By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

BAD COMPANY – FAME AND FORTUNE  (1986)

“A high-tech clunker”.

That’s what one original review said about the Bad Company album Fame and Fortune. But was it?

I didn’t listen to the album when it was first put out back in 1986. I didn’t even know about it until I heard the follow-up album Dangerous Age.

The Fame and Fortune album is the seventh studio album from the band, but it was the first one after the band’s original run of releases. It featured Brian Howe stepping into the vocalist spot with Paul Rodgers having vacated the position.

Having enjoyed the Dangerous Age album, I was looking forward to hearing this one when I found a copy way back in the day. Which is why I was struck by the descriptor at the top of this article about the quality of the album.

The first side of the album opens with the song “Burning Up”. And while those expecting the bluesier vocal tones that came from Rodgers were sure to be surprised, I know that I was enjoying Brian Howe’s vocal style as well.

The song is a pretty lively rocker for the most part. Fully uptempo, there’s a nice melodic sensibility to the music and I am still wondering why this one wasn’t released as a single back in 1986. It’s a killer track and I think it would’ve done extremely well. And I love the guitar solo in the song.

Instead, the first of three singles from the album was the album’s second track “This Love”. Don’t get me wrong, I think the song is really good but it definitely feels a bit lighter in comparison to “Burning Up”. The chorus of the song is more rocking in tempo but their is definitely more of a nod or perhaps musical bent in the main lyrical passages before the chorus. As the song goes on, it does continue on a harder rocking level but that saxophone sound that threads itself in the music leaves no doubt that this one was pop chart aimed. Not a bad thing in my book overall, but I definitely liked “Burning Up” more as a potential single. Not that my perspective four decades on really matters but still.

The album’s title track is the sole creation of guitarist Mick Ralphs and it definitely has a harder edge to it throughout. The weird thing is that you can also hear the 1980s production style at the same time. But this is a damn fine song. It was the third and final song released as a single but that was only in the UK. I know Bad Company as a band doesn’t really like to acknowledge the Brian Howe era if they can avoid it, but this is a track that I would’ve love to hear Paul Rodgers sing when he rejoined the band because it really has a solid thump to it musically but the phrasing used for the vocals would’ve been just as good for him as it was for Brian Howe.

Meanwhile, the song “That Girl” was the second single from the album (at least in the US) and it was another solid track. It’s more restrained vocally in the initial verses but the song gets revved up in the chorus.

The first side of the album ends with the song “Tell It Like It Is” and there’s not much in the way of restraint on this track. Fully uptempo with a kind of swinging rock and roll beat to the song, I think this is another song that should’ve been a single. Even the saxophone used in the song sounds like a blaring rocking soundtrack all by itself.

When you flip over to Side Two of the album, the album gets off to a slightly slower start with the song “Long Walk”. It’s a mid-tempo track in the first verse but you can easily hear the song ramp up a bit in between the first and second verses. After that the song splits itself between the more sedate tone and the more upbeat sound until it just goes full uptempo towards the end.

The song “Hold On My Heart” is one of my favorite tracks on the album. I’m not sure I know exactly why but I just found that I always liked this song. And while the song title might conjure up the notion that it is a ballad, it is definitely more of a rocking song than you might expect. But at the same time, there’s this hook that gets me every time I heard the song. 

By the way, with the appearance of the saxophone in this song as well, I found myself looking up who might’ve played the instrument for the album. There’s no credit in the liner notes and searching online yielded no true definitive answer either.

The song “Valerie” is another killer rocking track. It was co-written by Brian Howe and Mick Ralphs and while you can definitely hear the polished 80s production sound, this song just rocks start to finish. And Ralphs has a pretty cool solo on this track as well.

The one true ballad track on the album comes in the form of “When We Made Love”. If I’m being honest, it is probably the one track that I don’t get all that buzzed about when I hear it. Sure, my lack of love for a lot of ballads plays a part in this but overall, I just didn’t find myself able to get into the song all that much. I find that a bit sad given that it was the only writing credit that Simon Kirke had one the album.

Smartly enough, the Fame and Fortune album comes to a close with the rocker “If I’m Sleeping”. Musically, the song has a strong guitar vibe that is threaded throughout the entire track. But at times it is lower in the mix, especially when the chorus is being sung. At that point, the keyboard gets much more of the musical spotlight. Which is fine since both instruments balance out the music equally. Beyond that, the song just flows nicely and I thought it did a great job not only as a song standing on its own but as the song that put a bow on the album.

The Brian Howe era of Bad Company didn’t really take off until the Dangerous Age album but the Fame and Fortune album certainly gave music fans a damn solid foundation for where the band was taking their sound. Some may not like the album but the notion that Fame and Fortune is a clunker of an album is just flat out wrong.

NOTES OF INTEREST: While original bassist Boz Burrell is credited on the album as being part of the band, he didn’t actually play on the album. The bass parts were performed by session player Steve Price. Meanwhile, Paul Rodgers might not have been in the band anymore but he got a thank you in the liner notes.

Foreigner’s Mick Jones was listed as the executive producer of the album and two songs on the album.

The keyboardist on the album was Gregg Dechert. He co-wrote three of the songs on the album. He also recorded and toured with both Uriah Heep and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

JOHN WAITE – IGNITION (1982)

After the end of The Babys, singer John Waite unleashed his debut solo album Ignition in May of 1982. I suppose that nearly forty-four years after its release, it’s a good time for me to get around to finally listening to the album in full. 

I’ve written about John Waite’s solo albums three times before in this series but now I’m back to the very beginning to get a grasp on how things started for his solo career.

That notion got a great start with the first song on the album. “White Heat” is a killer rocking track. Fiery in its pacing and packed with not just a great vocal take from Waite, but a jam-packed musical score, I was quite taken with the song. The keyboards in the song were pretty cool and in spots they got a bit more of a spotlight and for me that only enhanced the overall song.

The funny thing is that I wasn’t sure if I’d really ever heard any of the songs on the album before now. And then Track 2 quickly reminded me that yes indeed I had heard at least one of the songs. That track is the song “Change”. It was the first of two singles released from the album and while it didn’t really make a dent in the charts at the time, it remains one of John Waite’s most recognizable songs. I was also reading online that in the early days of MTV, it was one of the channel’s most popular videos.

The song “Mr. Wonderful” has a nice rhythmic style going for it. It’s fed by a strong keyboard sound in the main choruses and then the pacing kicks up into more of a rock vibe for the song’s chorus. I like the way the song bounces back between those two styles. And the guitar playing on the song is phenomenal. According to the Wikipedia page for the album, session guitarist Tim Pierce played lead guitar on the album. On this song he was really outdoing himself. But the solo on the song is credited to Spyder Downtone Butane James. This is apparently a pseudonym for Neil Giraldo. There’s more on him in the “Notes of Interest” section of the article.

For the song “Going to the Top”, the pacing has a mid-tempo groove in the lyrical passages before once again becoming more of a rock and roll track for the chorus. I was kind of surprised by just how much I found myself liking this track. And then I read that it was the second single from the album. While it didn’t have much in the way of chart success either, you can clearly hear why it was chosen to be released as a single.

The final track of the first side of the album is “Desperate Love” and much like the opening track, this one is a full one rocker. The band is cutting loose and Waite is belting out the lyrics with abandon. And I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard this song somewhere before because the song’s chorus seems very familiar to me for some reason. But I can’t think of just where I heard it. Regardless, this is a killer track!

When you flip the cassette over to Side Two, things kick off with the song “Temptation”. It’s one of three tracks on Ignition that John Waite did NOT have a hand in writing. It’s got a solid thump to it musically.  I dug the subject matter of the lyrics and how John Waite delivered his vocals. The phrasing during the chorus was pretty damn cool.

With “Be My Baby Tonight”, I thought the title could have the song either going full ballad or have a real uptempo driving beat to it. Happily enough for me it was the latter. The guitar work really informs the rest of the song and you get yourself on heck of a rock and roll number with this song.

The opening of “Make It Happen” is kind of weird and that sound continues on even after the guitar track kicks in. It was kind of annoying especially when you can hear it buried in the mix at different points of the song. Still, when you ignore that part of the score, this is a foot-stomping rocker. It sounds vaguely familiar at times so I’m trying to figure out where I might’ve heard it before. This one is good enough that I think it could’ve been an interesting choice for a single release too.

The song “Still in Love with You” has a slower delivery. You might even call it the Ignition album’s ballad track. Given the song’s title and that aforementioned slower delivery, you aren’t making too big of an assumption in that direction. It’s a decent song and it does have a bit more of a livelier step than the more straightforward ballad pacing at least.

To close out the album in full, you get the song “Wild Life”. The song has a upbeat and uptempo feel to it, though not quite as much of a full on rocker like “White Heat” or “Desperate Love”. But that doesn’t detract from how good the song is on its own.

While I’ve owned the Ignition album on cassette, I’d be lying if I said I remembered playing it either at all or rarely. So perhaps if I did, that’s why some of the songs are familiar to me. But regardless of not being able to pin it down for sure, I found that I was really enjoying myself as I listened to the album in order to write this article. I think I’m going to have to give it more playing time in the future because this really was a solidly crafted album that gets overlooked for the most part when you think about John Waite’s musical catalog.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Ignition album was produced by Neil Giraldo. Alongside wife Pat Benatar, Giraldo was on the same label, Chrysalis, as Waite.

The song “Change” got a second life in 1985 when it was featured on the soundtrack for the movie Vision Quest. The song was written by Holly Knight and originally recorded for the second album of her band Spider.

Patty Smyth and Frankie LaRocka appear on the album. Both were members of Scandal at the time.

I have now seen John Waite live twice. The most recent time was a couple summers ago. I saw him opening for Foreigner and Styx in Mansfield, MA. Despite the shorter set, he was fantastic and still sounded in great voice.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

W.A.S.P. – LIVE…IN THE RAW (1987)

Back in October of 2025 when I discovered that I hadn’t written about any W.A.S.P. album in all the time I’d been doing The Cassette Chronicles series, I wrote about the band’s self-titled debut album.

In that article, I mentioned how I’d first become aware of W.A.S.P. not through their studio recordings but rather from seeing an ad in music magazine for the release of their new live recording Live…In the Raw. 

If I remember correctly I was struck by the slightly macabre cover art. This is a bit funny to me since I’m not much of a horror fan and the cover looks like something that you would’ve found as the box art for a 1980s slasher flick.

But when I saw that artwork, I was intrigued. So I went out and bought it on cassette and man, I was blown away. I was mid-teens by this point and loved anything that thumbed its nose at “polite” society, thinking I was one of those people (totally turned out not to be the case) that did so as well. 

The live album serves as a marker point for the end of the first part of W.A.S.P.’s career. I also own the album on the CD and that version has an essay that declares the album as being the “end of an era”. And considering the change in musical direction and growing maturity in the writing that came with the next studio album (The Headless Children), they weren’t underselling that point.

The Live…In the Raw album has eleven tracks on it. The first ten are the live show and it all starts with a great intro from whomever had the job of introducing the band: “Long Beach Arena…They have returned…for the final night of their 1986-87 World Tour! The most outrageous band in the world…W.A.S.P!”

As many times as I’ve listened to the album over the years, I still get a jazzed up feeling hearing that intro and the band launching into the song “Inside The Electric Circus”. There’s a slow build and then accompanying thump as the lead into the song in full ramps up.

And while I’m certainly no audiophile, I think this recording sounds fantastic. It captures the band at their peak. Blackie Lawless sounds great here and the rest of the band is certainly keeping the fire at full burn musically.

Eight of the selected tracks for the show come from the band’s self-titled album and both The Last Command and Inside the Electric Circus releases as well.

It’s funny to think that I somehow managed to BS my way through a term paper in English class my junior year by writing about W.A.S.P. and their lyrics. Especially considering their song titles and lyrics were far from being subtle. I mean the first side of Live…In the Raw has the song “9.5.-N.A.S.T.Y” just as a tune-up for everything to come.

But despite the fact that Lawless considers the Inside the Electric Circus album his least favorite release from the band, the title track is perfect to kick off the show. You can just imagine the crowd going crazy as the band played this track.

They follow that with a cover of the Ashford & Simpson song “I Don’t Need No Doctor”. Considering the original song is a R&B number, this might be one of the strangest covers for a metal band to do, but W.A.S.P made their own version of the track, ramping everything up to ten and leaving the original song in the dust.

Following that up with “L.O.V.E. Machine” and “Wild Child” before you get to “9.5.-N.A.S.T.Y.” in the track listing. The first side of the album ends with the ballad “Sleeping (In the Fire)”. That’s from their first album and like I said in that article, the album has aged perfectly and remains a ballad that I can actually enjoy even now.

When you flip the cassette over to Side Two, you get the full bore anti-authoritarian stance from Blackie Lawless that made me sit up and take notice from the first time I heard his stage rants on this album.

Given that they still must not have been allowed to include the song “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)”, the second half of the album opens up with the first of two tracks that were written specifically for the Live…In the Raw album and weren’t on any of the three studio albums. That track is called “The Manimal” and by way of introduction, Lawless refers to the track as being “The son of “Animal” before he launches into an explanation about the song’s origins (or at least what I think is the song’s origins anyway). The intro might give those given to handwringing these days a bit of a pause, but the song is actually pretty tame lyrically. Now, don’t let that fool you into thinking the song isn’t any good. It’s still prime early-W.A.S.P. and the single entendre dripping sexuality dripping from the lyrics is there for all to see.

The song “I Wanna Be Somebody” comes up next in the set list and if you are wondering how it sounds live, let me just say that there’s a reason this song is still going strong more than four decades after its original release.

Now for me, the second of the two songs written specifically for the album is pure defiance from Blackie Lawless and his battle against the PMRC over censoring music. And in the intro for the song “Harder Faster”, he fires both barrels at them with what he says from the stage. I used to be able to do the piece word for word from memory but I had to look it up in order to include it in this article. 

“Let me ask you something. I’ve been reading an awful lot in the newspapers and the magazines about me and my boys here. And I was reading one article in particular about an organization, you might heard of them before, they’re called the PMRC.

Well I read, I read that they said that they think that We Are Sexual Perverts. Now, this is coming from an organization called The Washington Wives. And I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds like some sort of goddamn Jackie Collins Hollywood fuckin’ novel if you ask me. Well this is for that whole bunch, because they can “Suck Me Suck Me Eat Me RAW!” This is “HARDER FASTER”.”

Oh man, I tell you I freaking loved that intro. I may have thrown the middle finger in general every time I heard that song just on principle alone. And as he ends that last line, the music kicks in and it is a fully rocking track as the song serves as a musical response to all the crap W.A.S.P. and metal bands in general were facing from self-appointed moral crusaders.

The show closes out with what might just be W.A.S.P.’s signature track “Blind in Texas” which is just a balls-out rocker that seems to get better each time you hear it.

But as the live show comes to a close, there is still one track remaining. It’s a studio cut called “Scream Until You Like It” and it was used on the soundtrack for the horror film Ghoulies II. It’s a pretty decent track in my opinion though I’ve only heard it on Live…In the Raw and not from viewing the movie itself or anything.

While my enjoyment of most live releases has waned over the years, those live releases I discovered back in the 1980s still hold a special place in my musical heart. And it is no surprise that W.A.S.P.’s Live…In the Raw stands out to me as one of the best of the 1980s.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The album was reissued on CD in 1998 and included four bonus tracks. Three were live tracks, though I don’t know if they came from the same show as the main album cuts or not. Those songs are “Widowmaker”, “Shoot From the Hip” and “Sex Drive”. The final bonus track is an acoustic version of the song “Sleeping (In the Fire)”.

This was the final album to feature drummer Steve Riley. He left the band after the tour and joined L.A. Guns. Riley passed away in October 2023.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

HELIX – BACK FOR ANOTHER TASTE (1990)

Over the years I’ve been writing The Cassette Chronicles series, I’ve written about three different albums from Helix, including the very first article in the series.

As 2025 was coming to a close, the band announced they’d be releasing a new album in late January 2026. At first, I was pretty excited because I’ve really enjoyed their last two releases a lot. But when I read the description of the material that was to be featured on the Scrap Metal album, I found myself a bit cooler on the prospects of me picking it up. 

Well that was stupid of me because once I heard the song “Stuck in the 80s”, I found myself thinking, “Damn, this sounds pretty damn good!” So of course now I want the album in my greedy little hands ASAP.

But that wasn’t the only bit of current Helix news that led to me writing about the band again. My friend George Dionne recently did a pretty damn good interview with singer Brian Vollmer that was packed with a lot of great information. It’s well worth the view/listen if you go check it out over on KNAC.com. 

So when I discovered a copy of Back For Another Taste on cassette while helping out at Purchase Street Records last week, I just felt the need to write about it given all the ties with the band I’ve been finding myself with of late.

Of course, it’s all about the music from this point, so let’s talk about the first side of the album.

Side One opens with the song “The Storm”. I found this song to be a bit odd, for me, as an opening track. Despite the fact Helix made a video for the song, it didn’t quite feel like a song you’d want to set the stage for the rest of the album. I say this because the way the song opens, it is just a bit slower than I guess my own personal preferences would’ve liked. Of course, once the second verse comes into play, the music ramps up into far more of a driving rocker tempo and suddenly the song got a whole heck of a lot more interesting. And I freaking loved the guitar solo from Paul Hackman in the song as well.

Funny enough, it was the album’s second song “Running Wild in the 21st Century” that I initially thought would’ve been more suited as the album’s opening cut because it was a full-throttle rocker pretty much from the start. 

And that’s why you can’t just go on first impressions even when checking out an album for the first time, even 35 plus years after the fact.

For the song “That’s Life”, I found it to be another foot-stomping rocker with a slight bluesy sound woven into the track’s intro. The rhythmic delivery of the vocals from Brian Vollmer was quite good. But you know what really sold the song for me? It was the drumming from Greg “Fritz” Hinz. His work behind the kit is vitally important to establishing the foundation upon which the rest of the track is built.

There is yet more uptempo thump to the musical score of the song “Breakdown” but it isn’t quite as fast as any of the first three songs on the album overall. 

The closing track of Side One, “Heavy Metal Cowboys” conjured up expectations of an anthemic rocker when I saw the title on the cassette insert. The song didn’t quite hit that crowd chanting with fists pumping in the air mark for me, but don’t let that you fool you into thinking I didn’t like the song. I  was rocking out to the track pretty much from start to finish. I just don’t know that I’d be shouting out the “Heavy Metal Cowboys” line if I was seeing them in concert. It just didn’t feel like it would be a part of the show where you’d get crowd participation. 

When I flipped the cassette over to Side Two, I got treated to the album’s title track right there at the start. And I really dug the song. The main lyrical verses were a tad slower than what you got in the chorus but man, this song really had me wanting to pump my fists in the air and sing along to the song’s title in the chorus. The song “Give It To You” also employs that same kind of anthemic feel to the music and lyrics as well.

One of the things I’ve appreciated with some of the material from Helix is how they seem to have a sense of fun injected into their songwriting. I don’t know if that’s by their design or just how I take some of their songs but for songs like “Rockin’ Rollercoaster”, it is just a FUN rocker track.

While Helix did avoid balladry for the most part on this album, they did have the song “Good to the Last Drop”. But I’m not sure it’s really a straight up ballad in true. The music is slower at the start, pretty midtempo overall. It’s the chorus where the music reaches a crescendo and the entire delivery of the band changes into more of a dramatic rocker feel. That continues from the guitar solo through to the end of the track. So, power ballad might fit as the best kind of description for the song. And you know what, the song is pretty damn good too. It ages well and I enjoyed listening to it each time I played the album through for the writing of this article.

The song “Wheels of Thunder” closes out the album and it is a rocking, rollicking good time. The rat-a-tat-tat drumming in the intro gets you amped up as the rest of the musical score kicks in with a fiery delivery. It’s a nicely drawn track that features the band firing on all cylinders.

But you know what song really struck me the strongest on Side Two? It is the song “Midnight Express”. There’s a rocking groove to the delivery and when I was first listening to the song, I was easily drawn in by the vibe that Helix was creating with the music. It has a really cool hook in the music. This is a killer tune!

It seems every time that I write about a Helix album I enjoy it so much that it makes me long for the band to play a gig near me so I can see them live. And that’s the case here with Back For Another Taste. You get eleven tracks that amply demonstrate that Helix just knows how to craft some damn fine rock and roll!

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Back For Another Taste album was the last one that Helix recorded for Capitol Records. It was also the last album that guitarist Paul Hackman recorded with the band. He was killed in an accident in 1992 while on tour with the band. 

The UK edition of Back For Another Taste  contains an extra track, which is the “Wild in the Streets” song that was the title track for the band’s 1987 album. 

The song “Running Wild in the 21st Century” won the Music Video of the Year award in 1990 from MuchMusic.

By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

FLEETWOOD MAC – TANGO IN THE NIGHT (1987)

While Fleetwood Mac is best remembered and classified as a 1970s classic rock band, it seems that a lot of people tend to forget that one of their best-selling albums actually came out in the late 1980s.
And for me, as much as I join in on the love that everyone else has for the Rumours album, the band’s fourteenth studio album Tango in the Night tends to fluctuate with that aforementioned album as my personal favorite from the band.

That said, it’s been a good long while since I’ve listened to the album in full. But as I kick off the tenth year of The Cassette Chronicles, the timing is perfect to listen once again. One of the reasons I decided to write about Tango in the Night is because I’ve recently been hanging out at my friend Roger’s record shop, Purchase Street Records, and I’ve noticed an awful lot of Fleetwood Mac (and associated side project) albums being picked up by the customers. Customers who were perhaps twenty or twenty-five years away from being born when the band was in their 1970s heyday. And yet, I haven’t seen many people picking up Tango in the Night. This seems like a rather dramatic oversight on their part in my opinion.

The production process for the album was long and involved. It originally started as a solo album project for guitarist Lindsey Buckingham that morphed into a full-fledged Fleetwood Mac album. For a quick recap of everything that went into the making the album, you should check out the Wikipedia page for the Tango in the Night album. It’s interesting reading and once again makes you wonder how anything ever got done by the band with all the various distractions and interpersonal issues going on in the band.

But that’s for you to discover for yourself, let’s talk about the music now.

The first thing to note is that six songs of the twelve on the album were released as singles. Four of them became Top 20 hits in the US. Three of those hits are the first three tracks on the album.

So when you hit play on Side One, you get the track “Big Love”. It features Buckingham on lead vocals. There’s a point counterpoint vocal with the alterating “oh-ah” phrase that sounds almost as if a couple is having sex. The funny thing that I never knew until looking up the album online for this article is that all the vocals are Buckingham and not a female (a lot of people thought it was Stevie Nicks apparently).

There’s a cool guitar line running throughout the song and while the track doesn’t totally cut loose in full, the decidedly uptempo pacing made it perfect for the album’s first single. A fact confirmed by the fact the song hit #5 on the singles chart.

While Stevie Nicks wasn’t nearly as involved in the creation of Tango in the Night (for a variety of reasons I’m not going to go into here, read about it on your own), I think she delivered a fantastic contribution with the song “Seven Wonders”. It’s a bit slower in tempo though the chorus does unfurl a more rocking tempo. While Nicks does get a co-writing credit, the song was mainly written by songwriter Sandy Stewart who had worked with Nicks on her The Wild Heart solo album. The song made it to #19 on the singles chart and I love the way the vocal from Nicks comes through in the song. One thing I noted is that while the song’s run time is on par with the rest of the tracks on the album, I got so swept up in this one that it feels somehow shorter, though no less impactful.

For the song “Everywhere” (which peaked at #14 as a single), Christine McVie sang lead on the track which she wrote as well. It’s strange that since her passing back in November 2022, I’ve been becoming more interested in the various material of hers that I hadn’t checked out or at least paid enough attention to over the years. Of course I know the big tracks she was instrumental in bringing forth, including one which I’ll be writing about in this article, but it’s the other stuff that I’ve slowly been checking out. And while a hit single like “Everywhere” doesn’t technically fall into the “other stuff” category, I think as I listened this time around I really got into the song perhaps a bit more than I had before.

I was reading up on the song and apparently when the album came out, “Everywhere” was a track that a lot of critics at the time dubbed as the best song on the album. I can see what they were thinking (though I don’t quite agree). It has a softer delivery, even with a quickened step musically. The weird thing for me is that Stevie Nicks provides the backing vocals to the song but it really doesn’t sound anything like her at all. For the longest time I thought it was someone else in the background. It’s just a pretty damn cool song that I found myself enjoying almost as if it was the first time hearing it.

As I said, those three songs were singles from the first side of the album. But we have three other tracks on Side One to get into and that starts with the song “Caroline”. I think this is an underappreciated song. Written and sung by Lindsey Buckingham, there’s a bit of an atmospheric mood to the song. The main lyrical portions establish that mood with its instrumentation and a slightly restrained feel to the vocal track. For the song’s chorus, there is an amped up delivery in both terms of the tempo and the gang vocal presentation. Embarrassingly, as I listened to the song for research, my own bad singing was part of that gang vocal sound. What can I say, I just really like this song.

The album’s title track is pretty damn cool. I like the way you get kind of a soft pedaled delivery in the song’s main portions. It’s almost as if they are trying to be a spare as possible in the presentation leading up to the chorus. That’s where the song really picks up with an explosively delivered chorus and the instrumental score goes from a bit more sparse to rocking and lush. And the outtro guitar solo is freaking phenomenal!

The Side One closing track is “Mystified” and if there’s a track on here that I like a bit less than all the others it is this one. Written by Buckingham and McVie (who sings lead), I just felt as if this one was too soft and “gauzy” in its delivery. It’s not that it is a bad song, it is just that even amidst all the other “pop” and or “soft” rock, this one was just not one that really hit it off with me.

For Side Two, we get the fourth of the singles released from Tango in the Night that charted right out of the gates in the song “Little Lies”, which hit #4 on the singles chart. For me, this is one of my all-time favorite Fleetwood Mac songs. From that sleek intro to kick off the song, straight through to the end, this is just a damn fine track. With Christine McVie singing lead, and both Buckingham and Stevie Nicks adding in backing vocals, the group’s three singers all make their mark on the song. I love the way McVie’s silky smooth delivery fuels the song. But I like the way Stevie Nicks comes through in the chorus with her starkly different sounding vocal tones. It enhances the overall combined vocal track for me. The song is deceptively uptempo. It doesn’t really feel that way in the main lyrical portions of the song, but the chorus finds the rocking tone amped up to give a nice rise and fall edginess to the track as well.

The other two songs on Tango in the Night that were released as singles were “Family Man” and “Isn’t It Midnight”.

For “Family Man”, it was almost entirely a Lindsey Buckingham creation. He had most of the song set as it was going to be included on that abandoned solo album. He played everything on the song except for the drums (which were of course played by Mick Fleetwood). Other than some backing vocals from Nicks, this was Buckingham’s show. It’s an okay song but I think the most impressive part of the whole thing was the guitar playing on the track. If what I read online is accurate, it is a Spanish guitar playing style and within the framework of the song, it works wonderfully.

For “Isn’t It Midnight”, there’s an uptempo rocking beat and rhythm to the song from the first note. There’s a nice guitar line threaded into the music though it is kind of in the background. You can hear it but it isn’t the focus. Of course, it does get to shine right out loud in the solo and throughout the ending of the track. But what makes me like this song is that it rocks a lot “harder” than a lot of Fleetwood Mac’s material.

The first of two songs that Stevie Nicks wrote on her own is “Welcome to the Room…Sara”. It’s a song about her 1986 stay in rehab. Pretty stark subject matter, no doubt. One thing I noticed is that when Nicks is singing the main lyrics, her voice sounds just a bit different to me, particularly in the first lyrical stanza. I don’t know if it was simply a production choice for her vocal to sound “unadorned” or if her voice was different somehow. In the chorus, her voice sounds more like the classic “Stevie Nicks” sound you might expect. Musically, I like the way the sound surrounds those vocals and lets them guide where the song is taking you.

The second Nicks-written song “When I See You Again” is a straight up ballad. With an spare guitar accompanying her vocal, the song has a sense of immediacy to it. I also liked that it doesn’t change styles through the track. What you hear at the start is how the song carries itself throughout but it works.

The album closes out with the song “You and I, Part II”. There’s a nice little melodic sensibility to the song. I do kind of dig the track a lot. But I’ve always wondered why it is the shortest number on the album. It’s these little questions that pop up that tend to drive me batty. The whys and wherefores of a particular song and what choices went into the finished track. But regardless of where my brain takes me, I still do quite like the song.

What is left to say about the Tango in the Night album? It was the last BIG studio album of the band’s career and it is chock full of great songs. I absolutely love the album and as I said at the start, it is so good that for me it challenges Rumours as the best Fleetwood Mac album. What higher praise can there be than that?

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Tango in the Night album peaked at #7 on the Billboard album chart. It would go on to sell three million copies in the US (fifteen million worldwide) making it the second biggest selling album of the band’s catalog. The album got a deluxe edition reissue in 2017 that included three CDs, the second disc featuring thirteen rare, bonus or outtake tracks.

While Lindsey Buckingham was a major driving force in producing and writing for the Tango in the Night album, he quit Fleetwood Mac before the tour for the album.

The album’s cover art is from a painting that was hanging in Lindsey Buckingham’s house at the time.