Recording Fleetwood Mac & # 39; s "Tusk": The Biggest Recording Studio Ever?

The title song to Fleetwood Mac & # 39; s 1979 album "Tusk" expanded from a short fragment of music into a Goliath that needed a baseball stadium to record.

The song itself began as nothing more than a short four-bar riff that Lindsey Buckingham had invented for Fleetwood Mac to play while they were being introduced, after the band had gone onstage and the lights had gone down but before they started their opening number. At Mick Fleetwood & # 39; s request Dashut prepared a twenty-second tape loop of the riff.

The inspiration for the song actually came from Barfleur, a seacoast village in Normandy in northwest France that Mick Fleetwood had visited the previous summer in 1978. One Sunday morning he was woken up (by suffering from an intestinal hangover) by joyous music a local village brass band was playing as part of a festival honoring a local saint. Fleetwood thread open his his windows and saw everyone in the town from children to old peasants decked out in flowers and celebrating. Recalling this incident Fleetwood was moved to recreate this music on top of their "riff".

He was in luck: Judy Wong, a longtime friend of the band, knew someone The end result was that a few weeks later the song was recorded at no less than an empty Dodger Stadium, hosting Fleetwood Mac, a film crew and the largest number of musicians ever to perform until a single up, that setting, setting a record.

Because "Tusk", the album, went platinum the Trojan Marching Band earned a platinum disc. Fleetwood, Buckingham and Nicks presented it to them on October 4, 1980 during a game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The stands were not empty this time .

That 's something for John McVie had already already seen Stevie Nicks demonstrating her little - known baton twirling skills. You & # 39; ll see see only four of the five members of the band. McVie probably wished that he had stayed in Los Angeles since his a baptism with his some part of the song and set out with some friends on his boat bound for Hawaii boat was rammed by a whale on its way from Hawaii to Tahiti.