your uncle because it's just a rock song um and so maybe that's why, what we get here is so close to the final product just because um Hmm... There aren't a lot of like alternate takes right you know this is it well.

Jeff:
[1:37:20] I mean yeah once you add that that marching band component in it's like you're kind of locked in with that like.

Bryce:
[1:37:26] Yeah i.

Jeff:
[1:37:26] It's it's actually i don't know if uh in those other versions i would be interested because i can't really imagine this song as without that.

Bryce:
[1:37:36] Marching band.

Jeff:
[1:37:36] Like it sounds like it'd be very simple and kind of just sort of a loop without that i don't know.

Bryce:
[1:37:42] Yeah it leans a lot on that drum loop yeah um when you listen to the to the to those demos you know it's definitely drum loop forward um there's also not the the album there the i guess both of these versions of tusk have a lot of like percussion overdubs right like even if this is a song that is centered around this drum loop there are other percussive things that go on top of it yeah that make it not just be a loop you know there's a lot of like yeah you know or there but i mean more than just like the vocal bits there's a lot of bits where they kind of are improvising and changing it up without, always making it sound different um tusk tusk well.

Jeff:
[1:38:33] I i'm glad that mick uh got to see that band because, again, I think this is one of the more singular, like this one stands out from a lot of the other stuff around it.

Bryce:
[1:38:43] Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we're going to wrap up the album here with another softer

Bryce:
[1:38:49] jam. Let's never forget. Let's listen to a little preview here of The Christine Closer.

Bryce:
[1:40:38] Never forget kind of a sweet little damn like more fucking whiplash yeah after tusk though yes um like tusk not being the closer and instead of being never forget and i think maybe alluded it alluded to it inside a but um there's a bit of it feels like continuity between never forget and over and over. Aesthetically, they're both kind of softer. They both are a little rambly, or maybe they're kind of, a little repetitive. I don't know. What do you feel about Never Forget?

Jeff:
[1:41:21] I, this is the most challenging song for me on this entire album, because this is such a, I don't know. This just seems like it was, this seems like it was, okay say it okay i don't want to i don't want to be mean but like this seems like uh you know killer you you went to chat gpt you typed in write me the lyrics to a soft rock song that could be that no one could find offensive ever in the history of all mankind and then you listen to it, musically you go is there anything to talk about no what's going on musically no and listening.

Bryce:
[1:41:55] To it even just now i was like oh this doesn't nothing changed.

Jeff:
[1:41:59] Yep like.

Bryce:
[1:42:00] There's a slight chord change.

Jeff:
[1:42:02] But it has a you know it has a chorus but like this is sometimes um a nice pop song my nice inoffensive pop song yeah is catchy and it works and there's a lot of christine songs that i like i can't find anything to grab onto with this it's not like yeah it's it's just it's so kind of a nothing burger you know come on baby let's get you know don't you be cold don't you be cold love is gold like i i could see this in the hands of a um like a blues band who could who could lyrically or musically oomph it up even with the same lyrics even with some of the same stuff but the way it is here it's just it's such a vanilla cake with buttercream frosting that i'm just like okay do i eat it no i don't have anything to say about it's like.

Bryce:
[1:42:56] I think it's a I think it's catchy in a way that I think... Pop songs have to be bad to be catchy hold on hold on uh i don't think katie perry is a good singer i think her voice is not particularly good sure for singing yeah her timbers not my preference, and i think that's partly why she's successful because it's not bad i just don't like it.

Jeff:
[1:43:31] I i don't know.

Bryce:
[1:43:32] And and and so i i guess where what i'm getting at it here is like i think this is fine and there are a few like almost like uncanny valley bits like the way she says stroll and the like two different ways she says it are like strange yeah we don't say stroll in America to begin with. We definitely don't say stutroll. I don't know. But it is catchy.

Jeff:
[1:44:01] I don't know.

Bryce:
[1:44:02] Never forget.

Jeff:
[1:44:03] The thing is that I go to Katy Perry. I've been known when doing projects to sometimes listen to the exact same song on repeat, like just for six hours at a time as just like a kind of a something to keep my motor running. And I have done that with specifically Hot and Cold by Katy Perry which is a much more dynamic song like is it the best song no but it's really catchy I mean with this it's like, the tempo is just low enough that it's a foot tapper but not like a getting you going foot tapper it's a it's a warm bath yeah on a mild afternoon I.

Bryce:
[1:44:42] Think I think if this song was on Rumors or the White Flea with Mac album, I think it would fit really well because I think there's a folk, a folk genre element to this that... Across the rest of the album i think is more succumbed to like country influence and i think between this and like honey high i feel like there's enough of a folky element to it.

Jeff:
[1:45:13] That.

Bryce:
[1:45:14] Like that's why i didn't feel any tropical elements to honey high because to me that's like a folk song.

Jeff:
[1:45:19] Yeah um.

Bryce:
[1:45:20] And the folks don't have palm trees are you kidding me no they would never in this economy.

Jeff:
[1:45:24] Also i i i think that i'm also just i'm judging this song harshly because like, tusk was the perfect end to this album of being the title track and the way that it kind of fades out and the way that it's so different it's such an excellent it's like an exclamation point tusk exclamation point yeah and then you have this come along and it's just like like i don't think i would be as irritated with this if it was pushed back into some of the other places that we were yeah But it doesn't seem to have the raw emotional element of some of the other songs. It's not lyrically as interesting as even some of the other Christine songs. Again, it's not that I hate it. It's just that it doesn't evoke much to me at all.

Bryce:
[1:46:07] So I feel like I'm going to look at the Christine songs on this album over and over. Think about me.

Jeff:
[1:46:14] I really did like think about me.

Bryce:
[1:46:17] Brown eyes. Never make me cry. Oh. I think this is a song where I think Christine needed to be challenged more. Like, I think Never Make Me Cry, we heard, you know, a huge shift between its earlier version, which would have been like a very piano forward, like Songbird 2 type song. And that song got challenged into being this very vocal forward kind of soundscape. Yeah. And for like Never Forget or over and over, I don't think there was as much challenging of like, can't this... I'm not gonna imagine i had a better word than this but can't this be better like can't we do more can't we do more with this because hit.

Jeff:
[1:47:08] It with the spice weasel.

Bryce:
[1:47:09] You would you would think that would be what you would find in this band that is defined by the way it, collaborates yeah and maybe this is part of the excess kind of coming back full circle of this was christine's song this is what she wanted and what she wanted was this very basic sense of a song there's.

Jeff:
[1:47:33] Also i mean i i again this could be me reading into stuff but you do i mean the one thing i like about a lot of the christine songs is that there's a lot of like emotional tumult between.

Bryce:
[1:47:43] The stevie nicks.

Jeff:
[1:47:45] Songs and uh lindsey's songs and so the idea of like giving the entire band just to sort of a little bit of a.

Bryce:
[1:47:52] Break let's just have.

Jeff:
[1:47:54] A let's just have some little basic let's just have a chicken and potatoes dinner and then we can go back to freebasing jalapenos tomorrow like.

Bryce:
[1:48:03] I mean yeah I mean that's the story about Think About Me right is like the band kind of came together and it was like oh yeah we're a fucking rock band we can just do this yeah I see that I it's also another track, with kind of a rim click that's been double tracked was it Brown Eyes Yeah, it was brown eyes. That's also got that click, that rim click. So I'm sure that was fun.

Jeff:
[1:48:31] I didn't really get that. But as I said, this song kept just flowing over my brain.

Bryce:
[1:48:37] I didn't get it to go inside. One... I have two more things here on Never Forget. One of them... There's a sound that you hear near the end of Never Forget.

Bryce:
[1:48:47] This like kind of whooshing, warbling sort of sound.

Jeff:
[1:48:53] Okay. Okay.

Bryce:
[1:49:09] I'm kind of stuck on this because it's in the alternate, but it's such a weird warbling sound that you would have to do a lot of work to make that sound. 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, part of the idea of this album was to make strange sounds to make new sounds that people may not be used to hearing before I mean there are sounds that you hear in a studio all the time that are not interesting when you're in a studio but if you're not in a studio all the time then, holding down pressing down on a turntable to make it stop and go right is is something that people is novel to people especially in 1979 and so there's like this warbling effect with i it sounds like it's with a guitar but i don't know how else to describe it other than this like, wind whooshing sort of sound um but i but i i can't describe it any better than that and i I don't know how you would make that sound.

Jeff:
[1:50:23] Yeah. Maybe the air conditioning was on. Maybe there was a fan.

Bryce:
[1:50:28] Yeah, this grand studio, there's like a little window unit.

Jeff:
[1:50:33] Yep, yep.

Bryce:
[1:50:36] The last thing on Never Forget, I want to say this was probably a slightly earlier song that they recorded.

Jeff:
[1:50:43] Okay.

Bryce:
[1:50:43] I think the original title of it was Come On Baby. Um and come on baby they saw beautiful china said no we gotta change it um but the kind of what we talked about is like tusk probably should have been the closer for this album yeah and it was an intentional choice by the group to quote stifle expectations um the album was about the ups and downs of relationships. So by ending on never forget, you were ending on a more positive, slightly optimistic tone.

Jeff:
[1:51:21] I had thought of that when I first listened to this, of the idea of doing that. I don't know.

Bryce:
[1:51:26] I mean, it's there, but...

Jeff:
[1:51:28] I mean, but then you go back to this question of like, are you trying to challenge me or not? Like, if you're trying to challenge me, then get me out of my comfort space and let's go through this raw emotional journey that you've got going on and let's end with the lead singer of your band screaming penis into a microphone while the marching band is behind him. Like, you know, let's challenge it.

Bryce:
[1:51:49] Because so much of the rest of this album is challenging.

Jeff:
[1:51:51] Right.

Bryce:
[1:51:52] It is intentionally like being kind of a...

Jeff:
[1:51:57] A contrarian yeah a little bit of like.

Bryce:
[1:52:00] Just fuck you i'm gonna record in my bathroom.

Jeff:
[1:52:03] And we're.

Bryce:
[1:52:03] Gonna make a replica of my bathroom fuck you i'm gonna be on record saying that 1927 bathrooms are better than what we've got now.

Jeff:
[1:52:09] I mean fuck you i guess it's just a question because i think that the second time i listened to the song i thought of it as like i don't know this kind of feels like a like a nice gender neutral hug from somebody that you trust and it was like oh that's nice But then the more I thought about it, the more I started to get mad at it, where I was like, no, like you dragged me through all of your emotional turmoil and all of these weird songs full of all these strange ideas. You know, you're prone in the bathroom screaming.

Bryce:
[1:52:38] Fuck you!

Jeff:
[1:52:40] Screaming at me about this stuff. Don't give me a cookie and a pat on the back. But maybe.

Bryce:
[1:52:47] Maybe we're still human. Maybe we're not animals.

Jeff:
[1:52:50] Like, march off into the sunset with your crazy-ass band after you've had this frenetic drum solo and screamed the word Tusk at me inexplicably several times. Like, I think that that would be a more fitting end. And again, I want to say that it's not that I dislike this song, and I think that it might have worked in a different place. But I think that there is weight to how do you end the story, you know? It's like you can end a story in an interesting way, or you can make sure that when you get to the end of the story, it's all wrapped up in a nice bow and everybody feels fine. And those are two different things. And for this one, I think I just would have preferred the whole album was messy. Take your messiest song and your most experimental song and leave me with that to go like, wow, what a way to go out. because i.

Bryce:
[1:53:37] Mean i and i hear what you're saying too like it's an it's it's an interesting concept on paper but there's not a lot of other concepts that it sits next to that are that intentional.

Jeff:
[1:53:48] Yeah it feels like like mentally i'm sorry i don't want to keep harping on this but mentally in my head it's like the idea you talked about the concert thing of going through all of these songs which are all these different things and imagine if you're watching this as an audience and then tusk comes on and they're they're you know why don't you tell me that you won't go away And then suddenly a marching band streams down the hallways of the concert, playing this incredible thing. And then they stream up onto the stage and everybody screams Tusk. And then they all kind of wander off. And then the house lights come up, right? It just totally makes more sense to me.

Bryce:
[1:54:25] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean...

Jeff:
[1:54:29] I'm belaboring a little bit at this point.

Bryce:
[1:54:31] Well, we talked previously that it seemed like there was an idea going around through a lot of the recording sessions that this might be two projects.

Jeff:
[1:54:40] Right.

Bryce:
[1:54:40] Or this might be two separate disks or two separate products. And maybe that's a consequence of that, of we didn't really have anywhere else to put Never Forget, or we had to change tack so late in the project that nothing else can respond except the track listing. But then like either way you have to take that on the chin.

Jeff:
[1:55:01] Yeah because i don't know in looking at this last side it's like if we just try to find a place for never forget on this last side i don't think that it works well after beautiful child because that's such an impactful song and i don't know that it would work after walk a thin line um because it would just be kind of too much of the same back to back so and.

Bryce:
[1:55:20] Then what do you put on this side if you're replacing never forget to make room for it.

Jeff:
[1:55:25] I don't know i mean i would have to go it's.

Bryce:
[1:55:27] A longer it's a longer conversation.

Jeff:
[1:55:29] Like you would you could probably you could probably make a case for taking never forget somewhere back in like side one and then taking another one of christine's songs like think about me that is that does contrast more with what's on this last side and swap them out but then i feel like putting never forget on side one takes away that nice little uplifting

Jeff:
[1:55:49] pop song that you get after the first two kind of experimental things. So anyway, I mean.

Bryce:
[1:55:54] It's it's it's obviously not an easy problem to solve, you know, tracking out, you know, one album that is kind of three little albums, but then making everyone feel good.

Jeff:
[1:56:08] Right.

Bryce:
[1:56:08] You know, at the end of the day, you actually have to make the band feel good. Otherwise, they're not going to want to do it. Well, let's jump into the alternate. Never forget here. Not much to say about it. There we go. A little bit of organ.

Jeff:
[2:00:07] Yeah.

Bryce:
[2:00:07] Got a tambourine instead of the click.

Jeff:
[2:00:09] Yep. Better. Yeah. I mean, I thought musically a little bit more interesting. It had a little bit more character. I'm still not the biggest fan of the lyrics, but they were even sung in a little bit more expressive. Yeah, a little bit looser. I would be less. it's another slight yeah like.

Bryce:
[2:00:35] It does sound different enough compared to the studio cut.

Jeff:
[2:00:40] Yes but.

Bryce:
[2:00:41] Out of all of them it's like i don't even know they don't even talk about this one in the book um no they do talk about just briefly but like it's like yeah it's.

Jeff:
[2:00:55] It's a basic song it's a very basic song yeah like i i it kind of goes back to some of the, when i've talked in the past about lindsey's guitar where i'm like if you know if you guys are artists that like give it to me give it to me like full throttle yeah and so again the christine stuff is kind of hit or miss for me because sometimes it feels real out of place sometimes it seems like a nice respite um this one just doesn't seem to have as much to grab onto as a lot of the other ones yeah.

Bryce:
[2:01:26] Yeah um yeah i mean i don't even really have whatever.

Jeff:
[2:01:33] Like you know i.

Bryce:
[2:01:35] Think i don't like this song.

Jeff:
[2:01:37] I'm not coming around i think i'm not liking this song yeah well i mean it seems like the thing that you're most focused on is like what is that aquarium noise like that's all you've got what is it because it's not like there's anything about the lyrical content that's worth talking about. I mean, it's fine.

Bryce:
[2:01:53] It's fine.

Jeff:
[2:01:54] It's fine. My mom could listen to this song. It would be fine.

Bryce:
[2:01:57] Your mom probably did listen to this song.

Jeff:
[2:01:58] I probably did listen to this song. It was fine.

Bryce:
[2:02:00] And I think if you're in the band and this is one of the Christine songs that she's got, well... That's how Christine made her hits, writing simple songs. So I think, yeah, there probably just isn't, there's just not as much challenging going on of this track.

Jeff:
[2:02:23] And I mean, there's another thought that I've had about this, but it might be better saved if we're going to do like kind of end thoughts about the entire album.

Bryce:
[2:02:30] Yeah, we will.

Jeff:
[2:02:31] Because I did have a thought that I'd like to put in there that's kind of about.

Bryce:
[2:02:35] Well, let's jump into that because I don't fucking want to talk about Never Forget anymore.

Jeff:
[2:02:38] Okay.

Bryce:
[2:02:38] How did you feel now that we are at the end of this experience, Jeff?

Jeff:
[2:02:43] It was interesting. I don't think, like, I think that if I had just come to this album, if I just said, I'm going to listen to this Tusk album, I don't think I would have liked it. I think that it was one of those things where, like, I think that there's some music you like right away and some music you're ambivalent about and you don't like it. And some music you're ambivalent about, and then as you listen to it more, you start to appreciate it. And I think that I've appreciated this, especially with your insight and the alternate tracks. I didn't know anything about Fleetwood Mac coming into this.

Bryce:
[2:03:20] We have to do a follow-up episode where you just listen to rumors. Just you reacting to listening to rumors. Like, where is this guy been?

Jeff:
[2:03:30] But, you know, one of the things that I did think about that I think is worth pointing out is that I think that I've been a little bit of a harsher critic on this throughout this process, because a lot of these aren't really for me. But yesterday when I was thinking about this side, I was desperately trying to kind of dig into it. Yeah.

Jeff:
[2:03:50] I had to something that I think a lot of times we forget is that I'm listening to this from 2025 perspective. I came up and for the first time and for the first time, a lot of the music that I like tends to be more complex. It tends to be more produced. It tends to be faster. But all of that is a result of the evolution of music over the years. Like this could have an entirely different effect listening to it at the time. Like it may have come off as very experimental when it came out. Whereas nowadays, having heard the results of that experiment and then seen people iterate and iterate and iterate that, like, I guess I just want to give the band credit for, like, they wanted to try something and they did. And that's going out on a limb is a hard thing, especially, I mean, like what you just said, like, if their previous albums were a lot easier to digest, and this is more complex and challenging, like, it may not be my thing, but that's okay. Like um because it probably i don't know i don't know if this one of those albums where you know you hear about that stuff from time to time where there are less popular albums that then become like major influences like people talk about like oh the first time i listened to tusk it just changed my whole thoughts about how music could be created yeah um so there's a very good possibility that i'm missing out a little bit of that just because of where i'm coming from.

Jeff:
[2:05:19] But I just I guess I wanted to temper a little bit of my my harsh critiques of this album by saying that, like, you know, I'm coming to this from an entirely different viewpoint.

Bryce:
[2:05:28] Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's part of what I want to do with this is to say like, hey, what? I mean, it doesn't help the listener much, I guess, if we are able to like perfectly replicate what people would have reacted to in the late 70s. But, yeah, I have felt kind of that way about this album, similar to how I feel about almost like the individual tracks of like, it doesn't leave a good first impression and it's tough to make it through. But if you get to the end of it what you'll find is a thought that has been like executed on well you know a lot of these songs like don't have good beginnings and so i think that's something i'm i'm like constantly having this friction with of like if you just did this today you would have just done this and you wouldn't have even needed to change much of anything just do this do you know you this thing that I really actually don't like when other people do I'm trying not to do it of like oh this movie would have been good if you just cut this scene sure and it's and so it is it's.

Jeff:
[2:06:49] I mean, it's a difference between taking it as it is, right? And I mean, you know, in my other stuff where I get into video games, a lot of times people will judge a product based on something that that product never said that it was going to do, never gave me an impression it was going to do, and yet it's being judged harshly for not doing something. And that is irritating. But by the same token, there's also, I think, an instinct in a lot of people who make art and who have been in production, especially editing, which I've both done a lot where you say, oh, man, I can just see some places where if you just had just.

Bryce:
[2:07:24] Do this and move this.

Jeff:
[2:07:25] Up and you just move this down here, you put this course over here, it would have it would have been a lot more. And those two things are hard to square.

Bryce:
[2:07:35] Absolutely. I hope that the listeners at least can take away some sense of the thought process at the time. I think that's probably the most objective goal I can try to have on this. It's like, I hope we can at least create some sort of a line between point A and point B of how these people thought, how they acted, and what their headspace was when making this music. Because i don't i don't think that it represents it doesn't represent a modern, sensibility this is not the way you make an album now but it also wasn't really the way you made an, So I just want to try to understand why I'm getting away from being objective. But why did you do this?

Jeff:
[2:08:44] Well, that's okay, too, because this is, I mean, music is about taste, right? Everybody has a different taste. There's just such thing as like an objectively perfect song.

Bryce:
[2:08:53] Yeah.

Jeff:
[2:08:53] Like, you know, you can probably play this entire album at 1.5x for me, and I would have maybe enjoyed it more.

Bryce:
[2:09:00] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Jeff:
[2:09:01] Just because I like hierarchy.

Bryce:
[2:09:02] That would have made you like the ledge, just a little bit. yeah i um i just think it's it's so fascinating and with all of the stories i mean there are i i, think it's kind of also self-evident like why this band is attracts attention just because these stories are not primal but they do feel primary like rumors is about you know people who broke up and it's about your headspace and if you could say something to the person who broke up with you yeah and that's so enticing you know i mean it's no i don't think it's a mistake that the band even... The image of the band and even the band will accept the image that they are the musical soap opera. But you know what? They are. And they made some good songs. And... End of thought process, I guess. And I would like to make content.

Jeff:
[2:10:17] No, I definitely, that is something that's unique about this. And in thinking about it while you were just talking, it was like, I don't necessarily think that I, like, listening to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, I don't feel like I know anything about what was going on in, you know, John Lennon's personal life based on those tracks. Whereas this is like a reality TV show where we're throwing drinks at people's faces. We got, we're going back and forth. We've got, you said, we got, she said, um, and there is, there is an attraction there. I think that it would be interesting to get the impression of somebody who had never listened to this before, who knows about the personal lives of the band, but then hasn't listened to this album. And then what did, what is their impression from just listening to this with a deeper, uh understanding of those.

Bryce:
[2:11:09] Relationships so i mean and i think that's another place where like this band is really poised to look flea and mac charted a few years ago yeah because of like a tiktok trend that went viral like there's still some magic in that old top hat sure sure even if lindsey's not even in the band anymore like there's something about it that that, attracts attention and i think it's very noble that the music is also good yeah you know um, in high school i listened to a lot of japanese pop music and a lot of these like girly girl groups like idol groups yeah and i look back at that time now and maybe maybe i'm finding some shades here that most people won't but um the the groups that like the big group that i liked there's a big like umbrella group around it part of why i liked them was because the guy who made their music was a rock star he like legitimately wrote tons of songs he wrote hundreds of songs for these bands um.

Bryce:
[2:12:33] And whatever you felt about the singers or the outfits or the like the end of the day, there was also so good music under there.

Jeff:
[2:12:40] Sure.

Bryce:
[2:12:40] You know, this is the guy who does the music for Rhythm Heaven, by the way.

Jeff:
[2:12:46] OK.

Bryce:
[2:12:46] It's that like, oh, like, like there's something there. And so I feel strangely, just to go from like the fucking purity of Japanese idols to fucking 79 Fleetwood Mac, I feel a similar sense of like the music is here and it's whole. Even if the music itself isn't experimental, this is a five-piece band that gave it their whole. I um when when i was looking up um like what to name this album i almost called this um a noble failure because there's like a whole thing about like what a noble failure is and, i think potentially tusk falls under that of like uh this band trying to make the most of their opportunity fully committing to everything that they do um and even if the results are relatively only 4 million copies oh only 4 million only 4.

Jeff:
[2:13:47] Million copies geez why even bother at that point.

Bryce:
[2:13:50] Um any other thoughts on tusk as a whole piece of text before we go into some other stuff no.

Jeff:
[2:13:58] I think that that kind of wraps it up an interesting i i think an interesting mess is maybe how i.

Bryce:
[2:14:04] Would say.

Jeff:
[2:14:05] 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:
[2:14:11] That's music yeah.

Jeff:
[2:14:12] That's how it is.

Bryce:
[2:14:13] So so after tusk comes out in 1979 um the band ends up going on the tusk tour okay um the video that making of comes out even later they were like technical issues or something so it doesn't come out around the same time um and that tour i suppose really um really maybe permanent finalizes some of the the frustrations in the band some of the resentment or anger um they've members of the band have talked after the fact later that you know recording the albums is really difficult and going on tour is like five times as difficult um and i absolutely see why you're constantly in a new place you you're in the band that has as much drugs and drink as they want at all times um, Not to mention, there's probably a good amount of fucking going on in a band with people who fucking hate each other.

Jeff:
[2:15:28] Right.

Bryce:
[2:15:29] So, like, that's also really stressful.

Jeff:
[2:15:31] Also, I can't, I mean, interject, I can't imagine what it's like to then have to get up night after night and sing some of these emotionally raw songs. And there's got to be, I don't know, but there's got to be some kind of emotional calculus about like, do I keep poking at this wound to get a good rendition of this emotional song? Or do I let it become this degraded version because I've squeezed all the emotion out of it and we're just kind of going through the motions? Like, how do you sing what makes you think you're the one like three times a week with the with with the emotion of what's going on on this album?

Bryce:
[2:16:10] Yeah.

Jeff:
[2:16:11] And not like and then like those wounds that begat these songs that never heal because you just keep opening them up night after night for a big group of people

Jeff:
[2:16:20] screaming and cheering. And then, yeah, then go back and do a bunch of drugs and have weird sex or whatever.

Bryce:
[2:16:26] Yeah, I mean, because you go through all of this and the reward is you continue to have your lavish lifestyle of excess. People tell you that you're still geniuses, even when you make like the funky weird art album.

Jeff:
[2:16:42] Yep.

Bryce:
[2:16:45] So that kind of happens. A lot of the recording during the Tusk tour becomes Fleetwood Mac Live, which we've heard pieces of. Um tusk and sarah are singles and they are moderately successful i think there's a small fun fact that in the uk tusk at the time maybe still but at the time because it charted in the uk it was like the song with the most number of musicians in it to chart okay because there's 120 20 some people sure um after tusk the band doesn't put out another album until 1982's barrage um but in that meantime, uh stevie nicks goes and has her solo career bella donna comes out and is a pretty big hit lindsey releases an album called law and order um and those are more tepidly received yeah, lindsey's got um this song called trouble which is kind of a kind of a hit but it's also this very like kind of watery song so whatever um the band would get together to do mirage they, they got back to do like a pop album we're going to get richard dash it back from rumors he's going we're going to make a pop album and we're going to do it in france for some reason i'm.

Jeff:
[2:18:11] Going to recapture the magic of our youth.

Bryce:
[2:18:13] It's going to be great.

Jeff:
[2:18:14] It's going to be just exactly like it was.

Bryce:
[2:18:17] And mirage is a fine album yeah it's a fine album um then eventually uh uh you know it'd be a few years and they the band would be working on tango in the night after tango is done lindsey ends up leaving the band right before they go on tour like two weeks before they go on like they're the band have gotten together to sign the contracts to go on tour and he says i'm not going to go on tour i'm leaving the band which leads to like a a fucking brawl like stevie attacks him and chases him outside it's a it's a fucking wow whole thing um and so he doesn't go on that tour they end up getting these other two guitarists to replace him um the band goes on tour the band tries to cover without him then 1994 or 93 bill clinton is on the campaign trail and is using Fleetwood Mac's Don't Stop as his campaign song, which leads to a small reunion in 94 of the band performing Don't Stop. And then their big reunion would be in 1997 for The Dance, where Lindsay would come back. They produced this live video and album.

Bryce:
[2:19:33] You may have seen it, honestly, for some of the ubiquity of it at the time. Um and then they end up going on tour again kind of in this new reunited uh mac okay um christine leaves a little bit after that um and then and then say you will comes out in 2003 and then that's kind of the fleetwood mac story um there's there's i mean i gave that was even longer than i expected that to go but um this is a band with a lot of story and it is a musical soap opera but I just wish there were better words to describe it like that,

Bryce:
[2:20:10] because it just feels unfortunately cheap.

Jeff:
[2:20:13] If you call it that. I guess maybe something to just, as we talk about this chaotic period, I don't really, you know, of Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks is really the only person I was familiar with before we started this. Was Lindsay Buckingham considered... Talented, like a, like a, like a talented, cause I mean like, yeah, he seems experimental, but he doesn't seem as experimental as some of the other acts that I've been able to think of.

Bryce:
[2:20:43] Yeah.

Jeff:
[2:20:44] Um, and then when he does the kind of basic stuff, he seems fine at it, but at no point does his guitar seem as good as some of the big notable guitarists that are out there. His vocals aren't, are fine, but they're not like, you know, something.

Bryce:
[2:20:58] That a.

Jeff:
[2:20:59] World-class musician that everybody knows like i be honest with you there's a lot of these songs where it was like christine and lindsey i could i had a hard time telling between the two of them so.

Bryce:
[2:21:11] I would say that he uh i would say that lindsey's like saddest right now is like as an underappreciated guitarist okay um that said like i think if you look at this this whole resume of his time in fleetwood mac that there's probably enough points where you go like that does seem questionable that maybe on a technique on technical reasons you would like not have him be you know some sort of like mount rushmore type figure like i think tusk probably does a lot of damage to the idea that he's a great guitar player well.

Jeff:
[2:21:55] And then also it seems like i mean just from the chronology that you laid out that like i again i don't know if i'm just making stuff up but what it sounds like is that he thought he was a genius himself and.

Bryce:
[2:22:07] You know oh.

Jeff:
[2:22:09] You guys are just holding me back and then you go out and don't actually manage to put anything out that that manages to wow people that.

Bryce:
[2:22:16] His strength.

Jeff:
[2:22:17] Was more as a part of this band.

Bryce:
[2:22:18] And not necessarily.

Jeff:
[2:22:19] As a solo entity in the way that like stevie nicks um.

Bryce:
[2:22:23] I could see that i mean it's definitely his assertion here by the time they're making tusk that what he can bring to the band is not just guitar playing but is in studio skills you know i don't just play the guitar

Bryce:
[2:22:41] i help everyone finish their songs i help make sure the albums sound good now.

Jeff:
[2:22:47] Build my bathroom.

Bryce:
[2:22:50] And and i don't i don't think that that's, even inherently wrong i don't think that there's anything that says that that's not true you know i think it's very possible that lindsey had a very big help a big hand in the production of rumors and parlayed that into a stronger hand in Tusk. Um... But I think he also has to be the one to take all of the response on the chin. Right.

Jeff:
[2:23:28] If you're going to be in charge, then when the plane comes down, it's going to come to you.

Bryce:
[2:23:34] So much so that on Tusk, on the actual printing of Tusk, it's on the vinyls. And I think you probably have it on the CD if I'm thinking about it. But um so they're you know uh tusk by fleetwood mac and every copy of tusk i've seen including the alternate tusk has another line says special thanks from the band to lindsey buckingham my goodness yeah wow yeah uh.

Jeff:
[2:24:02] I i'm starting to uh i'm starting to uh empathize with stevie dicks chasing him out in the parking lot.

Bryce:
[2:24:08] The ego.

Jeff:
[2:24:09] On this guy which i mean i don't know the the problem with this is that like it would be interesting to get into the you know the what if machine and.

Bryce:
[2:24:19] Be like.

Jeff:
[2:24:19] What what would tusk sound like without lindsey right.

Bryce:
[2:24:22] Oh may there there are what ifs maybe not the tusk one though um this one is a wild hair i'll leave to the audience yeah um in some point in get tusked i only caught this today but um the studio or i don't know if the record label or someone went back in and made a like 5.1 surround sound mix of tusk and i it sounded like there was a good amount of work from the engineering team to kind of maybe re-smooth tusk again in those 5.1 mixes okay but i don't i don't know enough about those to say to say more um just fascinating just because i mean not i i also think that like i've worked in plenty of collaborative and creative scenarios and i think i feel a certain amount of kinship to the scenarios and the stories of tusk of dealing with personalities dealing with outside voices dealing with technology and outside influences um and even uh you know at the time they had the they had the run of the land because they you know they had all this huge success yeah and even then.

Bryce:
[2:25:50] All that huge success was not an indicator that if you do it your way, it will be even more of the same.

Jeff:
[2:25:59] Sure.

Bryce:
[2:25:59] You know, it's complicated. Like this album, there's not necessarily one moral. It's just a lot of vignettes of what it's like to be dealing with a relationship.

Jeff:
[2:26:12] It's like life.

Bryce:
[2:26:13] It's like life. Before we head out, I want to do one last quick thing. We're going to send people out with a performance of Tusk from 1997 from The Dance. This is that big reunion where Lindsay came back and they're touring again.

Jeff:
[2:26:32] All right.

Bryce:
[2:26:33] So we're going to listen to a little bit of the live Tusk.

Jeff:
[2:26:38] Okay.

Bryce:
[2:26:40] Now imagine that in every city across America.

Jeff:
[2:26:44] It's very impressive. It's very impressive. And was that Lindsay?

Bryce:
[2:26:48] Yeah.

Jeff:
[2:26:49] Oh, okay.

Bryce:
[2:26:49] Yeah. So that was 1997, about 18 years after Tusk.

Jeff:
[2:26:53] Okay. I like that, Lindsay, more than what I heard on this album. Yeah. Even though I did miss a little bit of the kind of everybody's singing together, but I did appreciate the accordion.

Bryce:
[2:27:05] Yeah.

Jeff:
[2:27:05] And then I felt bad for Stevie because she didn't really have anything to do with it.

Bryce:
[2:27:08] She was going to shake, she was going to shake, and then her tambourine is not being picked up at all.

Jeff:
[2:27:12] Yep.

Bryce:
[2:27:14] Yeah. So that's a clip from The Dance, which they got a Grammy for that.

Jeff:
[2:27:19] Oh, okay.

Bryce:
[2:27:19] So like, hey, you know what? Maybe there's some magic in that hat.

Jeff:
[2:27:22] Sure.

Bryce:
[2:27:24] All right. Well, that's going to do it here for PsyD. And I think that'll do it here for Two Tusks.

Jeff:
[2:27:28] Cool.

Bryce:
[2:27:29] Unless we find some reason to come back again. But thank you, Jeff, for joining me on this journey.

Jeff:
[2:27:33] Yeah, no problem.

Bryce:
[2:27:34] Thank you to the listeners for joining us. And we are going to send you out with the dance version of Tusk. Thank you. Have a good one.