The problem (with the Stones' mid-70s albums), which I was ignorant of for a long time, was studio musicians and sidemen taking over the band. The real problem with those albums was the band was led astray by brilliant players like Billy Preston. We'd start off a typical Stones track and Billy would start playing something so fuckin' good musically that we'd get sidetracked and end up with a compromised track. THAT made the difference.

In Russia we've tried very hard. And we've received a lot of rebuffs. But there's a genuine demand for the band in Russia, that I know. In China, though, I should think there's absolute zero. In Russia, there's a genuine knowledge of western music - jazz, rock, all types. Eastern Europe, everyone's been over there, all the English bands go there, but they're severely restricted. They wouldn't let us in, we're going to freak them out with some fucking weird show.

Basically, the Rolling Stones are a two-guitar band. As far as records go, it's no big hassle for me not to have another guitar player 'cause I'm used to doing all the parts. It's just I LIKE working with another player, that's the turn-on for me, hearing someone else fill in the spaces. We crossed the problem of Brian's death so successfully that it's actually harder to cross this one, 'cause Mick Taylor dropped out so naturally. A band doesn't stay together unless there's a reason.

As a guitar player I know what I can do. It doesn't matter about the B.B. Kings, Eric Claptons and Mick Taylors, 'cause they do what they do - but I know they can't do what I do. They can play as many notes under the sun but they just can't hold that rhythm down, BABY. I know what I can do and what I can't. Everything I do is strongly based on rhythm 'cause that's what I'm best at. I've tried being a great guitar player and, like Chuck Berry, I have failed.

They can both play solo. I mean, Keith used to be a lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, remember? Maybe Keith's gonna have to do more solos. Now he's gotten kind of into this rhytm guitar thing. 

I wanted someone that was easy to get on with, you know, that wasn,t too difficult and that was a good player and was used to playing onstage. It's quite a lot to ask of someone to come and do a big American tour with a band like the Stones, you know? I mean, not that I think the Stones are any really big deal, but it tends to be a bit of a paralyzing experience for people. You know what I mean? And I wanted someone that wasn't going to be phased out.

He can sing... a little. He'll probably say a lot about that! He can sing. He's starting to get it togehter... Onstage he's got a lot of style. And it's gotta be fun on the road. That's what it's all about, isn't it?

I remember learning 150 of their repertoire (laughs). I gave up trying to remember which key each one was in or the chord sequence to a lot of them. I did a lot of it by feel in the end, you know. Had to, it's impossible to log all of those songs.

It was intense - to get hit with all of those Mick Taylor lines, to echo what Brian had done, then to add my own bluesy input to it all.

I'm not sure I'd be allowed to move here permanently. I might be able to. I haven't asked. I like America very much, it's a good place, but I like Europe too. I'm afraid that England at the moment is... without sounding... well, if I did 50 shows I'd get the money from one of them if I lived in England. Which may sound fair or unfair, but that's the situation. I don't need it, but it just seems to me slightly off. Maybe they should give me two shows - which would double me up. But it's difficult to live there right now, because the tax is 94 percent.

The last time? I don't know where that comes from. Nobody in the band gives off that impression or even thinks that. They said it in '69; they said it in '72; why the fuck should THIS be the last time? What else are we gonna do? Get a job in an ad agency?

That's like me asking you if there's a specific reason for you doing an interview with me. I mean it's my job, it's my vocation... no musician is beyond that, no musician is until they get too old. That's my vocation, or my pleasure.

We're starting in Baton Rouge because it's always nice to start in a quieter place. You can get yourself together straight-away. It's a bit more relaxing and you can concentrate on the show. I had to get used to the stage. It slopes up about 5 feet and I got terribly tired the first hour on it just from having to lean back to compensate for that angle.

Well, yeah, I just thought that practically it'd be better if we didn't use it because if we were arrested we wouldn't be able to use the fucking thing at all anymore. They'd be waiting for us everywhere. The cock has now reached minimal proportions, rather than if we'd said, Oh, fuck 'em. I thought of that, of course I did. You just have to realize where you are and whether it's really worth it. It's not compromising so much as being a bit more far-sighted.

We may put (Sympathy for the Devil) back into the show, though it needs rehearsing. So it'll be part of one's makeup again. We prefer to play the newer songs. I would prefer not to do any of the old ones at all. We have a lot of new ones that we don't do, that I'd like to do, like Time Waits For No One.

I'm very happy. (I'm not l)onely... no, not lonely at all. Why should I be? I have my dearest friends with me, Keith, Charlie... most of the band are my friends, and a lot of other people who have been my friends for years. It's not like I'm on tour and I'm the Lonely Rock Star. I mean forget it, doesn't apply to me.

See, we're coming in and we're going to tour here, right? And he's just trying to cash in. And he doesn't have anything new. Klein has nothing. All he has is a lot of old things. He doesn't have any new artists or new product... But we have to take life as it comes.

You know with Ronnie we seem to be able to get back to the original idea of the Stones, when Brian was with us in 1962, '63. Two guitars has always been my particular love because I think there's more that can be done with that combination thean almost any other instrument. But what screws most of that up, and this is the bag I fell into with Mick Taylor - whom I love deeply and I think is one of the most incredible guitar players in that kind of music you'll ever get a chance to hear - is that there's this phony division between lead and rhythm guitar. It does not exist. Either you're a guitar player or you're not. And if you are a guitar player with another guitar player, there's no point in designing one thing to one... there's no freedom there. 

This way with Ronnie is more like what it was with Brian, because we had basically the same ideas about guitar when Brian was still very interested in guitar. It's two guitar players and one sound.

I've been playing rock and roll and blues, and I started playing blues when I was very young. Fourteen... and that was mature music compared to Venus and Blue Jeans which was the hit at the time I started. The band I was in at the time was playin' music by 40-year-old men. So this guy says to me the other day, You're over 30, how can you write rock and roll songs? But I started off by singing songs by 40, 50, 60-year-old men... You Gotta Move was written by a 70-year-old man. I mean what does it matter?

The thing about rock and roll is - I never wanted to be a rock and roll star. I've never been into singing teenage lyrics, and when I started I did these songs written by old people. Perhaps that's why people were sometimes shocked by my lyrics... well, not shocked, but interested, at a point where there was no real interest in lyrics... 

There is a perpetual adolescent influence because what I was doing when I was 18 I'm doing now. I mean the room I had at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle is the same room I would have had in 1964. I mean it wasn't any grander, it was the same room. And I'm doing the same things, slightly different of course. Instead of travelling on commercial planes we've got our own, but it's still the same thing. And the responsabilities I have are much less than someone who used to come to our concerts when they were 17 and now they've gotten married and have five children and two cars and three mortgages. I'm married and have children and all that, but I don't sort of worry about it because I'm doing what I did before...  when I was an adolescent. 

I only discovered this really by looking at other people in rock and roll... it  perpetuates your adolescence, for good or bad. I don't know if it's good or bad, because I can't evaluate it. It feels real nice and I don't give a shit...  I don't feel responsabilities other people feel. Obviously, being in a rock band makes you more adolescent than if you worked in an IBM company and really had to worry about your future. I don't worry about the future. I'm living out my adolescent dreams perpetually.

People always give me this bit about us being a macho band and I always ask them to give me examples. Under My Thumb... Yes, but they always say Starfucker, and THAT just happened to be about someone I knew.

There's really no reason to have women on tour, unless they've got a job to do. The only other reason is to fuck. Otherwise they get bored... they just sit around and moan. It would be different if they did everything for you, like answer the phones, make the breakfast, look after your clothes and your packing, see if the car was ready, and fuck. Sort of a combination of what Alan Dunn does and a beautiful chick.

It may have looked like that, but I didn't feel like that. Which means I wasn't acting it properly... (I)t's easy to say: Ah well, they're not as good as they were before. It may be your eyes that are jaded, rather than US.

I haven't been on a tour yet where I was bored. At the end of that tour we began to look around for dates, because for us it's just starting to get good. Because this is a brand-new band for us. It's got a lot more fire. The last band was too intellectual. 

There ain't a band in the world that can survive without going on the road. If a band doesn't play in front of people and turn them on at least as much as we do, and I don't think we do it enough, then they're not a band. You rehearse for a month, get the tour going, crank it up, and just as you're hitting top gear the last gig comes and it drops for nine months.

Ron: Fortunately for me, I was in Switzerland, deep in throes of how after the second Faces tour that year - '75 - I was thinking like What do I do? What do I do? Suddenly I get an English paper, it says Stewart quits the band, you know, he's forming his own group. So that was tailor-made.

Well, the (Stones) didn't want to split the Faces up, and I didn't want to split them up either. Although, you know, the Stones were my first... musical blood as a unit, you know. The Faces was very, very enjoyable but my heart was where the Stones are.

I think I knew where (the Stones) were coming from. Even though they came from all different parts of England but - yeah, their direction, their whole approach of Nothing need be said really. I think the whole key is just sliding in, asking no questions.

Keith: This is an English band and the communication and the way it works is because everyone comes from within a radius of twenty miles, you know. And the minute Ronnie appeared, out of the blue, it was obvious. It had to stay that way. This is not a band that you can hire musicians from other parts. You need that certain communication that doesn't need to be spoken, doesn't have to be explained. You can give somebody a wink in a certain way and do it in another way and it would mean something different. It's just something that saves a lot of time and trouble and it still kept the Stones what the Stones really are, which is an English band.