‘Tango in the Night’: Fleetwood Mac’s “darkest period”, according to Lindsey Buckingham
No one wants to look back on their history and relive all of the bad times. There might be some learning experiences to be had out of revisiting some failed experiments, but there are so many opportunities for people to look back and cringe when they see one of their records that didn’t hit the mark. It gets a little complicated when it comes to Fleetwood Mac’s discography, but Lindsey Buckingham knew the difference between one of their classics and when they were stuck in limbo.
Granted, ‘The Mac’ is one of the few bands where even their classic albums are hard to talk about. Rumours is still one of the finest pieces of musical art ever conceived, and yet you’d have to be a strong person to be able to talk about an album that was all about going through a breakup and having to still be in a band with the person that broke your heart.
But that tension was part of the appeal of that version of the group. Their bluesy beginnings had already been marred by Peter Green losing his way, but when listening to ‘Go Your Own Way’ or ‘Dreams’, it feels like getting a glimpse into the band members’ lives for a second, even getting a bit more than many bargained for when Buckingham accused Stevie Nicks of shacking up with anyone she sees.
Even though Buckingham did have as much control as he wanted over his own songs, Tusk was the moment where he started to go too far outside everyone’s comfort zone. Following his muse was all well and good, but hearing a song like ‘Not That Funny’ when all anyone wanted was a few more hits was enough to weird out the rest of the band, even distancing themselves in the liner notes by giving the guitarist a back-handed thank-you.
While the idea of doing solo projects was far from the worst, it brought its own fair share of problems once they got back together in the 1980s. Nicks had overcome her nasty cocaine habit from the Rumours era, but that was quickly replaced with Klonopin, leaving the band barely on speaking terms when creating Tango in the Night.
Despite Buckingham refusing to tour for the record and getting kicked out of the band after a fight at Mick Fleetwood’s house, he admitted that morale wasn’t exactly high to begin with, saying, “Everyone was at their worst, including myself. We’d made the progression from what could be seen as an acceptable or excusable amount of drug use to a situation where we had all hit the wall. I think of it as our darkest period.”
Still, it takes some extra songwriting strength to make songs that are as catchy as ‘Little Lies’ amid that dark period. The music video might see the band members by themselves half the time, but hearing Christine McVie, Nicks, and Buckingham’s vocals layer on top of each other during the chorus is still one of the best moments of their career.
But that’s before looking at what Tango in the Night represents to a lot of people in the context of Fleetwood Mac. The band could still play perfectly together, but no one could have anticipated that this would be the goodbye letter from the classic Rumours lineup.
