What It’s Really All About

Fleetwood Mac “The Ledge”

A huge amount of time and effort went into crafting and recording Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, and yet its sequencing seems totally random. For example, I can’t think of many first tracks less suited to opening an album than “Over and Over,” a country rock ballad by Christine McVie that is so minor and low key that she may as well sing “bury this on side four” in the second verse. This song, one of the most square soft pop tracks in the entire Fleetwood Mac catalog, is immediately followed by “The Ledge,” a Lindsey Buckingham tune that is probably their all-time weirdest recording. The only reason you would front load these two tracks would be to deliberately confuse and alienate the band’s audience, which at this point in time was something in the neighborhood of 16 million people in the United States alone. So yeah, it’s not too surprising that about 15 million of those people took a pass on Tusk.

“The Ledge” isn’t very representative of Lindsey’s material on Tusk — and has virtually no aesthetic connection whatsoever with McVie and Stevie Nicks’ contributions — but it sets a tone for the record and establishes him as something of an eccentric. “The Ledge” is a like a caricature of Buckingham’s persona, exaggerating his trebly tone and high-strung character to the point that it becomes funny and a little grotesque. It’s also a radical deviation from his band’s established aesthetic, casting aside the polished perfection of Rumours for this perverse, intentionally sloppy and manic sound. It’s not as if Lindsey invented weird, arty pop, but there’s something about his weirdness that strikes me as particularly human and distinct. Even when he lets it all hang out, he sounds uptight and wired. That overcharged quality carries through the rest of his Tusk material, even the really pretty ballads. I’m sure you can chalk some of this up to the amount of cocaine he was snorting at the time, but if you look at his entire body of work, it’s obvious that this odd energy is essential to his personality. It’s just dialed all the way up for “The Ledge,” that’s all.

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Lindsey Buckingham “It Was I”

This Gary Paxton cover from Buckingham’s first solo album Law and Order is another good example of his willful perversity. It’s a really sweet and straightforward pop song, but Lindsey pitches everything up a bit for a peculiar effect. It seems a bit more child-like, but also really cheap and plastic. (It’s almost Christmas-y.) The sound is just slightly off, but it makes a huge difference. It’s so much more colorful and evocative than if it had been played entirely straight. You really feel the youthful romance here. You know how in movies flashbacks are often shot with a different film stock or filter or something to signal to the audience that they’re in a different time and place? The treble-heavy tonality of this track does a similar trick.

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Stay tuned. There will be more Lindsey Buckingham tomorrow.