Lindsey Buckingham - Go Insane

“Go Insane“ is the title track of Lindsey Buckingham’s second solo album. Released as a single on July 3, 1984, it became Buckingham’s second top 40 hit (after “Trouble“, three years earlier). “Go Insane“ is also Buckingham’s most recent U.S. solo hit (peaking at #23 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart); on the other hand, it did not chart in the United Kingdom. When asked about the lyrics of “Go Insane“, he explained: “Insanity can be said to be very relative to the context you find yourself in. An example might be a very acceptable and typical behavior for a group of people in a little rock and roll microcosm, might be grounds for someone being committed if they worked in a bank“. “Looking at it that way we all tend to go insane a little bit, I think that’s ok. I think that’s one of the things the album is saying – it is ok to go insane, it can be quite cathartic actually, to watch yourself go out to the edge and sort of reel yourself back in – now hopefully you do reel yourself back in. In later years, Buckingham has stated that the song, “Go Insane“, was actually written about his 7-year-old (at that time) post-break up relationship with former lover, Stevie Nicks. “We were disintegrating as couples, by virtue of that, we were suffering as people. So in order to get work done, I had to go through this elaborate exercise in denial – leaving whole areas of baggage on the other side of the room, compartmentalize feelings... no time to get closure, to work things out... working in a very highly charged and ambivalent environment. So the go insane thing – would just be whenever I let my guard down and got back to all the things I hadn’t dealt with, it was almost like going insane – like I always do. Took a long, long time, working in an artificial environment on a personal level. So many things not worked through for a long, long time.“ – Lindsey Buckingham “Stevie, at some point her persona onstage was latched onto and she was in a sense called away by a larger world and separated on her own from me.”- Lindsey Buckingham