The Tango sessions were this bad?

[cbBen]

Mick's account sounds wrong. Stevie is on only four songs on Mirage too (hers, plus "Love In Store"). So why would a similar level of participation on Tango be viewed as precedent-breaking?

According to Lindsey, in his interview in Paul Zollo's book Songwriters On Songwriting, Tango started life as a Lindsey Buckingham solo album. He could turn what he had started over to the band, or keep it for himself, and make more of a cameo on a FM album, with outside producers. He opted for the former.

That said, he says there are some things on which he is only band member playing. When Zollo asks about the writing of "Mystified": "A few of the things on Tango In The Night were done in a little bit of a different way. I took a bunch of the raw material home and Christine's basic drum track and worked at home on that and on a couple of things that weren't really the band. One of the reasons we did that was because it was really hard to get everybody together.... So a few things of Christine's I took home to re-work. So I think the melody on that was her seed and whatever I put over it."

Also, FYI, he says (not in reference to Tango particularly, but in general): "Constructing harmonies is like engineering. You turn the knobs until it sounds good."