Ken Caillat - Get Tusked: The Inside Story of Fleetwood Macs Most Anticipated Album: The Inside Story of Fleetwood Macs Most Anticipated Album

K EN C AILLAT is the producer and engineer for the Fleetwood Mac albums Rumours, Tusk, Mirage, Live, and The Chain Box Set. He has also had the pleasure of producing his daughter Colbie Caillats albums Coco, Breakthrough, All of You, and Christmas in the Sand.

H ERNAN R OJAS is a recording engineer, music producer, and on-air host of Sonar FM when not leading Great Place 2 Rock, a company dedicated to promoting change and transformation through music.

H ERNAN R OJAS

First, I would like to thank my mentor, Ken Caillat, for sharing his friendship and professional sound and musical knowledge from our first encounter remixing the singles for Rumours to the end of Tusk, and for trusting me enough to join him in the making of this book.

I would also like to thank the devotion and craftsmanship of our editor, Dan Hoffheins, whose dedicated and passionate work has taken Kens and my stories to higher grounds.

I would also like to thank my wife, Pascuala, for her love and relentless support during the intense writing sessions for this book.

I would like to thank, for their inspiration, and without whom I would have never taken the one-way-ticket trip to California: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Violeta Parra, Los Blops, Los Jaivas, Vctor Jara, and Fleetwood Mac.

And finally I would like to thank Stevie Nicks for her friendship and trust during Tusk that led to such wonderful songs, including the mesmerizing Sara.

(Special thanks from the authors to Lindsey Buckingham.)

R OBIN A NDERSON

G ABRIELLE A RRAS

T ERRY B ECKER

D AVID B IANCO

K ENNETH F. C AILLAT

J OHN C OURAGE

D ANNY D OUMA

D AVID E LLIOTT

C ARLA F REDERICK

G EORDIE H ORMEL

M ICHAEL H UBER

B ARBARA I SSAK

D ANNY K IRWAN

D ICK L A P ALM

T OM P ETTY

G REG T HOMASON

B OB W ELCH

B OB W ESTON

J UDY W ONG

H ERBIE W ORTHINGTON

Buckingham, Lindsey. The Beach Boys. Rolling Stone, April 15, 2004.

Buckingham, Lindsey. Fleetwood Macs Lindsey Buckingham Turns Another Corner. Interview by Blair Jackson. BAM, January 30, 1981. https://www.fleetwoodmac-uk.com/articles/FMart72.htm.

Buckingham, Lindsey. Interview by Molly Meldrum. Countdown, ABC, October 21, 1979. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSHPJiGe1DQ.

Crowe, Cameron, director. Almost Famous. Universal City, CA: DreamWorks Pictures, 2000.

Egan, Walter, songwriter/musician. Discussion with the authors. November 2009.

Flans, Robyn. The Power of Fleetwood Mac. Modern Drummer, OctoberNovember, 1980. https://www.moderndrummer.com/article/october-november-1980-mick-fleetwood-power-fleetwoodmac/.

Fricke, David, senior editor Rolling Stone. Discussion with the authors. August 2017.

Jerome, Jim. Fleetwoods Tusk. People, November 26, 1979. https://people.com/archive/cover-story-fleetwoods-tusk-vol-12-no-22/.

Lindsey, Ray, Fleetwood Mac guitar tech/roadie. Discussion with the authors. November 2009.

Lydon, John. The Danceable Solution. Interview by Chris Brazier. Melody Maker, October 28, 1978. https://www.fodderstompf.com/ARCHIVES/INTERVIEWS/mm78.html.

McLane, Daisann. Fleetwood Mac: They Dared to Be Different. Rolling Stone, February 7, 1980. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/fleetwood-mac-they-dared-to-bedifferent-243618/.

McVie, Christine. Interview by Nancy Collins. Rock N Roll Women, NBC, 1980. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ8oLODVE3U.

Nicks, Stevie. Interview by Molly Meldrum. Countdown, ABC, February 1980.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm-U0oIKCHE.

Nicks, Stevie. Letter: Stevie Nicks to Hernan Rojas. Los Angeles, CA, October 1979.

Nicks, Stevie. Letter: Stevie Nicks to Maria Teresa Rojas. Santiago, Chile, October 1979.

Nicks, Stevie. Unpublished diary. September 1979August 1980.

Salewicz, Chris. Fleetwood Mac: Cant Go Home Again. TrouserPress, April 1, 1980. https://stevie-nicks.info/1980/04/fleetwoodmac-cant-go-home-again/.

Spain, Tom, dir. Tusk Documentary. Burbank, CA: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1980. DVD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIQrfFu5uTg.

Trucks, Rob. Tusk. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011.

Unterberger, Richie. Fleetwood Mac: The Complete Illustrated History. Minneapolis, MN: Quarto Publishing Group, 2016.

Williamson, Nigel. Fleetwood Mac: Everybody Was Pretty Weirded OutThe Story of Rumours. Uncut, January 29, 2013. https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/fleetwood-mac-everybody-was-pretty-weirded-out-the-story-of-rumours-26395#zGfdrIQHz3LixQl6.99.

Its not like Rumours was the best album ever made because it sold the most copies. It did well for a lot of different reasons, many, Im sure, that had little or nothing to do with the music. If Im going to believe it sold so well because it was so great, how am I supposed to interpret Tusk selling so many fewer copies? I like Tusk better. I just cant take it too seriously. Sales are not necessarily indicative of quality.

L INDSEY B UCKINGHAM

Since finishing Rumours a year and a half ago, things changed a lot for us. Rumours went platinum a month after it was released with 1 million in sales and hit no. 1 in April 1977, and stayed no. 1 all the way until November, breaking and setting records established by some of the biggest names in the music business. A year later, my coproducer, Richard Dashut, and I won a Grammy as the producers of the Album of the Year for our work on Rumours, and were also nominated for Best Engineers at the twentieth annual Grammy Awards.

I traveled with the band on its victory lap around the worldall across the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, recording its live shows to millions of rapturous fans. Everywhere Fleet-wood Mac played, it was more than just a rock band; it was a phenomenon, one that required hours of hard work behind the scenes to maintain. After a much-needed rainy winter break, the band rented Joe Walshs house on Mulholland and began rehearsing and writing again. The bands popularity hadnt waned one bit. If anything, it was growing. Fleetwood Mac had the magic touch, with more hits than Rod Carew. Even its side projects, such as Warren Zevons Werewolves of London and Walter Egans Magnet and Steel, were burning up the Top 40.

On September 16, 1978, construction began on our new custom-built studio on the edge of Santa Monica, a new addition to the renowned Village Recorder Studios, and by June, Studio D was complete. The owner was an eccentric midwestern tycoon, Geordie Hormel of Hormel Foods, and the studio that Spam built was his favorite toy. If he was low on money, hed sell an island. If someone didnt let him play piano, hed buy the place. Geordie was a very nice guy and mild mannered with long hair well down past his shoulders, a former socialite once married to Leslie Caron now turned California hippie. Geordies clients were some of the biggest stars in the music business, and he was constantly paranoid about the rampant drug use and parties going on only half a block from the local precinct. Therefore, the entrance to the Village was a maze of mirrors intended to confuse and delay a police raid. Inside his office he even built a fake wall that he could open and disappear behind. It truly was a different time.

After getting loose on the road, the band was itching to record. Now that its studio was complete, it was time to get down to business. I was confident that this time around would be easier. I was no longer the new kid, and I now knew the band intimately and how to better fulfill its needs. Its storied relationship issues had apparently all but healed. John McVie was engaged to his secretary, Julie Rubens, and Christine McVie was head over heels for LAs most eligible bachelor, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Christine and Dennis spent most nights either sleeping on his 52-foot yawl,