Arcade Fire seems to be doing very well; certainly, Phoenix is doing very well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You come off the kind of commercial success that 'Rumours' had, and you see that there are limitations to that as well as freedoms.
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.
Fleetwood Mac was one big lesson in adaptation for me. There were five very different personalities, and I suppose that made it great for a while.
There is nothing like this extended family that is Fleetwood Mac. And I think you have to say, for all the perceived and real dysfunction that there has been, underneath that, there is and always has been a great deal of love. And that keeps pulling us back together.
I just find things that work and embellish them.
I was playing a Fender Telecaster when I first joined.
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.
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 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 12 years I was in Fleetwood Mac before were not particularly happy years. I was not in a very good place, psychologically, when I left. I didn't have a lot of confidence in what I was doing.
When I work alone, my process is like painting. With Fleetwood Mac, it's more like movie making.
There were a number of false starts where I was trying to make solo albums. They would get constantly folded into group efforts. In retrospect, I can say fair enough, that you call yourself a band member, and you've got to step up to the plate when the need arises.
I always made the joke that I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Warner Brothers first put 'Tusk' on and listened to it in their boardroom as a follow-up to 'Rumours.'
