In 1985, Lindsey Buckingham was writing and recording songs for what was planned as his third solo album. There is an irony about Tango In The Night: that it began not as a Fleetwood Mac album but as a solo project by the man who would leave the band once it was completed.
It was almost an obsessive-compulsive desire to not give up. “My motto” Fleetwood says, “was ‘the show must go on’. And this was key to the success of Tango In The Night. While he freely admits that his own drug-fuelled insanity was instrumental in Lindsey Buckingham’s exit, it was Fleetwood who kept the band together once Buckingham had gone. And for Mick Fleetwood, it represented a personal triumph. Perhaps most significant of all, it marked the third coming of the Mac, following the successes of the Peter Green-led blues rock Mac of the late 60s and the Buckingham/Nicks-fronted AOR Mac of the 70s. Just as Rumours had done in the 70s, so Tango In The Night defined soft rock in the 80s. It became the second biggest-selling album of their career, after 1977’s 45-million-selling Rumours. It was a dangerous period, and not a happy time.” And yet, for all the drama that came with it, Tango In The Night was a hugely important album for Fleetwood Mac. “It is,” Fleetwood says, “a pretty wild story.