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It's been a song that's defined him for decades. Now, Fleetwood Mac guitarist and singer Lindsey Buckingham is making "Go Your Own Way" his personal philosophy as well.

For years, Buckingham has struggled to balance the needs of his band with his interest in recording and performing as a solo artist. It hasn't been easy — he left Fleetwood Mac for almost a decade before returning for good in 1997, a reunion that grew out of his solo album "Out of the Cradle." The work he put into a never-materialized follow-up, "Gift of Screws," was commandeered for the bulk of Fleetwood Mac's 2003 record, "Say You Will."

Now 57 years old, Buckingham is finding comfort in balancing the band that will forever define him with the solo work that always sustains him. It's tricky, doing both, and sometimes the shadow of Fleetwood Mac looms large over his work as a solo artist. But like the song says, Buckingham is realizing that he can, indeed, go his own way. He can do both, and that's what keeps him playing rock 'n' roll.

"The thing that becomes difficult is allotting the time," Buckingham told The Daily Times this week. "I like to think of myself as the Terrence Malick of rock — I'll do a solo album and I won't tour behind it, and then I'll wait a long time before doing the next one. Some of that has to do with juggling the needs of Fleetwood Mac with the opportunity for solo work, and that can be a bit difficult. But if you're going to be in a band, you have to think of the needs of the group first, and being someone working behind the scenes with the nuts and bolts, that tends to fall on me a little more.

"The other part is that the psychology of it can be difficult only in the sense that you have a kind of mechanism that wants you to be a certain thing, and of course the solo work tends to be way to the left of that. It's outside the box, so you have to move out there to go after it. Your support system goes away, and you have to be own best booster. Not many people, and not even the record company really, wants you to go there. So you have to assert that on your own.

"That's a side of my palate that has been nurturing for me over a period of time," he added. "It's what allows me to grow — my own sense of focus and stubbornness and stalwartness to keep that thing alive."

Keeping his independent spirit alive is no easy task, given the crushing success Buckingham has experienced with Fleetwood Mac. It hasn't always been so, however; he was a solo artist before joining the legendary group, and he remains one today.

Born in San Francisco, he went to high school with his future lover and bandmate, Stevie Nicks, but it would be several years before they began making music together. His early musical interests steered him toward folk music, and he first learned to play banjo and fingerstyle guitar before veering toward rock. Eventually, Nicks joined Buckingham's first band, Fritz, and the two remained musical collaborators after Fritz broke up.

For several years in the early 1970s, they were struggling musicians, finally signing to the Polydor/Anthem label and releasing an album, "Buckingham Nicks," critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful. Ironically, the album is now a collector's item, especially since it's never been released on CD.

"A lot of people would like to see that happen, and I think that has something to do with the demand — it kind of creates the mythology a little more around it," Buckingham said. "Stevie and I, as owners of that, will get organized and eventually put it out on CD, and what might be interesting is whatever we decide to do to drive that as a release. I don't want to say that we'll tour together, but I'd certainly be willing to do that if she would."

As fate would have it, however, opportunity came knocking in the form of Fleetwood Mac drummer Mic Fleetwood. Guitarist Bob Welch has just quit, and Fleetwood asked Buckingham to sign up. Buckingham insisted that he and Nicks were a package deal; a day later, Fleetwood invited them both to join the band.

That was 1975. The newly revived group's first album together was self-titled, but it was the second album Buckingham and Nicks made with the band — while going through an emotionally devastating break-up — that turned Fleetwood Mac into massive superstars.

"Rumours," released in 1977, has sold almost 20 million
copies to date, making it the third highest-selling album in history. It would
forever define the band, and Buckingham would feel its effects for years to
come. When the band's follow-up, "Tusk," didn't reach the same level of
success, it was seen as a disappointment, despite brisk sales. After its
release, Buckingham began his first steps toward autonomy from Fleetwood Mac,
releasing "Law and Order" on the Elektra label. Thus began the juggling act —
he followed it with the 1982 band album "Mirage," followed that with his second solo album ("Go Insane") and was at work on a third when Warner Bros. Records chairman asked him to shelve it and focus on Fleetwood Mac.

The result was 1987's "Tango in the Night" — difficult to make, but commercially successful. After it was done, however, Buckingham left, returning to the studio to finish his third solo album (1992's "Out of the Cradle"). Despite reuniting with his bandmates for 1993's inauguration of President Bill Clinton (who used the Fleetwood Mac hit "Don't Stop" on the campaign trail), it wasn't until Buckingham invited Fleetwood and fellow Mac bandmate Christine McVie to work on his fourth solo album, tentatively titled "Gift of Screws," that would lead to Buckingham rejoining the band.

"I had put out 'Out of the Cradle' and just a little bit behind that had gone back in the studio and worked for quite a while," he said. "I got the tunes formed to some degree, and I ended up in the studio with Mick. That in itself was the catalyst for someone thinking maybe we could get John in the studio, and from there, it kind of sidetracked the project and became something I ended up doing with Fleetwood Mac.

"That was a big thing. When you're over at Christine's house for dinner, and people are almost intervening on your situation, it's hard not to respond to that. Those kinds of things, I don't think happen anymore, but at the time, it was a struggle for sure. It's become a little easier to separate the two now, because you have to make that choice to be proactive and put boundaries up, so that random events become less random. Back then, it was difficult to do that."

"Gift of Screws" was lost to that process. After setting it aside to join the band for a 1997 tour and live album ("The Dance"), the tracks for it became the seeds for a new Fleetwood Mac studio album (2003's "Say You Will.") Last year, he finally released a fourth solo album — "Under the Skin," for which he's currently touring and will appear in Knoxville on Saturday night. It's the focus of his show, but it doesn't mean he'll ignore what long-time fans have come to expect of him.

"Because the tone of the new CD is more intimate — it's like an extended version of someone sitting in your living room, playing guitar — I have to start with that as the tone," Buckingham said. "I can't pretend the CD doesn't have any relevance to what I have to say, because in retrospect, everything has happened in the manner it was supposed to. What I'm doing now is so much more resonant with what I've done with over the last 10 years.

"One of the things that's significant to what I'm doing now, other than that 'Under the Skin' is a departure, is that I've carved out a larger window to not only tour far more extensively behind this CD, but to then again go in and finish up another one and put it out in relatively short order and do the same thing again. But even doing that, you have to put yourself in a position of possibly expecting Fleetwood Mac to knock on the door, and when that happens to just let them knock.

"I don't think there's a new Fleetwood Mac album in the future, and that's too bad, but certainly we'll tour again," Buckingham added. "We'll probably look at going back out on the road again at the very end of 2008."