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.

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.

All of my style came from listening to records.

Those 12 years, they were ambiguous at best.

Another thing that was unique about working on this stuff was that I was engineering it. I used many of the things I had learned while I was away from the band. It sort of vindicated my decision to leave in '87.

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.

I'm also married for the first time, and I have two kids. So there's some kind of good karma right now.

I was playing a Fender Telecaster when I first joined.

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.

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.

I didn't take lessons, and I don't know my scales.

But by taking the time away, getting myself off the treadmill, and just slowing down and learning, I felt I had so much more to give back. And maybe that was something that needed to happen for all of us.

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.

After a couple of failed attempts, I came up with a weird tuning where I was dropping the G string down a step so that it became a seventh, and it got me to a place where I could play all these figures fairly easily. It was not an easy thing to work out.

I also learned to be more confident, to trust my instincts more.

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.

That's basically what's going on now: Everything is propaganda.

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.

Confounding people's expectations was a way to maintain integrity.

That's the only way to do it. Just like an actor. You can get a great performance if you do a bunch of takes and edit it. You find the moments and string them together.

Even though I had pushed through the Tango album, it was just not a very good environment to be in on a daily basis. In many ways, this is the best time of my life.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 had to seal off my feelings about Stevie while seeing her every day and having to help her, too. But you get on with it. What was happening to the band was much bigger than any of that.

They tried to get me to use a pick when I first joined the band. They had certain things they thought were appropriate. I tried to adapt as much as I could.

I just find things that work and embellish them.

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 thought of being on my own really terrified me. But then I realized being alone is really a cleansing thing.

We aim in the domain of politics at republicanism; in the domain of economics at socialism; in the domain of what is today called religion, at atheism.

I have come to realize that Jesse Helms stands for everything in politics that is anathema to me.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Hope springs eternal, even in politics.

Politics is about winning. If you don't win, you don't get to put your principles into practice. Therefore, find a way to win, or sit the battle out.

I don't think at my age... you can start ruling people out in politics.

The new generation of Labour is different. Different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.

The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.

A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.

The challenge is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

In almost every country there are elements of opinion which would welcome such a conclusion because they wish to return to the politics of the balance of power, unrestricted and unregulated armaments, international anarchy, and preparation for war.

Even if we don't know it or aren't aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.

So begins a question which has of late become more and more urgent: what is the relation of aesthetics to politics?

The Olympics are coming... and it's a big problem in American politics, because the problem with holding the Olympics this fall is that we're all going to be focused on the Olympics, and it makes that window of opportunity for Gore to win the election that much smaller.