The best one (on that album) - for a guitar solo, anyway - is Time Waits for No One, which is the first song we recorded for It's Only Rock 'N Roll. We hadn't seen each other for about 3 months, and it was done in one or two takes. We had done a bit of a layoff because we'd finished an American tour (sic), and everybody went to different parts of the globe and had a rest. I went to Brazil, which is possibly why there is a little Latin influence there.

We finished off writing the songs that hadn't been completed lyricwise, because a lot of them had been written in a very loose framework to start with - maybe just a chorus, a hook line, or something. Then we got on and did the vocals and I left Mick for a couple of weeks to do his solo vocals, because he often comes up with his best stuff alone in the studio with just an engineer. Then he doesn't feel like he's hanging anybody up.

I can't live without being on the road. Every minute spent off the road I either turn into an alcoholic or a junkie 'cause I've got nothing else to do. It's just a waste of time. I can turn into anything: a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a psychedelic treat, a Jehovah's Witness, a junkie - anything can happen 'cause I'm not doing THAT. That's what I do. I mean, most people that do things at least have the opportunity of doing it pretty regularly. We're in this unique, so they say, position of not being able to expose ourselves too much. So you've got these horrible extravagances of people saying, I don't want to work this year. That's why I did the album with Woody. I couldn't stand it anymore. To write off a whole fucking year in one sentence is stupid.

I reconciled myself to what I was years ago (laughs). I'm not gonna last forever. I'm changing my image. I'm finally getting my teeth fixed.

Well - what we're thinking of is something like this: We'll go and do some sessions in December to start recording a new album which we hope to have out by May. Because, hopefully in June we'll be starting out a tour which will last a year altogether. It would start in America and go through there until about August, with maybe South America and Canada thrown in somewhere during. After which there will be a break when we hope to be able to get a live album out - of the American tour. Following that - starting around November, or October or something, will be the second half of the tour, which will probably be Australia, Asia, and ending up in Africa. There we hope to be able to make some kind of a movie, not just a documentary... Anyway - that will take us until about Christmas, when we'll have another break, and we'll have to start recording another albunm because by then it will have already beeen a year since we will have done the one we're planning to do now, if you follow me. Yes (laughs), and then it goes on for the third part of the tour which would be Europe, hopefully the Iron Curtain, England, etc.... which would take us a year from the start of the tour. That would then be one June later, and it would end in June 1976. That's basically what we talked about.

It was inevitable. I was becoming so depressed and frustrated that it was rubbing off on the group. I had a lot of personal problems which had nothing to do with the group. I was bored. Not bored with the Rolling Stones but bored with myself. I knew I had a lot more inside me, and it needed to get out.

I was actually getting very bored with the inactivity and the lack of direction. You know, for a whole year we just really didn't do anything. We didn't see each other and nothing was happening. And there were all sorts of things going on that had absolutely nothing to do with the band and being on the road and making records, which, I think, interfered with relationships within the band.

I think if I'd have been a little older, I don't think I would have left actually. You know, I don't REGRET that I left, but because I hadn't been involved with them right from the beginning, there was much more of a sense of urgency about needing to do something else, inside me, you know. Whereas with the rest of them, they always knew inside themselves that no matter how difficult things were or how crazy things were, they'd sort of always be together, they'd get through it.

Around the time Mick Taylor quit I just wanted to leave. I couldn't see myself standing it any longer. But I didn't want to be the person who caused the breakup of the band.

We started the record in Germany, the night before Mick Taylor left the band. The five of us, as it turned out to be, getting back together as the original crew on our own, with Nicky Hopkins, and Stu. And it was FANTASTIC, because it was just like the old days but without Brian. We cut eleven tracks in - I think we were there for just under two weeks. We overdubbbed on a lot of them. Cause they got on quicker than they'd ever been before. We had a GREAT time. The material was pretty good. We broke for Christmas or whatever...

Mick: Living with someone like that for five years, being with them so much, makes you very close to them. So, as far as we're concerned, he was just as close as anyone else in the band. There's no question of his being frozen out of the group or anything like that. Five-and-a-half years is a long time to spend with one band, especially these days, I think. And people talk about him not having a kind of Stones image. I think it's only Keith and me to a certain extent, who have what you'd call that kind of image.

Mick and I used to get on very well, and we used to go around a lot together. I think it's just that he has a lot of ideas and he wants to try them out. And I hope he does. I don't want to say goodbye to him. I hope I can work with him again.

Keith: My playing relationship with Mick Taylor was always very good. There is no way I can compare it to playing with Brian, because it had been so long since Brian had been interested in the guitar at all, I had almost gotten used to doing it all myself - which I never really liked. I couldn't bear being the only guitarist in a band, because the real kick for me is getting those rhythms going, and playing off of another guitar. 

But I learned a lot from Mick Taylor, because he is such a beautiful musician. I mean, when he was with us, it was a time when there was probably more distinction, let's say, between rhythm guitar and lead guitar than at any other time in the Stones. More than now and more than when Brian was with us, because Mick Taylor is that kind of a player; you know he can do that.

We have got American dates coming up about May, and we'll be touring extensively next spring. Mick's departure doesn't really affect the plans, by then we'll probably have a new man anyway.