The Album That Cost a Million Dollars and Was Called a Failure

You already know the short version. We wrote about it on the blog: Tusk was a hit that almost sank the band. Lindsey Buckingham went experimental, hired a marching band, spent too much money. Album went platinum anyway.

That’s the headline. Here’s what actually happened in the room.

The Number Nobody Was Supposed to See

The reported cost was “about million.” The real number, revealed years later, was .4 million — roughly .2 million in today’s dollars. The most expensive rock album ever made at that point. The first LP to cross the million-dollar threshold.

The band didn’t just rent a studio. They custom-built Studio D at L.A.’s Village Recorder using their own advance royalties. Dolby system. 30 ips tape speed. Their personal sound laboratory for thirteen months.

Christine McVie later called the spending “quite absurd” and added: “The studio contract rider for refreshments was like a telephone directory. Stupid. Really stupid.”

Warner Bros. chief Mo Ostin’s reaction, as Mick Fleetwood told it: “You’re insane doing a double album at this time. The business is f—ed, we’re dying the death, we can’t sell records, and this will have to retail at twice the normal price. It’s suicide.”

Buckingham didn’t care.

The Punk in the Pop Star

Here’s the part that makes this story matter. Buckingham wasn’t being difficult for the sake of it. He was listening to The Clash, Talking Heads, Gang of Four — and he was terrified of becoming irrelevant. Of becoming a band that just remade Rumours over and over because the label wanted a sequel.

His words: “The whole impulse was to make sure that you didn’t succumb to the external expectations that begin to sort of close in around you in terms of commerce from the label.”

He refused to make Rumours 2. Warner Bros. would have loved that. Buckingham wanted something stranger, louder, and completely unrecognizable as a follow-up to the biggest-selling album of the decade.

His leverage was blunt: he threatened to leave the band. Everyone acquiesced. Producer Ken Caillat put it plainly: “We were all working under duress with Lindsey saying if we didn’t do what he says, he was going to quit, and he was giving us no clear direction. We were almost in a prison camp for 12 months.”

What It Looked Like Inside the Room

This is where it gets real.

Buckingham would walk into Studio D and turn every knob on the console 180 degrees just to see what happened. He used a Kleenex box as percussion. He experimented with the sound of lamb chops — yes, the meat — as a found-object instrument. He taped microphones to the studio floor and got into a push-up position to sing into them.

He built a home studio and took the session tapes with him so nobody else could have any input.

Early in the sessions, he walked in and cut off all his hair with nail scissors because he was stressed.

The rest of the band’s response? Mick Fleetwood and John McVie wrapped gaffer tape around their own heads so they couldn’t hear his directions. McVie put his ,000 bass in the trash. Not as a joke. As a statement.

Caillat described Buckingham as “a maniac… into sound destruction.”

112 People in Uniform at Dodger Stadium

The marching band idea came from Mick Fleetwood. During a 1978 trip to Europe, he saw brass bands marching through streets and couldn’t shake the image. A year into the sessions, he pulled out a rough track and pitched it.

Arthur C. Bartner, director of the USC Trojan Marching Band, was brought to the studio. He and his assistant composed the arrangements alongside the band.

On June 4, 1979, 112 members of the Spirit of Troy assembled in full uniform at Dodger Stadium. The venue was secured for free through Dodgers player Ron Cey after Fleetwood had offered to pay the rental himself.

The recording engineer expected the marching band to stand still. Bartner informed them: “We don’t play unless we march.”

So they marched. Through Dodger Stadium. While the engineering team pivoted to shotgun microphones and a mobile recording studio. 112 people in full uniform, playing and walking, captured on tape.

That became the heartbeat of the title track.

Four Million Copies of “Failure”

Tusk topped the UK charts. Hit #4 on the US Billboard 200. Sold four million copies worldwide.

By any reasonable standard, that’s extraordinary. But the only standard anyone cared about was Rumours, which had sold ten million copies. Measured against that, and against .4 million in production costs, the industry called it a failure.

Four million copies. A failure.

This is the part that matters for anyone who makes anything. The paradox of Buckingham’s choice: he created something that sold more than nearly any album released that year, and it still wasn’t enough because it wasn’t the safe thing. The expected thing.

Stevie Nicks, looking back, called the album “something so beautiful and so ahead of its time” and described the studio period as almost spiritual: “We were going to the top of the mountain.”

Buckingham himself put it best: “You got that sweetness [from Nicks and McVie] and me as the complete nutcase. That’s what makes us Fleetwood Mac.”

Why This Story Matters

Tusk is now frequently described as one of the boldest artistic statements in rock history. “Arguably the most punk record of the Seventies — the ultimate in nonconformist, anti-commercial artistic expression.”

It took decades to get that reassessment. At the time, it was just expensive and weird and not Rumours.

Artists who choose the harder path don’t always get to see the verdict change in their lifetime. But sometimes the most important thing you can make is the thing nobody asked for.

Behind the Music is a Founding Members series exploring the deeper stories behind the songs and artists on Masters Radio. New drops 1-2 times per month.