Fleetwood Mac Tusk Recording Notes

Some collected fragments on the recording of Tusk:

• On the song “Tusk” the USC Trojan Marching Band played the main riff, on Mick Fleetwood’s insistence. Stevie Nicks can be seen twirling the baton in video footage of the recording.
• “Most of Tusk was recorded on 57s.” -Ken Caillat talking to Shure
• Lindsey’s acoustic guitar parts were mic’ed with an SM57 close to the neck and an AKG C451 about a foot back.
• In footage of the recording of “I Walk a Thin Line,” Mick’s drums appear to have sheets of paper taped to the snare drum and kick drum heads.
• For at least one song, Lindsey tracked backing vocals with a mic taped to the tile floor of the band’s home-made echo chamber.
• An outtake from the making of Tusk documentary shows Lindsey reamping the snare drum from “Over & Over” into a 1927, tile-floor bathroom and mic’ing the space with what appears to be an SM57.
• “Once, we spent ten hours getting kick drums sounds in The Record Plant’s Studio B, and then ended up moving to Studio A, and building a special drum platform to get what we wanted… We shoved a Shure SM57 about four inches from where the beater struck the drum head to pick up the attack of the drum head, and then put an Electro-Voice RE20 a foot away from the outside head to get the sound of the kick. Because Mick didn’t hit hard, we weren’t getting the bottom end from his kick drum. The bottom end on that album came from John McVie’s bass. So we opted for the combination of midrange presence and low-midrange punch that those two mics provided.” -Richard Dashut to EQ Magazine, November 2007