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.

When I work alone, my process is like painting. With Fleetwood Mac, it's more like movie making.

When Stevie and I joined the band, we were in the midst of breaking up, as were John and Christine. By the time Rumours was being recorded, things got worse in terms of psychology and drug use. It was a large exercise in denial - in order for me to get work done.

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.

You know, I was never totally thrilled with being a Fleetwood Mac member, but surprisingly, I was having such a good time reuniting with John, Mick, and Stevie.

There have been several occasions during the course of Fleetwood Mac over the years where we've had to undermine whatever the business axioms might be to sort of keep aspiring as an artist in the long term, and the 'Tusk' album was one of those times.

I think when you work alone - the way I do it, anyway - you could sort of liken it to painting, where there's sort of a one-on-one with the canvas.

I can't judge myself by 'God Only Knows.' No one writes songs as good as that.

I'm not really concerned with the outer success.

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.

Warner Bros. never really got behind the solo work. They always kind of drew a blank. I think they always were thinking, 'Well, this is nice, but let's get back to what's really important.'

A house full of new furniture doesn't mean a whole lot.

I love to be in the studio. That's what I like to do best.

I'm trying to break down preconceptions about what pop music is.

I don't know what 'genius' even means. It's just a matter of keeping your eye on the ball.

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.

That's one of the real downfalls of celebrity. You're something that's about you at some point, and that gets latched onto and pumped into the machinery. Then you start having a million other people telling you who you are, and what you should be doing and why, and it's easy to lose your way.

As autobiographical as say the stuff on 'Rumours' was, I don't think we thought of it as such when we were writing it.

I actually like Taylor Swift. I admire what she's been able to do on some levels.

I seldom look back.

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.

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.

If things are crazy in the studio, usually the road is times 10.

Lyrically, you know, most of the things on 'Rumours' were very autobiographical and very much conversations the three writers were having with other members of the band.

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.

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.'

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.

I was always interested in listening to music - and, of course, when my older brother brought home 'Heartbreak Hotel,' that was it.

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.

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.

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.