Credit: Far Out / Steve Proctor
Thu 10 September 2026 15:00, UK
Lindsey Buckingham never bothered making any old rock and roll song whenever he walked into the studio.
Getting the chance to join a band like Fleetwood Mac would have been any other artist’s dream, but the guitarist knew that he needed to have tunnel vision when it came time to make the kinds of records that he heard in his head. Some of the biggest names in music were what he was after, and he had more than a few musical legends who were guiding him through some of the biggest songs of his career.
For instance, there isn’t a single moment that went by where Buckingham didn’t dissect what The Beatles were doing. Stevie Nicks even grew to resent the Fab Four for a little while because of how much Buckingham was making her look at the subtle intricacies of their songs, but it was all done in service to make the kind of records that he felt made him a more ambitious songwriter.
Tusk is practically Fleetwood Mac’s version of The White Album, but what Buckingham was doing had to do with more than studying the musicians of days gone by. He loved the idea of evolving on every record he made, and while ‘The Mac’ had the reputation of being one of the biggest pop-rock acts of their time, it wasn’t out of the question for Buckingham to take his cues from bands like The Clash or even a couple of new wave acts whenever he worked on some of his new songs.
Every song he heard was another lesson for him, but there was no getting around the influence Brian Wilson had on him. There was a goldmine of pop classics The Beach Boys made before they had even landed on Pet Sounds, and while Buckingham was already paying close attention all the way back during the days of The Beach Boys Today!, there was always going to be some sadness centred around the Smile project.
The whole album felt like it was going to be the moment Wilson capitalised on every promise he made during Pet Sounds, but since it never got released, all we were left with were scraps of what had come before. It tends to be fun building your own version of what Smile could have been when looking at the tracks on their own, but had the world got the finished product back in the day, ‘Surf’s Up’ would have been enough to compete with any other pop songwriter at the time.
Buckingham was already used to heaping praise on ‘God Only Knows’, but he felt that nothing could really eclipse a song like the title track, saying, “The album Surf’s Up was inconsistent, and it felt as if Brian were on the verge of withdrawing and the others taking over. And yet, the title track, ‘Surf’s Up’, is a masterpiece, among a handful of Wilson’s greatest efforts.” And compared to everything else Wilson made, this was a far cry from days of hanging out at the beach.
Further reading: From The Vault
Don’t let the title fool you: this is the kind of song that transcends anything ‘fun in the sun’ that The Beach Boys had been put to before, and coming after a landmark record like Pet Sounds, the melody Wilson created is enough to make anyone want to cry. That’s before even getting to the final section with the chorus vocals, which sounds like the kind of music that everyone hears when they reach heaven for the first time.
No one else could have made anything that spellbindingly beautiful, and even if Wilson saw Smile as a failure for the longest time, no one in their right mind would be able to call this song a disaster. If anything, the real tragedy was the fact that people had to wait years on end before Wilson finally managed to release it, and now that it’s out in the world, people like Buckingham can see precisely what musical excellence sounds like.
