Tango Liner Notes

[jbrownsjr]

Would someone transcribe the inside of the album? I have a digital copy.

[dreamsunwind]

I second this!
Pleaseeeeeeee

[jbrownsjr]

I got excited. I thought someone put the notes in here.

[jbrownsjr]

If I make my way to the record store this weekend, I'll do it.

I live in LA and going to Hollywood is an adventure. (traffic, parking, long lines)

[ricohv]

Originally Posted by dreamsunwind

I second this!
Pleaseeeeeeee

I third this-PLZ PLZ PLZ!!!
Thanks,
Ricoh

[sorcerer999]

Here's the liner notes. I was bored...LOL...

Tango In The Night
[ Saving The Last Dance...For A While ]
By David Wild

Fleetwood Mac's 1987 album, "Tango In The Night" - the band's fourteenth studio album overall, and fifth performed by the group's most iconic lineup featuring partners Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks - marks a beautiful and graceful turn in the extended dance that has become the storied history of one of music's most legendary and enduring bands. Yet by all accounts, "Tango In The Night" came together amid dramatic stops and starts under occasionally tense conditions. Still, there can be no doubt that the resulting album itself was an altogether stunning success, becoming Fleetwood Mac's second most successful studio album ever, following only "Rumours", which had been released almost precisely a decade earlier.

Ultimately, "Tango In The Night" would sell over 15 million copies worldwide, and produce an impressive run of four Top 20 hit singles - "Big Love", "Seven Wonders", "Little Lies" and "Everywhere" - as well as single releases around the world for other strong album tracks like "Family Man" and "Isn't It Midnight". In England, for instance, the album went to #1 on the charts three different times during 1987-1988 for a total of five weeks. Yet it must be remembered that "Tango In The Night" was the kind of massive success story that came with an unusually high price. That is because some of the same tensions that fueled "Tango In The Night" would lead Lindsey Buckingham to leave the group for a decade after the album's completion, and shortly before a planned Fleetwood Mac world tour that eventually would go on without him.

"I absolutely love 'Tango In The Night', and with this album I can say that with a certain amount of objectivity, because the truth is I wasn't even around for very much of it, " Stevie Nicks explains today with a small laugh. Then, sounding more serious, Stevie goes on to say, "That was back in 1986 and 1987 and, for me, the Klonopin I was prescribed had kicked in and was wrecking havoc in my life. To make matters more complicated, 'Tango In The Night' was being made up at Lindsey's house and his girlfriend was there and, at the time, it felt strange for me to be around there for all of those reasons. Literally, the vocals were being done right in their master bedroom and, as out of it as I may have been then, even I knew that was weird. So for any number of reasons, I couldn't or didn't want to go to a lot of those sessions."

All that being said, "Tango In The Night" is an album for which Nicks still feels a very big love. "Despite everything that was going on, I really treasure the record that came out of all that," Nicks says. "And I especially loved Lindsey's songs on that album - they remain some of my all time favorites from him. I loved and still love 'Family Man'. The same goes for 'Big Love'. I really love 'Caroline'. And I loved the song 'Tango In The Night' itself. In terms of Lindsey's songs, 'Tango In The Night' is my favorite Fleetwood Mac record ever, so I have to give credit where credit is due."

For Buckingham himself, "Tango In The Night" represented a complex moment in Fleetwood Mac's complicated dance when he found himself once again called upon to take the lead in the production process. "Looking back, I feel like after doing my solo album, 'Go Insane', in 1984, I was able to bring some of the experimentation I longed for back into Fleetwood Mac on 'Tango In The Night'," Lindsey Buckingham says today. Called upon - and not for the last time - to transform what might have become his next solo album to help create a new group effort, Buckingham went to work with a greater sense of responsibility than he felt in the process of making Fleetwood Mac's previous studio album, 1982's "Mirage". As Buckingham explains it, "To me, it felt like what had been ahead of its time during 'Tusk' was more of its time a few years later. So even if I couldn't paint musical paintings as I wished like on 'Tusk', I was able to assert a certain level of control now that I was slightly out of the penalty box with the rest of the band."

Yet, as Buckingham explains, "taking charge of 'Tango In The Night' was a role that I took mostly by default. By 1986, everyone in the band was at the absolute peak of craziness, which is saying something. Mick was basically living in a trailer in the front yard of my house because that's where we were recording. Stevie was pretty much disconnected from our band, and off in her own world then. Out of what was probably a year of work on the album, we saw Stevie for, at the most, a couple of weeks. So there was this collective insanity going on within the band that - on one level - made it difficult to get things done. Yet on another level, that left me and our co-producer, Richard Dashut, and our engineer, Greg Droman, a little more in charge of the day-to-day recording process. In a strange way, that worked in our favor because a lot of stuff on 'Tango In The Night' holds up well. At times, we would have to channel Stevie when she wasn't there because she's obviously such an important part of the Fleetwood Mac sound. So Christine and I would sing and speed things up or slow things down and use that kind of trickery to try and summon her spirit." Indeed upon the release of "Big Love" as "Tango In The Night's" hypnotic and sensual first single in March of 1987, many listener's wondered who exactly contributed the song's unforgettable female "love grunts" - before it was later revealed to be Buckingham's own voice, sped up.

According to Mick Fleetwood, Buckingham had to shoulder a lot of the responsibility of making "Tango In The Night" a cohesive effort during a less than cohesive time for the band. "It is absolutely safe to say that at that moment in our history, Stevie and I were at the top of the list of Fleetwood Mac band members who needed to make lifestyle changes that had nothing to do with music - and make them quick," Fleetwood explains. "And it is sort of true that Stevie was not a major presence during the making of 'Tango' - she was more the crucial spare part that came in toward the end of the process to help make it work."

Today, Fleetwood expresses appreciation for the role that Buckingham played in helping make "Tango In The Night" such a success. "First of all, that album was a morphing of a solo album that Lindsey was working that he helped turn into this beautiful Fleetwood Mac album," says Fleetwood. "Lindsey took some of the material he had, and really led us through making this incredible album. Then we were going to go out on tour and showcase that work, but that's when Lindsey seemed to have a little buyer's remorse and changed his mind. For whatever reasons, he just couldn't do it, and so he left the band. The great irony of it all is that he produced this extraordinary album, and then disappeared. In a sense, 'Tango In The Night' had to be its own statement because there wasn't a tour with him as a part of it. Looking back at that, I get it - for Lindsey, to borrow a phrase from George Harrison, it was just all too much."

Over the years, Buckingham has referred to his stepping away from Fleetwood Mac as a "survival move," but Mick Fleetwood recalls that "on a recent tour, there was one powerful, pregnant moment when Lindsey expressed that, back then, he was deeply worried about the well-being of me and especially of Stevie, as disconnected as he was from her back then. One way or another, those two are never REALLY disconnected. They have made this whole journey as an odd couple since they were sixteen. That being the case, I believe Lindsey had gotten a mega dose of being disenchanted with everything going on, and needed to step away from the lunacy that I was as much responsible for as anyone. I know that I was a lot for Lindsey - or anyone - to handle right around then. Honestly, I don't think any of us were then archangels, but apparently in that moment, enough was enough.

"My belief at the time [was] that I just couldn't be around that particular circus anymore," Buckingham explains of his decision not to be a part of any "Tango In The Night" tour. "The idea of recording was one thing, but you try and take that kind of circus on the road, and I assumed the craziness would only multiply in terms of its intensity. So I couldn't contemplate doing it, and I think I felt comfortable with the decision I made. Back then, the band could have taken my decision another way, and agreed [to] not [tour] the album, so it would not have meant me leaving the band. But they took it another way, and decided to get new people in and hit the road anyway. What could I say?"

Of course, Fleetwood Mac did consistently perform Christine McVie's two hits from the album, "Little Lies" and "Everywhere" which went to #4 and #14 in America, respectively. As Nicks says, "I love 'Little Lies' and 'Everywhere'. It just shows you that Christine is the hit songwriter in Fleetwood Mac, and I love that more than anyone because I'm the first person to say, I'm NOT a big single writer. But that is one of Christine's MANY gifts."

The band also performed "Seven Wonders", another American Top 20 hit that Nicks sang, but as she explains, "that's a great song, but it really came from Sandy Stewart. It's a song we all related to, and it meant so much to me when that song came back to us and was featured on 'American Horror Story' in 2014."

Another "Tango In The Night" song close to Nicks' heart and experiences in that era is "Welcome To The Room...Sara" As Stevie explains, "That song was about the Betty Ford Center. I went into the center under the name Sara Anderson - which was my briefly married name. That was an interesting song - one I still like, about a very heavy situation. I thought it was important to write about that experience, especially back then before rehab was talked about much by people."

Even though Lindsey Buckingham did not take the "Tango In The Night" victory lap on the road, he now explains, " I still felt good when 'Tango' did so well mostly because that meant I had done my job. That's what I tried to do under some very unusual circumstances, before I moved on to do whatever I felt I needed to do to try and reclaim my own sanity. But I probably disconnected from paying too much attention to the album's success or anything else that would have created more of a sense of ambivalence I had about the decision I had made."

Now, 30 years on from the initial release of "Tango In The Night", Fleetwood Mac's dance with history continues to move us with this group's lasting power and grace, despite all those many stops and starts and bumps in the long road. Like a great Tango, "Tango In The Night" remains a thing of tremendous and lasting beauty - much like the album's stunning cover painted by Brett Livingston-Strong in homage to the French post impressionistic Henri Rousseau. "We LOVED the cover," says Mick Fleetwood, "And if you look closely, it does feature a penguin - our original Fleetwood Mac logo based on John McVie, which only made the cover better."

Thinking back on it all now, Mick Fleetwood says, "Making 'Tango In The Night' - and then falling apart before we could take it on the road - it's one of those many elements in the Fleetwood Mac story that could only be us - It's like hearing now that Stevie didn't want to go into Lindsey's bedroom to record vocals - it's another reason that our amazing strange-but-true story will someday make one hell of a great Broadway musical. That's the thing about the Fleetwood Mac story - you can't make this stuff up, and thankfully, we don't have to."

[sorcerer999]

Can I just say how I'm also disappointed in the liner notes as well???

A. David Wild just plain sucks at journalism.

B. No comments from Christine or John.

C. There's nothing written here that we didn't already know.

[sorcerer999]

Pictures of the CD sleeves and the liner notes...

[sorcerer999]

More......

[dreamsunwind]

Thank you so much sharing! I love reading these.

[HomerMcvie]

Me, too.....

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by sorcerer999

Pictures of the CD sleeves and the liner notes...

I love all of these band pics.

[HomerMcvie]

Originally Posted by sorcerer999

Pictures of the CD sleeves and the liner notes...

Whew, that first pic? They certainly look like they're at their dysfunctional best!

Stevie looks drugged out of her mind. And that jacket Lindsey is wearing? WTF was he thinking?

[aleuzzi]

Originally Posted by HomerMcvie

Whew, that first pic? They certainly look like they're at their dysfunctional best!

Stevie looks drugged out of her mind. And that jacket Lindsey is wearing? WTF was he thinking?

Stevie does look rough here. But I like the realness of these pics. You see them without gloss. Notwithstanding Christine's 80s hair, I think the rest look cool. And I LOVE LB's jacket!

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by aleuzzi

Stevie does look rough here. But I like the realness of these pics. You see them without gloss. Notwithstanding Christine's 80s hair, I think the rest look cool. And I LOVE LB's jacket!

So do I. He was right on point with his mid 80's fashion there.