Creative Process

[Betsy]

Musicians in Tune -
75 Contemporary Musicians Discuss the Creative Process
Jenny Boyd Ph.D with Holly George-Warren.
Published by Simon & Schuster 1992

Chemicals and Creativity p. 200-201

Lindsey Buckingham now eschews alcohol and cocaine, but has found that marijuana can help put him into this other world, which he believes is beneficial to creativity: “Cocaine is not part of my style: I certainly have done my share, but I don’t buy it. I don’t like it: It’s not good for work. It might be good if you want to put yourself in the position of having to work twenty-four hours, but why do that? I work fourteen hour days [in my studio] and I don’t need cocaine to do that: I can just do it on natural energy.

I do smoke pot. That’s the one thing that seems to ... it’s not great for things like memory, but within the relative security of the studio, in the womb like atmosphere where I know what’s going on in there, it’s very helpful. It breaks down preconceptions you have about something; it allows you to hear it fresh. If you’ve been working on something for a few hours and you smoke a joint, it’s like hearing it again for the first time. You walk away for ten minutes and come back, and it allows you to keep coming back in for more and enjoy it. It seems to open a lot of the right-brain stuff. It seems to fire off a lot of things. For me, it’s tied to a certain ability to visualize. It puts you way inside it. I would imagine if you smoke a strong joint, it’s mildly psychedelic and it just puts you in touch with things. You journey inside. Things seem to come out of nowhere sometimes; it throws you a bit. You have to get unsure of yourself if you are going to break down preconceptions, if you are going to feel out of control. You’re never going to do a good piece of work if you’re just imposing your ego on something. But the other side of that, the alcohol, is something I’ve stopped doing. That and cocaine are not creative things."




First - I wish Jenny hadn't put the elipses in there and we could hear the rest of the quote.
Second - I found the quote about "ego" interesting. Isn't that what FM members accuse him of doing?