I left Fleetwood Mac to make myself happy, and fortunately, it worked.
Ironically, that was quite a bit of the appeal of Rumours. It's equally interesting on a musical level and as a soap opera.
I also learned to be more confident, to trust my instincts more.
When you become successful on the level that Fleetwood Mac did, it gives you financial freedom, which should allow you to follow your impulses. But oddly enough, they become much harder to follow.
The want to return to the fold doesn't mean you can repeat history.
When I was in a band after high school and in college, I didn't even play the guitar. I played the bass because I couldn't play lead, and I didn't have the gear.
I just find things that work and embellish them.
I guess you can look at Fleetwood Mac as the 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' movies and my solo career as indie films.
I was playing a Fender Telecaster when I first joined.
I actually like Taylor Swift. I admire what she's been able to do on some levels.
I'm in the position where I don't have to make commercial music to feed myself, so I have the luxury of being more experimental, if that's what I choose to do. I guess I've earned the right by being in the business for a while and paying the dues and taking the lumps.
This time, there were no drugs involved. The hours were completely normal daytime hours. I think we were able to appreciate the interplay, where before we had taken it for granted.
You just get out there and be what you want to be. That's part of evolving and part of staying true to yourself - part of remaining alive in a real authentic, long-term sense creatively: not listening to what other people tell you to be.
When I work alone, it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits, and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive, subconscious process.
That's basically what's going on now: Everything is propaganda.
I don't read music. I've never had a lesson. I don't know anything about music other than what my inner knowledge is.
All of my style came from listening to records.
Studio D has a lot of symbolism for me.
My personal life is fairly barren.
Sometimes I wish we were the Eagles. That's one thing they've always been able to do is want the same thing for the same reasons.
It's really touching that we can come back after so long and care about making an album that says as much as this one does. And after all this time, we really do care about each other.
You can look at 'Rumours' and say, 'Well, the album is bright, and it's clean, and it's sunny.' But everything underneath is so dark and murky. What was going on between us created a resonance that goes beyond the music itself.
We've always had the sensibility that you work on the set, and you structure it, much like a play, where once you've got the lines down and blocking right, you freeze it, and then you go out and do what you're doing night after night. You want to structure something that has form and that builds the right dynamic from start to finish.
A house full of new furniture doesn't mean a whole lot.
I can't judge myself by 'God Only Knows.' No one writes songs as good as that.
I'm trying to break down preconceptions about what pop music is.
The only way I've been able to keep my sanity is to pull back when I feel like it's time to pull back.
The first couple shows I did by myself, I was looking around wondering where the rest of my band was.
I'm very fortunate.
Back in 1985, I was working on my third solo album when the band came to me and asked me to produce the next Fleetwood Mac project. At that point, I put aside my solo work - which was half finished - and committed myself for the next seventeen months to producing 'Tango in the Night.'
I'm also married for the first time, and I have two kids. So there's some kind of good karma right now.
When I work alone, and I'm in my studio, and I'm playing a lot of the stuff myself, I think the style of it becomes something a little different.
Sometimes you can do the work in the moment, and you don't know whether it's going to really have meaning once time has elapsed.
One of the things about Fleetwood Mac, you gotta say, is that it's not very often that you get everyone to want the same thing at the same time.
When I work alone, my process is like painting. With Fleetwood Mac, it's more like movie making.
If you want to be an artist in the long run, it isn't necessarily a good axiom to repeat formulas over and over until they're used up.
The writing is all done, so it's all about verbalizing everything from point A to point B, and certainly there's a bit of politics involved, so it's a different thing.
The thought of being on my own really terrified me. But then I realized being alone is really a cleansing thing.
One thing I admire about the Eagles is they always seem to know what they want. They always seem to know why they want it. They always seem to want it at the same time.
I don't really think of myself so much as a writer as a stylist, someone who came into writing from the back door and has found it through a certain very specific and personal means.
There have been times when I've feared for my own well-being in the great scheme of things because, historically, the track record has not been kind to the guitar players in this band.
What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist.
I was lucky enough to meet someone when I was about 46 and had my first child when I was 48, so I got started late, but I also got all that other stuff out of the way and was at a point where I could be a consistent presence at home.
A lot of people who have gone to music school have gotten their individuality stomped out of them. It becomes harder to find those instincts.
You come off the kind of commercial success that 'Rumours' had, and you see that there are limitations to that as well as freedoms.
You could say that Fleetwood Mac is a bit of a dysfunctional family, but we are a family.
Years on, Christine and John still have a deep love for each other, as do Stevie and I - we've been working together since I was 17.
Confounding people's expectations was a way to maintain integrity.
I've been playing since I was about 7. I never really used a pick very much. I mean, once in a while, if you're in a festive mood, you might draw a little blood, but nothing significant... But my hands aren't abused, really.
