Day 177: Fleetwood Mac – Tango in the Night

Album cover courtesy of Warner Records

I don’t know what it is about Fleetwood Mac that manages to just level me emotionally, possibly more than any other band. But I’m not special, find me a 30-something woman who’s not overemotional about Stevie Nicks, we’re a dime a dozen, really.

Today, it was time — I was emotionally ready for a bit of Fleetwood Mac. I went for something I don’t think I’ve listened to in full before, Tango in the Night.

It’s 2026, I’d be willing to bet that everyone knows at the very least the basics of what was going on with Fleetwood Mac. You’d really need some sort of a helpful visual aid to explain their personnel changes and messy personal life that bled into the band, and based on my preliminary googling, no one has created that visual aid, so I might as well give it a bash. Surely me stealing some images for educational purposes falls under fair use.

The band was founded in 1967 and originally consisted of drummer Mick Fleetwood, bassist John McVie, and Jeremy Spencer and Peter Green, both of whom did vocals and played guitar. See below.

The first changes to their lineup came when Peter Green’s mental health had been declining, which may or may not have had a lot to do with psychedelic drugs. He because disillusioned with having wealth and had some sort of a strange acid trip in a German commune that affected his mental health poorly and signified the beginning of the end of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac.

Jeremy Spencer said he’s just going to be nipping to the shop and he’ll be right back but he never came back because he went off to join a cult. I thought the “I’m just going to go buy some milk”-exit was something shitty fathers did to their families, but apparently it can also be used to leave a band, who knew? As a result, John McVie’s wife Christine McVie joined the group.

I forgot to include the band’s guitarist Danny Kirwan who joined the band in 1968 so I’m adding him in now. He looks like he showers too often to be in this band, he was doomed from the start.

Dannie Kirwan unfortunately struggled with alcoholism and quit mid-tour before a show at the Whisky a Go Go. Apparently he’d also suffered from mental health issues stemming from the same incident at the Munich commune that harmed Peter Green. He was still inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the group, but he didn’t attend. He was replaced by Bob Weston.

But Bob Weston had to leave the band after he had an affair with Mick Fleetwood’s wife, Jenny Boyd. Fun fact, she’s the younger sibling of Pattie Boyd, who was married to George Harrison and then married his best friend Eric Clapton. I have been itching to talk about this. I’ll get into this at a later date but long story short, Clapton is a bit of a snake.

Then Mick Fleetwood met Lindsay Buckingham, who was in a relationship with Stevie Nicks and in a duo called Buckingham Nicks. Mick Fleetwood asked Lindsay Buckingham to join the band, but he pulled a classic move: “Can my girlfriend come?” They originally didn’t want her to join, but Lindsay Buckingham made it a condition to his joining that they allow Stevie Nicks in, too. I’m putting the non band members in the photo in purple, by the way, Jenny Boyd was never in the band.

Now, this is where things start to get truly messy. We’re getting into the Rumours-era, famously a time when they were all sort of at it and then writing songs about being at it and forcing their partners to perform them night after night. Also, they’re engaging in one of the most important relationships of Fleetwood Mac history, which is the relationship between Everybody and Cocaine. It’s hard to put white powder on a white background, so you’re just going to have to make a mental note of it.

Mick Fleetwood found out that Jenny Boyd had had an affair, so they got divorced. John McVie an Christine McVie also divorced and refused to even speak to each other, while in a band together, recording an album together. Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham also broke up. But in the midst of all of that, they all managed to have affairs, some with each other: Stevie Nicks was having an affair with Mick Fleetwood, while Christine McVie had started an affair with the band’s lighting director.

That’s the complicated history of Fleetwood Mac (and about an hour of my life that I’ll never get back). The never-ending psychodrama plus a full-time drug addiction plus being in one of the biggest rock bands of all time, I just don’t know how they managed it all. And they still stayed together and recorded, and toured! Genuinely, the mind boggles. With the relationship drama alone, it’s a miracle they got anything done.

By the time they were doing Tango in the Night, Fleetwood Mac had released 14 albums, but each member was on their own path.  Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks were both pursuing solo careers and Stevie had just completed her third go in rehab. John McVie had struggled severely with addiction and Mick Fleetwood says he was using more cocaine than he was back in the Rumours days, having also filed for bankruptcy. Lindsay Buckingham parked a motorhome outside the studio for people to go to when they were too zonked to work, horrified at the states they were in.

I could probably have gone for Rumours and gotten a bit more of a deep dive into that era but I’ve listened to it so much that I couldn’t be bothered. Tango in the Night was a great choice, though: it’s the band’s foray into slick, warm and immaculately produced ‘80s pop with a more synth-heavy, poppy sound than we might be used to. It sounds so quintessentially ‘80s and upbeat that some of the songs, like “You and I, Pt. II”, are practically unrecognisable as being Fleetwood Mac.

That’s still not a bad thing, it’s a very good album that has some of their biggest songs, like “Little Lies” and “Everywhere”. The tightness of the album hides that the group was once again in a state. Lindsay Buckingham said he refused to do the Tango in the Night tour with the rest of the band and that escalated into a physical fight between him and Stevie Nicks that was apparently brutal. Tango in the Night was the last album with the classic line-up of Christine and John Mcvie, Stevie Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood.

It’s a damn good album that I’ve been missing out on by focusing too much on their earlier stuff. I love “Big Love” so much that I could probably listen to it 24 hours straight and still have a pretty nice time. And “Everywhere”? Come on. It’s a solid 9/10 with some all-time bangers peppered in.