Time & Perspective Quote by Lindsey Buckingham

Buckingham is giving away the magician’s trick: the “authentic” performance is often a manufactured thing, built in pieces and made to feel inevitable. By comparing recording to acting, he punctures the romantic myth of the one-take genius and replaces it with a craft ethic that’s almost bluntly unglamorous. Do “a bunch of takes,” “edit it,” “find the moments” - the verbs are workmanlike, even surgical. The artistry isn’t only in singing or playing; it’s in choosing, curating, and sequencing emotion so it reads as lived.

The intent is practical, but the subtext is about control. Buckingham, famous for obsessive studio precision and for turning private turmoil into radio-ready gold with Fleetwood Mac, is describing how you translate messy human feeling into something shareable. “String them together” is a quiet admission that continuity is an illusion: listeners hear one seamless arc, while the artist knows it’s a collage of near-misses, happy accidents, and disciplined decisions.

Context matters because Buckingham’s era helped redefine the studio as an instrument. Post-60s rock culture sold spontaneity; 70s production perfected the opposite - layering, comping, polishing until the rawness sounded more raw than real life. His actor analogy also hints at performance as identity: you’re not faking, you’re performing a version of yourself that communicates. The cynicism isn’t that art is fake; it’s that truth often arrives only after you’ve edited your way toward it.