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.

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.

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.

The avantgarde are people who don't exactly know where they want to go, but are the first to get there.

I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

After the first miscarriage, I tried to take the attitude that it was my body's way of telling me that this pregnancy wasn't meant to be.

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

My first figure was a SLAYER eagle. And the dragons and the tribals are all I have got.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.

Working-class Americans have waited too long, close to a decade in fact, for an increase in the minimum wage. This has been the second longest period without a pay raise since the Federal minimum wage law was first enacted in 1938.

The first thing you do when you get out to center field is put up your finger and check the wind chill factor.