On The Road Again: Fleetwood Mac "Tango In The Night [1990 Reissue, Germany, Warner Bros., 7599-25471-2]"

miércoles, 11 de octubre de 2017

Fleetwood Mac "Tango In The Night [1990 Reissue, Germany, Warner Bros., 7599-25471-2]"

Tango in the Night is the fourteenth studio album by British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, released on 13 April 1987. As a result of Lindsey Buckingham's departure later that year, it is the fifth and final studio album with the band's most successful lineup of Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie, and Stevie Nicks, though Christine McVie would make guest appearances on the band's 2003 album, Say You Will. This lineup was not seen again until 1997's live album The Dance.

Produced by Buckingham with Richard Dashut, Tango in the Night began as one of Buckingham's solo projects, but in 1985, the production had morphed into Fleetwood Mac's next record. It contains several hit singles, including four US top 20 hits: "Big Love" (No. 5), "Seven Wonders" (No. 19), "Little Lies" (No. 4), and "Everywhere" (No. 14). Two additional songs, "Family Man" (No. 90) and "Isn't It Midnight", were released as singles to lower chart success. Tango in the Night has sold over 15 million copies worldwide. In March 2017, remastered deluxe editions of Tango in the Night were released, the first a double-CD set and the second a 3CD/1DVD/1-LP boxset.

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

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.

In 1985, Christine McVie was called to record a cover of Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" for the soundtrack of the movie, A Fine Mess. McVie contacted Richard Dashut, Fleetwood Mac's producer at the time, to produce the track. Buckingham, Fleetwood, and John McVie were eventually brought in to supply the instrumentation. Greg Droman, a relatively new producer at the time, was also brought in to participate. Droman had recently relocated to Los Angeles at the suggestion of Joe Walsh. Dashut and Droman eventually bumped into each other at a recording studio owned by the Captain & Tennille, and "just hit it off". Just a few weeks later, Droman worked with Buckingham on a song for the Back to the Future soundtrack. Droman was called once again to engineer a Buckingham solo album. The project later morphed into a Fleetwood Mac album instead.

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).

When Nicks did go to the studio, she often felt 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 some of the vocals himself using a Fairlight, an early sampling synthesizer. For example, on "When I See You Again", some of the vocals weren't even sung by Nicks. Instead, Buckingham assembled the vocal track by taking words and sentences that weren't hers, then tampered with them until they somewhat resembled Nicks' voice. "I had to pull performances out of words and lines and make parts that sounded like her that weren’t her.” After the middle eight, the rest of the song is sung in Buckingham's normal register. ”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.

Track listing