Stevie Nicks Hated This Fleetwood Mac Album Name Until She Found Out What It Meant, Then She Hated It More

Before Fleetwood Mac officially released their follow-up to Rumours in 1979, frontwoman Stevie Nicks made it clear that she hated the album name that the rest of the band chose. When she found out about the double entendre behind the name, something she said went right over her “prudish little head,” the “Dreams” singer said she hated the title even more.

To the rest of the band’s credit, Fleetwood Mac was under an immense amount of pressure to recreate the ten-million-copies-sold magic of Rumours. So, maybe a bit of locker room talk helped ease tensions in the studio.

The Fleetwood Mac Album Name Stevie Nicks Always Hated

After the massive success of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 album Rumours, the British-American rock band returned to the studio with a clear mission. Make an album that’s just as successful as the last one, but make sure it’s completely different sonically and creatively. Thus, the idea for their 1979 African-inspired album, Tusk, was born. But just because the ensemble was on the same page musically speaking doesn’t mean they agreed on everything. Stevie Nicks, for example, hated the album title.

“There was nothing beautiful or elegant about the word ‘tusk,’” Nicks told Mojo in 2015. “All it really brought to mind was people stealing ivory. Even then, in 1979, you just thought, the rhinos are being poached, and the tusks are being stolen, and the elephants are being slaughtered, and ivory’s being sold on the black market.” Years later, Nicks found out about the double entendre behind the title. As it turns out, “tusk” was Mick Fleetwood’s slang term for his, er, manhood.

“That went right over my prudish little head,” Nicks recalled. “I wasn’t told that until quite a while after the record was done, and when I did find out, I liked the title even less.”

Part Commercial Flop, Part Point of Pride For The Band

While it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Mick Fleetwood chose Tusk for its cheeky double entendre, another likely explanation is that the studio where they recorded the album had tusks perched on top of the console. In fact, the band furnished the entire studio with African-inspired decor, including the console tusks, shrunken heads, and velvet pillows.

“It was kind of like living on an African burial ground,” Nicks remembered. “It was heavy, intense heavy. Sometimes, it wasn’t very happily heavy either. We were all done with getting heavy, but Lindsey [Buckingham] was really trying to make it weirder and heavier than any of us were able to quite comprehend. But we went along. We followed him up the mountain.”

Ultimately, Tusk failed to reach the same level of commercial success as Rumours, with the former album selling four million copies compared to the latter’s ten million. Nevertheless, the African-inspired record is a favorite among other members of the group, including Mick Fleetwood.

“Tusk stands as a testament to Lindsey [Buckingham], who really foresaw that pitfall that happens to some artists who can end up with a form of complacency, which leads to, ‘Oh, we’re sort of done,’” Fleetwood told Mojo. “Tusk stands as a great body of work, a creative milestone, and a lesson learned that if you want to keep creatively stimulated, you have to take risks. It truly is my favorite album.”

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