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Fleetwood Mac · S5 E7
Four Million Copies
The label calls it a disappointment. By any other band's standards it is a massive success. Perspective is everything
The sales reports arrive at Warner Bros. in late 1979, and Tusk is moving units, just not fast enough. Four million copies will sell worldwide, a number that would make any other band pop champagne, but for the follow-up to Rumours it triggers a crisis meeting.
"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, official music video, 1981). This is what happened next. Tusk's commercial shadow pushed Stevie into a solo career that would rival the band itself. Her debut album Bella Donna outsold Tusk in its first year. The future was already pulling Fleetwood Mac apart.
The Disappointment That Wasn't
Four million copies sold worldwide. Two top-ten singles. A tour that packed arenas across three continents. By any rational measure, Tusk was a massive commercial success. But Rumours had sold over ten times that, and in the music industry, context is everything. Warner Bros. called Tusk a disappointment, and that label stuck for decades.
Sources
Fleetwood, Mick and Bozza, Anthony. "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac." Little, Brown, 2014.
“If we'd sold four million copies of any other record, we'd have been thrilled. But because we were being compared to the biggest album of all time, four million felt like failure. It was absurd, but that's how it worked.”
— Mick Fleetwood, paraphrased from "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac" (Little, Brown, 2014)
TAP TO REVEAL: What did the Tusk tour actually gross?
Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, Stevie Nicks with Tom Petty (1981)
"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" was written by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell, and it's essentially a Heartbreakers track with Stevie singing lead. The production by Jimmy Iovine is muscular and radio-perfect, built on a driving guitar riff that sits closer to heartland rock than anything Fleetwood Mac ever recorded. Stevie's vocal is rawer here than on most of her Fleetwood Mac recordings, with less reverb and more bite. The song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, higher than any Tusk single, and it announced that Stevie Nicks didn't need the band to sell records.
Sources
Davis, Stephen. "Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks." St. Martin's Press, 2017.
The Reappraisal
Time has been kind to Tusk. Critics who dismissed it in 1979 have spent the decades since calling it the band's most ambitious and rewarding album. Artists from The Killers to Haim have named it as a major influence. The lo-fi recording techniques Lindsey pioneered became standard practice in indie rock a decade later. Tusk's reputation has flipped entirely: it went from being the album that killed the Rumours formula to the album that proved Fleetwood Mac was more than a formula.
Sources
Fleetwood, Mick. "Play On: Now, Then, and Fleetwood Mac." Little, Brown, 2014.
Tusk: The Verdict
I Know I'm Not Wrong, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
"I Know I'm Not Wrong" was released as a single from Tusk and peaked at #30 on the Billboard Hot 100. It's a driving, new wave-flavored track that could have been a bigger hit on a less controversial album. The title feels like Lindsey's private mantra during the entire Tusk era: everyone at the label says I'm wrong, the sales say I'm wrong, but I know I'm not. Decades later, the critics proved him right.
I Know I'm Not Wrong, Fleetwood Mac (1979)
"I know I'm not wrong, I feel it." The song reads like a declaration of creative faith. Lindsey isn't arguing with logic. He's arguing with instinct, with the feeling in his gut that says this direction is right even when the numbers say otherwise. Read these lyrics knowing the album sold four million copies and was still called a failure, and the defiance hits differently. Sometimes being right and being rewarded are two completely separate things.
How did Tusk's sales compare to Rumours?
Tusk proved that Fleetwood Mac is more than a singles machine, but the cracks are widening. Stevie has a solo deal with Modern Records, a stack of songs she's been saving, and a producer named Jimmy Iovine who thinks she's the biggest star in rock. Next season: Bella Donna, and the beginning of five solo careers pulling one band in five different directions.
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