Lindsey Buckingham
Some days I would be there at ten in the morning and wouldn't leave till ten at night, and the others would waltz in for a couple of hours and then leave, because I was doing that painting thing. And they were happy to see that being done.Collection: Morning
I also learned to be more confident, to trust my instincts more.Collection: Trust
That's one strength that Stevie has. She's really not a strong instrumentalist in any way. Her instrument is her voice and her words. And it keeps her focused on the very center of that.Collection: Strength
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.Collection: Knowledge
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.
You could say that Fleetwood Mac is a bit of a dysfunctional family, but we are a family.
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.
We're not one of those bands that throws the names of all their songs in a hat and pulls them out right before they go on stage.
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.
I liked 'Rumours,' but to me, there was some point where the focus became the sales, not the music.
There is a lot of pressure to top yourself... to come up with a 'Rumours II,' and that seemed like a trap.
As I've grown as an artist, I've gotten more and more in touch with my center, and that center is voice and guitar.
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.
I'm very fortunate.
We really were poised to make 'Rumours 2,' and that could've been the beginning of kind of painting yourself into a corner in terms of living up to the labels that were being placed on you as a band.
The want to return to the fold doesn't mean you can repeat history.
If things are crazy in the studio, usually the road is times 10.
When you make music, and even if it's commercially successful, it doesn't mean that it's going to hold up. It takes time to sort of take stock of what you've done and whether it's got legs and whether it's going to really have a place.
Defining something being a Fleetwood Mac song is calling it a Fleetwood Mac song, you know? Nothing becomes Fleetwood Mac until that's what you call it.
I do think my lyrics have gotten... not necessarily more poetic, but more open to interpretation; they're less literal.
I couldn't put any kind of label on my production aesthetic.
I guess you can look at Fleetwood Mac as the 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' movies and my solo career as indie films.
If you look at the whole time I was in the band, I only did, like, three solo albums - two, really. 'Out Of The Cradle,' I had already left because we'd done 'Tango In The Night,' and it was sort of the logical extension of crazy in terms of everyone getting ready to hit the wall with their habits.
I honestly think part of the appeal of 'Rumours' was that it was sort of heroic. We managed to push through in the face of so much personal adversity.
'Tango' was a good experience, looking back on it, and it seems to hold up pretty well.
You could almost say I'm someone who doesn't practice age.
Creating a set list is like making a running order for an album. Certain things get pitted against one another that make more sense. One song sets another one off, or it might diminish it. You're just constantly looking for the next thing that's gonna make sense in a particular place.
You're not going to reinvent the wheel every time you go out, because that would disappoint the audience.
After the success of 'Rumours,' we were in this zone with this certain scale of success. By that point, the success detaches from the music, and the success becomes about the success. The phenomenon becomes about the phenomenon.
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.
For me, none of the albums after 'Tusk' quite had it. I think we lost something after that.
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.
The rest of the band had a cynical view towards the way 'Tusk' was made and the reasons why I thought it was important to move into new territory. It wasn't just negativity. There was open hostility. Then I got a certain amount of flak because it didn't sell as many as 'Rumours.'
The most disappointing thing to me after 'Tusk' was the politics in the band. They said, 'We're not going to do that again.' I felt dead in the water from that. On 'Mirage,' I was treading water, saying, 'Okay, whatever,' and taking a passive role.
'Big Love' was originally an ensemble song, but it's done now as a single guitar piece.
You come off the kind of commercial success that 'Rumours' had, and you see that there are limitations to that as well as freedoms.
If you go back to 'Louie Louie,' there's the whole element there, where you need to be able to appreciate what 'dumb' is in its profoundness.
You get to be a certain age - I am 58 - and it becomes tricky not to become a caricature of yourself.
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.
My foundation is acoustic guitar, and it is finger-picking and all of that and sort of an orchestral style of playing. Lead guitar came later, more out of the necessity to do so because of expectations in a particular situation.
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.
Certainly, whatever I learn while I'm out solo, I bring back to Fleetwood Mac.
If you talk about the 'Tango in the Night' album, the reason I didn't do that tour was because the album took about 10 months, and it was such an uncreative atmosphere.
There is a real joy to be able to get up and react to each other and appreciate the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, just the chemistry of the group.
I put out an album once every four or five years and it's kind of like starting over every time.
My center is not really my singing so much as my guitar playing.
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.
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.
You have to look at what 'Rumours' was, what drove the subject matter. You had two couples who were broken up or breaking up. And probably, you could say, success we had achieved was the catalyst for those breakups.
If everybody wanted to follow the left side of the pallet like I had on 'Tusk,' there would have been no need for me to do solo work.