Tango in the Night

History

After the completion of The Mirage tour in 1982, four of the members of Fleetwood Mac released five solo albums with varying degrees of success. Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham each released one while Stevie Nicks released two. John McVie retreated from music to pursue his passion for sailing.

Although the album took almost 18 months to complete, Stevie Nicks only spent a total of two weeks in the studio with the band as she was busy promoting her third solo album Rock A Little throughout most of this period. She sent demos of her songs to the band, recorded while she was on her world tour, for them to work on in her absence. The track "Welcome To The Room...Sara" was inspired by her 30-day stay at the Betty Ford Center to overcome her cocaine addiction in October 1986 (Nicks used the pseudonym "Sara Anderson" when she checked into the facility).

Nicks often came to the studio unmotivated. "I can remember going up there and not being happy to even be there...I guess I didn’t go very often..." With vocal sessions taking place in Buckingham's master bedroom, Nicks would ask for some brandy, drink a few shots, and eventually run through "four or five songs" intoxicated. Because of this, Buckingham had to remove most of Nicks' vocals. As a result, Nicks is almost entirely absent on the majority of Buckingham and McVie's tracks. To make ends meet, Buckingham recorded most of the vocals himself using a Fairlight, an early sampling synthesizer. “That was in my estimation when everybody in the band was personally at their worst...by the time we did Tango in the Night, everybody was leading their lives in a way that they would not be too proud of today."

Tango in the Night is, to date, the final studio album released by the 'classic' line-up of Fleetwood Mac consisting of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood, before Buckingham's departure from the band in the summer of 1987. This line-up has reconvened for live performances, however.

With pressure being placed on Buckingham to keep the project focused and moving forward, things came to a head shortly after the release of Tango in the Night when he announced his departure from the band shortly before their scheduled tour in 1987. Following Buckingham's sudden departure, two musicians were drafted in to replace him (Rick Vito and Billy Burnette), who proceeded to complete the tour in 1987-1988 with the rest of the band. Aspects of this troubled era of Fleetwood Mac's history are frankly documented in interviews with all members of the band, old and new, in two BBC documentaries: Fleetwood Mac at 21, first aired in the UK in 1988, and in Rock Family Trees, which was produced in 1995.

The distinctive cover art for the album was a painting by Australian artist Brett-Livingstone Strong which was hanging in Buckingham's home. It is a homage to the 19th Century French painter Henri Rousseau, emulating his colorful jungle theme works such as The Snake Charmer and The Repast of the Lion. It was also used as the cover of "Big Love", the album's first single.

Commercial performance

Tango in the Night is the band's second biggest selling studio album after the phenomenally successful Rumours which was released 10 years earlier. The intervening albums, Tusk (1979) and Mirage (1982), although big sellers in key territories, had not matched their predecessor's huge success. Tango in the Night was a worldwide hit with several singles from the album becoming popular all over the world. "Little Lies" and "Everywhere" in particular are now considered classic hits of the late 1980s and they continue to appear on retrospective albums of that decade.

The album was a success in the United States, where it peaked at #7 for three weeks, spending more than seven months within the top 20, and more than ten months within the top 40. It was certified 3x platinum in October 2000 for selling 3 million copies in the US. Four singles from the album reached the Billboard Top 20: "Big Love" (#5), "Little Lies" (#4), "Everywhere" (#14) and "Seven Wonders" (#19). The album was particularly successful in the United Kingdom where it reached #1 three times during 1987-88 for a total of five weeks, and spent more than eight months within the Top 10 of the UK albums chart. It is the seventh biggest selling album of the 1980s in the UK, being certified 8x Platinum (2.4 million copies), and it is still currently one of the UK's Top 100 best selling albums of all time. Three singles were Top 10 hits in the UK: "Big Love" (#9), "Little Lies" (#5) and "Everywhere" (#4). A total of six singles were eventually taken from the album over a period of 15 months. The album has spent 115 weeks in the Top 75 of the UK Album Chart.

Additional information

Personnel

Fleetwood Mac

Production