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

You get to be a certain age - I am 58 - and it becomes tricky not to become a caricature of yourself.

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 come off the kind of commercial success that 'Rumours' had, and you see that there are limitations to that as well as freedoms.

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 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.

For me, none of the albums after 'Tusk' quite had it. I think we lost something after that.

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.

You're not going to reinvent the wheel every time you go out, because that would disappoint the audience.

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 could almost say I'm someone who doesn't practice age.

'Tango' was a good experience, looking back on it, and it seems to hold up pretty well.

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.

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 guess you can look at Fleetwood Mac as the 'Pirates Of The Caribbean' movies and my solo career as indie films.

I couldn't put any kind of label on my production aesthetic.

I do think my lyrics have gotten... not necessarily more poetic, but more open to interpretation; they're less literal.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 seldom look back.