B-Sides: Tango In The Night

By Klara Worden

Fleetwood Mac’s music, particularly that of Tango of the Night, is effortlessly uplifting – so how is the back story anything but? Tango In the Night (1987) was Fleetwood Mac’s second-best selling album, delivering hits like ‘Little Lies’, ‘Seven Wonders’, and ‘Everywhere’ – the latter with over 1.5 billion streams. Today, we’re going to tell the story of the three each with less than 8 million streams – ‘Welcome to the Room…Sara’, ‘When I See You Again’, and ‘You and I, Pt. II” – and decide if this fate was justified.

‘Welcome to the Room…Sara’ 

It’s no secret that Stevie Nicks struggled with substance abuse. When she was admitted to the Betty Ford Center in the autumn of 1986, news was buzzing with speculation about her thirty days spent there. Nicks tells her own version of her experience in ‘Welcome to the Room… Sara’. When asked to detail the meaning behind the song by Creem magazine in 1987, she stayed pretty vague: 

“‘Welcome to the Room…Sara’ is very much a secret kind of song, [...] Sara is from Tusk, that’s the same Sara we’re talking about — and she just has some experiences that she’s talking about. I don’t really want anyone to know whether I’m going into her room or she’s coming into mine, or what’s in the room. This room is an ominous room.” 

In a 1987 Rolling Stone article announcing the album, Buckingham described the track as “a song with an islandy feel that Stevie’s written about her experiences in that cryptic way that only she can do.” Three years later, however, Fleetwood Mac revealed the true nature of the track: Sara was not a random name, but the pseudonym used by Nicks in the Betty Ford Center. References to ‘Tara’ and ‘Scarlett’ align with the 1936 novel Gone With the Wind. The lyrics describing being ‘held prisoner’ refer to Frontline Management Group, who alongside her family and friends, intervened to send her to the facility, leading to Nicks firing them not long after. 

I believe ‘Welcome To The Room…Sara’ to be partly rightfully overshadowed and also partly a hidden gem. It fails to measure up to the singles on the album, but the emotional weight behind the lyrics carries through into the instrumentals and Nicks’ haunting vocals and I personally believe it to be a stronger track than those with 20 million streams such as ‘Tango in The Night’ and ‘Family Man’. 

‘When I See You Again’  

‘When I See You Again’ was the third of the three tracks written by Nicks and is notably the only song in which Nicks and Buckingham’s vocals were truly together on the album. Nicks’ vision for the song was to resemble a conversation, and her method was slightly deceptive. In the same 1987 Creem magazine article, Nicks states “I made him sing with me, [...] I said, ‘Lindsey, you’re gonna sing on all my songs whether you like it or not — you have to sing this with me.’ So we went out and sang ‘If I see you again, will it be over? — we sang it in unison, then I snuck in and took my voice off. Otherwise, I’d have never gotten him to do it.” She openly admits this stunt likely went against Buckingham’s wishes: “He would think to sing with me, but wouldn’t want to end it. But that’s what I wanted, to leave people feeling they are really talking to each other.” 

Despite the band praising a newfound togetherness in an interview with NBC Today Show’s Rona Elliot , it is clear that subterfuge, turmoil, and tension that defined the making of Rumours lingered in the shadows of Tango In the Night. This tension reached a violent pinnacle following the album’s release. The album was extremely well received, but Buckingham’s time with Fleetwood Mac had come to a definite end. Buckingham had historically felt creatively restrained – he longed for the slightly edgier, avant-garde sound that he was able to execute through Tusk, but felt that Tango in The Night was being pushed to emulate Mirage’s lighter energy. He also had building resentment from feeling underappreciated: Tango In The Night’s conception began as Buckingham’s debut solo album, but the band convinced him to allow it to bring Fleetwood Mac together. Regardless, production fell largely into Buckingham’s hands while Nicks and the rest of the band abused substances in a trailer beside Buckingham’s house. From the beginning of recording, Buckingham knew this would be his last contribution to Fleetwood Mac, and his recording experience merely solidified that pre-existing sentiment: he stated “When I was done with the record, I said, ‘Oh my God. That was the worst recording experience of my life.’”.  When he dropped the news to the rest of the band, Nicks responded by physically assaulting him, a fight between the two that escalated into the street and ended with Nicks fearing for her life. On the musical front, this album was nothing but positive, but behind the scenes it was racked with dysfunction. 

I deem this song rightfully overshadowed: the productions and instrumentals aren’t quite where they need to be to be a Fleetwood Mac staple. I think that anyone interested in the history of Fleetwood Mac should give it a listen as the effect of Buckingham’s isolated vocals at the end really shines through. 

‘You and I, Pt. II’

‘When I See You Again’ was the intended close to Tango In The Night, until Fleetwood Mac decided it was “too down and depressing” to end with the “one last tortured conversation between Nicks and Buckingham”. ‘You and I, Pt. II’ was a combo effort on the parts of Chrstine McVie and Buckingham – McVie simply added lyrics to one of Buckingham’s existing instrumentals. ‘You and I, Pt. II’ deals with the tribulation of moving on without your partner; it references a speaker who longs to remain trapped in night as daylight entails facing the reality of the split. 

‘You and I, Pt I’ was one of four songs that failed to make the final cut, and was relegated to the B-Side of ‘Big Love’. It was eventually released in the deluxe edition of the album as a combination with Pt II into a singular track.

I believe this song to be rightfully overshadowed, it needs slightly more sonic dynamism similar to that of ‘Little Lies’ or ‘Everywhere’. I also think it would benefit from an intro – it sort of jarringly jumps into the chorus – but this is where the deluxe edition pulls through. ‘You and I, Pt II’ (Deluxe) is a nicely well rounded song and frequently finds its way into my personal rotation.