Yeah, this album is becoming overlooked even though it was tremendously successful for him at the time. It's almost as if he is completely disowning this 80s period in his live shows, focusing on Beatles songs, a few Wings numbers and then fast-forwarding to more recent works, completely leaving the likes of 'Take It Away' behind in the dust. You could also argue 'No More Lonely Nights' on the Broadstreet album suffers from the same fate. I think he could've done a great job playing these songs in a touring situation.
I'm also a big fan of 'Ebony and Ivory', simply one of the classics.. he did so many great duets with the likes of Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson in the early 80s - again, it's like he prefers to act as if that era never existed - it's a shame.. it brought him some of his biggest hits as a solo artist, it would be great to hear them again, done with a full live band.
Some of the other standouts on Tug of War for me include 'The Pound Is Sinking' and 'Somebody Who Cares' (the acoustic guitar solo in it is superb). While I think 'Ballroom Dancing' and 'Wanderlust' are great songs, they suffer from an overly trebly thin production (much like Venus and Mars) and I am glad Macca re-recorded them and improved them significantly on the Broad Street album. He gave the snare drum sound a lot more presence (the TOW snares have very little ambience) and the sound mix just feels a lot warmer and fuller on Broad Street compared to TOW where at times it all feels a bit brittle and 'digital' (this album of course was one of the first to be digitally mixed).
There are times the digital mixing sounds wonderful ('Take It Away', especially the drum intro!), but at other times the album sorely needed more fullness. While the other Stevie Wonder collaboration 'What's That You're Doing' is a groovy song, it almost sounds like a demo with that drum machine rhythm furiously tick-tocking away in the background.
Overall it's a solid album - I just hope it gets properly remastered one day.