1. It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people.2. For 70 nights, right across America, I've been getting out there with two ex-lovers and we've been playing songs which are so specific about each of us, you just wouldn't know. We're friends now but we can't forget what happened between us.
3. You know, the man of my dreams might walk round the corner tomorrow. I'm older and wiser and I think I'd make a great girlfriend. I live in the realm of romantic possibility.4. I think they all went too far. Their jeans got too low, their tops got too see-through. Personally, I think that sexy is keeping yourself mysterious. I'm really an old-fashioned girl, and I think I'm totally sexy.
5. By the time I was five, I was a little diva.
6. Rock and menopause do not mix. It is not good, it sucks and every day I fight it to the death, or, at the very least, not let it take me over.7. I am pretty fearless, and you know why? Because I don't handle fear very well; I'm not a good terrified person.
8. Even in my really bad, drugged-out days, I didn't go away. I still toured, still did interviews. I never gave up the fight. That's why I'm who I am today, because I didn't leave. And I think I made the right choice.
9. I preferred not to be laden down with a big instrument. If you're behind a guitar, you get used to being behind a guitar, and you don't really perform because you can't. I wanted to be able to just hold on to the mike and sing.10. If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?
11. If you see somebody running down the street naked every single day, you stop looking up.
12. Right now I'm not involved with anybody, but I hope by 75 I will be again.
13. My other family is Fleetwood Mac. I don't need the money, but there's an emotional need for me to go on the road again. There's a love there; we're a band of brothers.14. But for me, I knew that if I had a baby, I would have to take care of that baby, and I wouldn't have been happy with a nanny taking care of my baby and walking into the room and having my child run across the room to another woman.
15. Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was.16. Do you want to be an artist and a writer, or a wife and a lover? With kids, your focus changes. I don't want to go to PTA meetings.
17. He and I were about as compatible as a rat and a boa constrictor.
18. I had Botox and I hated it. For four long months, I looked like a different person.
19. I didn't want to look like anyone else - like Janis Joplin or Grace Slick. That's why I never went to any of the big designers.20. I want to be age appropriate. I don't want to be that girl you see walking away and she looks 25 and then she turns around and she looks 90.
21. I was not going to be a stupid girl singer. I was going to be way more than that.
22. I made a conscious decision that I was not going to have children. I didn't want others raising them, and looking after them myself would get in the way of being a musician and writer.
23. I watched Janis one time - we opened for her - and that's the only time I ever saw her. We opened for Jimi Hendrix. I got to stand on the side of the stage and watch him for two hours and then he died. But I got the essence before they left.24. I wouldn't like to be in movies. Movie people are strange. They live a different life than musicians do.
25. I'm doing lots of interviews and stuff. I'm longing for the days of getting up, not having to put on makeup and do my hair and just going to the studio.
26. If you want to find somebody and you want to be married and you want to have children, don't make it a rock star.27. If you're an unattractive girl who's trying to be beautiful with Botox, forget it. If you are a beautiful girl who's trying to be beautiful with Botox, you will look like you're angry all the time.
28. The day before my 16th birthday I got my guitar.
29. Men are going to go out on the road and they're going to find other women. So if you really want to save yourself a whole lot of heartache, do not fall in love with somebody in a band. Just don't.
30. Singing is the love of my life, but I was ready to give it all up because I couldn't handle people talking about how fat I was.31. When you're rich and famous you are the dominant force in a relationship, even if you try hard not to be. I've talked of sacrificing everything for Fleetwood Mac, but I realize now that it is simply the only thing I've ever wanted to do.
32. We don't need to have somebody that's gonna make sure they pay for our market bills. It's like we have only one reason to love and that is for the real idea of love.
33. Little girls think it's necessary to put all their business on MySpace and Facebook, and I think it's a shame...I'm all about mystery.34. I have my own life. And I am stronger than you know.
35. I said: "Instead of going in the direction that a lot of the women singers are going in (revealing), I'll be very, very sexy under 18 pounds of chiffon and lace and velvet...I will have mystique.
36. Don't Listen To Her, Listen Through Her.37. I have no fear, I have only love.
38. If you think you know the truth about this band, you can think again. Other than the people involved, nobody knows what really went on.
39. One day, when I'm an old lady, I'm going to tell the whole tale and people will be amazed. The truth will blow your mind. The story is deep, dark and heavy. But it's also beautiful, sexy and more romantic than you could ever imagine. Now's not the time, though. You'll have to wait ten years for that one.
40. I only saw Janis Joplin one time - on a hot summer day in San Jose, California, at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds. Lindsey and I were opening a big outdoor show for her, and because of that, I got to stay on-stage and watch the other bands. I don't exactly know what I expected, but I didn't expect what I witnessed.Janis was extraordinary. She had a connection with the audience that I hadn't seen before, and when she left the stage I knew that a little bit of my destiny had changed - I would search to find that connection that I had seen between Janis and her audience. In a blink of an eye she changed my life.
41. Lindsey and I got a record deal with Polydor and made our first album, Buckingham Nicks. We had a taste of the big time. We had great musicians in a big, grand studio. We were happening. Things were going our way. But up until that point I had been thinking of quitting it all and going back to school 'cause I was sick of being miserable and I hate being poor. When Polydor dropped that record, we were completely depressed. Then three months later Mick Fleetwood called.
42. I was twenty-seven when I joined Fleetwood Mac. Everybody thought I was this teenager, but I had already lived with Lindsey for five years. While doing our music I'd been a cleaning lady and worked at the Copper Penny, Clementine's and Bob's Big Boy restaurants. I supported Lindsey and I for years, cause he never worked or had a job. I was pretty grown up when I joined Fleetwood Mac. I was glad because I would not have been able to handle that kind of overnight success.
43. Mick is the king. He's the head of the band. He comes in and you think you ought to curtsy. In the studio, Lindsey's word was law. Christine almost always delivered the hits. She's like an earth mother, and I'm her little sister. John is the other fixed point around which the band revolves. Sometimes it got really funny, this giant percussionist and two couples in front of him. Especially when all the relationships broke up.
44. The clothes I wear... that doesn't change. I love long dresses. I love velvet. I love high boots. I never change. I love the same eye make-up. I'm not a fad person. I still have everything I had then. That's one part of me... that's where my songs come from. There's a song on the new Fleetwood Mac album (Mirage) that says: "Going back to the velvet underground/back to the floor that I love," because I always put my bed on the floor. 'To a room with some lace and paper flowers/ back to the gypsy that I was.45. I'm timeless, I got that Dickensian, London street-urchin look in high school. I'll never be in style, but I'll always be different.
46. I love leather and I love lace, but not necessarily together. I'm probably happiest in a long black velvet dress, black suede boots, and some kind of really beautiful wrap than I am in anything else. I don't even own a pair of jeans.
47. The outfit I wear on the cover of Bella Donna is the same as the one I wore on Rumours, except it's opposite, it's white. It's a strange turn-around that I've come from black to white... The outfit was my idea and Margi Kent designed it. She just keeps making it longer. She makes everything, and these are my boots that my little Jewish cobbler who's seventy years old makes. A five-foot one-inch-tall person needs six inches. Onstage especially. Standing next to Mick Fleetwood is ridiculous. Anybody standing next to Mick is ridiculous, so imagine a five-footer. You blend into his drums, which he loves because then he's the star. So I say: "Wait a minute, Mick, I'm going to get tall." I get far on these boots. They are very out of style and I don't care. I love them. They are beautiful suede and they are soft. I tried to get this boot a long time ago, and it was going out then. We searched London, and I found one pair that was a size five, and I wear a five and a half or six, but I bought them anyway and stuffed my little feet into them.48. Believe me, when I stop singing I'm gonna have a garage sale like you're not gonna believe. We're talking chiffon, chiffon, and more chiffon.
49. When I first met him, he was going with somebody and so was I, but I fell totally in love with him. I was captivated. (On Lindsey Buckingham)50. Lindsey and I were as close to married as I'll probably ever be. I took care of him, I cooked for him, I ironed his jeans, I embroidered stars and moons on them, I adored him, I took care of him.
51. You know, when Lindsey and I go back and forth on the songs that were written between the two of us, for that moment, we are back in love again.
52. These days Lindsey deals with me on a much kinder level. And I'm more willing to be open with him. It's nice to think I might go to my grave being Lindsey's friend and not a thorn in his side for all eternity.
53. I know that when I'm 80 and he's 79 and I'm on my walker, I'll be swinging my walker at him!
54. And then I fell in love with Mick (Fleetwood). That went on for two years. Never in a million years could you have told me that would happen. That was the biggest surprise. Mick is definitely one of my great, great loves. It was not good for anybody else in the band. Everybody was so angry, because Mick was married at the time to a wonderful girl and he had two wonderful children, and I was horrified. I loved these people. I loved his family. So it couldn't have possibly worked out. And it didn't. It just couldn't.55. I wasn't displeased by anything Mick said about me in his book, I knew the truth would come out someday. It was a great love affair - something I would never trade in a million years.
56. If you've never experienced the really dark and deep lows of love, then you can never really experience the real highs of love. Just to know that I am capable of feeling that strongly about another person. Because some people I know aren't capable of that.
57. In almost every relationship I've had, my career has ruined it. I will never be able to stay with anyone really long, because there will always come a point when they say: "I can't deal with your life."58. I really understand what an incredible commitment it is to have a child, and how difficult it is. I know I could not have done both. I'd have ended up having to stop doing my music, or pretty much letting someone else raise my child which would have made me very unhappy. Or I'd have ended up kind of a half-assed mother and a half-assed rock musician.
59. Well the gold dust refers to cocaine, but it's not completely about that, because there wasn't that much cocaine around then. Everybody was doing a little bit - you know, we never bought it or anything, it was just around - and I think I had a real serious flash of what this stuff could be, of what it could do to you. The whole thing about how we love the ritual of it, the little bottle, the diamond-studded spoons, the fabulous velvet bags. For me, it fit right into the candles and incense and all that stuff. And I really imagined that it could overtake everything, never thinking in a million years it would overtake me. I must have met a few people who I thought did too much coke, and I must have been impressed by that. Because I made it into a whole story. (On what "Gold Dust Woman" is about)60. It was like being swept up on a white horse by a prince. There was no way to get off the white horse and I didn't want to. It took over my life in a big way. (on cocaine)
61. I think a lot of us realize we're really lucky to be alive. The ones of us who did make it pretty much cherish the fact that we are alive. You have to learn if you can't depend on yourself without chemicals, you might as well stop doing it and go do something else, because it isn't worth dying for. But it is difficult, and probably always will be difficult to accept this whole life in a different way. Because for so long it was lived under that dream cloud, dream child world of different kinds of drugs.
62. If there's money and high powered people around, it's pretty easy to do drugs. It wasn't just the tenor of the times. It was just everybody did cocaine. Everybody. Nobody ever told us how dangerous it was. If somebody ever sat me down and really told me the repercussions of doing too much cocaine over 10 years, I know I would have been more careful. But nobody ever did. I absolutely remember people saying: It's recreational, it's not addictive, it's excessive. It's the rich man's drug. It's something you do once in a while and have a good time. Nobody ever said anything about that it could remove your brain from your head. It was OK. And then, of course, it wasn't OK but it was too late.
63. The drugs were bad and they got everybody sick and made a lot of problems. However there's the tragic artist drug syndrome that sometimes makes for great art. So I would go back and change any of it? No I wouldn't. I think it all happened for a reason. I'm alive today and I'm fine and I'm in fairly good health. So I got through it. I wouldn't go back and change anything. I'm not disappointed with it and I'm not sorry about it. It is the way it was. And I'm OK now. If I was dead now, we wouldn't be doing this interview. But I got through it and I was lucky.64. I really did go crazy. For several months I was completely nuts.
65. I would never lecture anybody because I don't think that's the way to get to people. It certainly wasn't the way to get to me. I decided to go to Betty Ford. Nobody came and threw me in a van and took me. That was my decision. I booked the room. I paid for it. So I really think when it comes down to that stuff, it's really all up to you.
66. No matter how fabulous and big time Fleetwood Mac were, there was always a really dark edge to it. Fleetwood Mac were anything but a happy soft-rock band. There was a lot of darkness and a lot of dark stuff going on. And so maybe people relate to that darkness because they knew it wasn't easy for us and that we went through the drugs, criticism, the big success and the dropping down and going back up.67. I remember the night I wrote Dreams. I walked in and handed a cassette of the song to Lindsey. It was a rough take, just me singing solo and playing piano. Even though he was mad with me at the time, Lindsey played it and then looked up at me and smiled. What was going on between us was sad. We were couples who couldn't make it through. But, as musicians, we still respected each other - and we got some brilliant songs out of it.
68. During the late 70s Fleetwood Mac was a huge moneymaking machine, with limos and jets and drugs and crazy people all around all the time. That's why I really hated that time in my life, because the spiritual sort of went away. It's taken a while to get it all back.69. Oh I've been close to leaving Fleetwood Mac ever since I joined Fleetwood Mac. But so has everybody else. To be in Fleetwood Mac is to live in a soap opera. And it has been pretty scandalous and pretty incestuous, and pretty wonderful in a lot of ways.
70. The truly incredible thing is we're realizing that you can perform a two-and-a-half-hour gig without being high and still have a fantastic time.71. Well, if the earthquake happens, I've got my steel-toed shoes and some rope, and we'll get down a mountain.
72. All my feather stuff is in L.A. at a temperature-controlled stage-storage place. I keep all my good stuff there because if I had it all in my house, I wouldn't have any room for my regular clothes. It has to, like, not live here.73. I hated Chris, my brother. I would pull his hair and kick him, until one day my father gave him permission to fight back. I'll be apologizing to him for the rest of my life.
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