I know (Mick) listens to - and used to - a lot of Merle Haggard (from Bakersfield, California)...When you think about it, he even sings Bakersfield in (Far Away Eyes)... I wonder why Bakersfield? I've got to ask him that. Maybe he don't even know himself. It must go back to him listening to a lot of Merle Haggard.

Truthfully, it doesn't feel that different to me because I always know what I have to do and what is expected of me. For instance, part of Some Girls was made in a totally different condition to what I'm in right now. But yes, I've started to notice the difference more and more since I quit using junk.

These Paris sessions have made me realize how much of a Rolling Stone I always have been. It's really weird. I feel like I've been with them right from the start.

I'm a lot less musically frustrated than I was with the Faces although at the time I didn't realize I was frustrated. With this album I've definitely taken a stand with my playing. During the first Stones tour I couldn't get used to having the freedom to be able to do whatever I wanted because the Faces were limiting, where the Stones let me rip.

I was sticking to certain safe formulas (during the first Stones tour). This album is more me because the numbers are being done for the first time. NOW I'm an integral part of what's going on which has given me a lot more confidence of expression. That should come over in the live gigs... The Stones bring out the best in me. I think I'm most powerful when I'm with them.

Mick: I can't live in this kind of situation where Keith's energy is taken away. But I musn't let it affect me too much. I musn't let it depress me to the point where I can't work. Keith WANTS to work through it, so I can't be depressed.

Keith: Whatever pressure I'm going through can't be anything like the pressure Mick's going through. Mick is a selfish person, but he's not ungenerous. In many ways he's a really nice guy. But he's too unsure of himself to be THAT nice a guy. It's sad I can't talk about engineers or whatever to him 'cause I know whatever I say he's gonna say the opposite.

Mick: I don't think it's gonna as bad as THAT. You've got to say if the worst happens and Keith gets put in an open prison with Mrs. Trudeau for life, that I am still gonna go on the road. Maybe we could play a tour of Canadian prisons (laughs).

Bill: I think we could play without Keith. I've learned through the years that nobody in this band is indispensable except Mick 'cause he is a figurehead of the band. To most people he IS the band. If you're the Rolling Stones you can't perform onstage without Mick. Any other members of the band can be replaced - including Keith, although I don't know whether Keith would agree with me.

I can't see the possibility of Keith getting off. And I can't see the possibility of him not getting off. I don't see him going free, but I don't see him going to jail.

Charlie: I think we'd go on playing, and Keith would come out, if that's the right term, pick up his guitar and it would be the same. He wouldn't want the band to fold up, nor would we. If he ever went to prison, it would be for a very short period of time; then we wouldn't bother to work. We'd just wait until he came out. I think he'd cope with it extremely well. He'd read books and draw. I've got no idea of prison apart from James Cagney movies.

Ron: There aren't any filler tracks on this album. The band was most aware of avoiding that. From the start we KNEW the album was going to be full of strong tracks. Anything slightly dodgy was shelved. I know people expect this album to be great. And I don't think anyone will be disappointed.

Mick: I'm very pleased with what the band was playing in Paris, when we recorded. And I'm pleased with what I'm playing too. I played guitar on the album, I enjoyed very much playing guitar - more than singing almost. I like to do both, but the thing is, I can't do both very well yet, that's the trouble... The rest of the band was very cute about it to me and Keith gave me a guitar as a Christmas present. He had it specially made for me, it was nice... Yeah, I think (the album)'s great. I think it's one of my best...

Well obviously everybody likes to be spoiled a bit. But that's not necessary in my relationship with a woman... Anyway, this soap opera will continue, I guess. I should be making money from it, we should all appear on TV doing it... I feel very free and kind of easy, you know... Of course I get lonely. But I don't want a relatiohnship with a woman where I'm in "charge" and I expect fidelity and all that. I never require that of anyone and I don't want it required of me. But I won't be unkind... Look, everything seems to vaguely all right. I mean it could be a lot worse.

(Sex) doesn't rule my life. It's in balance. It's fantastic. If you're with a woman and the sexual relationship is going well, everything will go well. For me, anyway. (M)y experience is when the sexual relationship is working like a Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, Cadillac, everything smooths out. The other things don't become important, they're trivia... Now don't take everything I say seriously because I'm trying to make the interview interesting...

Mick loves Keith, you know. They're like a married couple and they're dearest friends. And it gave Mick a very good feeling to be able to help Keith. He did it staying with us in Woodstock. He got off heroin right on our couch. I don't know if Keith even remembers this, but for a few weeks he was just lying there. Mick and I would feed him. And every time the clips fell off we'd hook them back on. And we'd cover him with a blanket at night...

He just slept and slept all the time. And he lost a lot of weight and when he got up he'd be so weak. And then he started getting better. You know the feeling you have when you have a child and you watch him grow? We were like Look, he's having a bath! and Oh, did you see what he was doing today? He's really much better. 

Then when he started getting more together you could see him getting more macho. His ego thing was coming back and he'd start going out and throwing knives at trees. He started getting his temper back and we didn't mind that because it was a good sign. And he started suntanning and started exercising and Mick talked to him a lot and it was so sweet to see. For Mick, seeing his friend get himself together is what made him really never want to take strong drugs again.

Hollywood is the end of the line for so many people. It's a killer and if you're weak you can be sure it'll get to you. It's like when we were rehearsing in New York, we tried to find John Lennon and get back into the scene. I mean, what the fuck is Lennon doing farming cows in upsate New York... what's THAT all about?

The Jam is sort of like an English rock group of 1965, but not as good. You can't really return to basics in big gigs... It's going to look different. I'd like to play lots of guitar. And I'd like to play the newer songs, but you can't do that in big places because no one wants to know. I'd like to play some smaller halls, but we've got to play some big outdoor ones in order to pay the roadies. It will be a varied tour - with both large and small gigs.

I can't see going around forever playing bigger and bigger baseball parks and superdomes. I think audiences have gone as far as you can go with it. In fact I think a lot of people probably don't go because they just can't stand to go to those places, you know. See, rock and roll keeps half these stadiums in America in the black. If it wasn't for that, half of them would just be closed down. Yet none of them are built with any consideration for playing music in. They're ice hockey stadiums, tennis courts, everything but rock and roll. 

I mean, also, there's audiences in South America, nobody goes there. Behind the Iron Curtain they're screaming out for somebody to come and see them. It's not all the bands' fault. They'd go there if it was made a lot easier to get there. It's not easy to get to those places. You've got everything working against you, from the sort of agent-manager flim-flam syndrome of Why should we send them to South America where nobody knows how to put on a tour and it's miles away, when we can stick them in the Garden for six nights and make a fortune. There's no P.A. on the whole of the South American continent that's worthy of the name, so that means that one has to be shipped there. There's every reason not to go there, except that the audiences are there and they're cying out to see people that they keep reading about. 

I mean they buy thousands of magazines just to see some crappy pictures of Mick and Bianca on the middle-page spread, you know... the middle-aged spread (laughs).

I can get into Russia far easier than I can get into Canada. Canadian fans are great but I'm not too keen on the authorities though (laughs). But then it's up to the fans to change the authorities, that's what I feel.

It's another one of those impossible things to put your finger on because it was a great studio, first time that we'd worked with Kimsey, who was one in a long line of Olympic Studios - that's in England, folks, for you that don't know - T-boys who've always been our best engineers... And it all came together very nicely. And you gotta remember it was Ronnie's first full album, first real album with the Stones. Some Girls was kind of like Beggars Banquet. Like we'd been away for a bit, and we came back with a bang.

We didn't realize really what we'd done to New York until it was all over. I mean, we realized we'd just blown the biggest market in America and played a 3000-seat (laughs) theater. But that was what we wanted to do and we felt that we needed to do it and that people who dug us would understand it too, you know. I mean, OK, it's a one-shot. We ain't dead yet, we'll be back, you know.

We've always been good in the small halls. I mean, (laughs) 'cause we did them for so long and, I guess, in a way, we kind of tested ourselves by doing it. Like going back to playing SMALL places again has always been something like, Come on, let's do it. We SHOULD. You know, We used to be great there, you know, we can really turn it on there. Cause you have lot less problems. You know, you don't have to worry too much about amplification 'cause you can feel the hall yourself.

Woody brought Keith and me together in 1978 in a hotel room on the U.S. tour. Keith insisted that I had never liked him, and it was like two kids making up after a fight. I never disliked you, Keith, I answered. Remember when you went to live in Switzerland - I sent you letters, and you sent me a lovely letter back with pressed flowers in it? It was you who never made any attempt to keep the relationship going... Oh well, let's be mates now, he said. And we were.

I really like our current set because we're playing lots of new numbers. And 75% of the new numbers go down very well at most gigs.

I went to see Kershaw in New Orleans and had to get him on with us. What an incredible show tonight: reggae with Peter Tosh, Cajun country and rock & roll with a little blues thrown in.

Flippo: So how are things with this crew, Prince Rupert?

Loewenstein: The Rolling Stones ship of state is on a very even keel. Tip-top. Yes, indeed. I've been popping in on a few shows.

Flippo: Well, will there be a Rolling Stones in 1981 or even 1984?

Loewenstein: Oh yes, indeed onto 1987 and 1991 and on and on.

I don't care about them. The kids are what I want. We don't want critics. They ought to fuck off. The stuff they write is RUBBISH. I don't want people to write on the front pages what the tickets are scalped for. It's a journalistic INVENTION. I mean, one of the reviewers reviewed the 1975 show. They think Let It Rock is Johnny B. Goode. They don't even ask for a song list. You don't NEED those people

(T)here's such a great rapport going now between the band that people actually say to each other, You played great tonight! - which we'd never say. That's never been said in 12 years. I've never been told, EVER, You did a great set tonight. I've only been told, You were out of tune tonight. If I play great, it's accepted, and it's the same with Charlie. If you play badly or something goes wrong, you get put down, so you never get that uplift, but Woody started to get that happening, and now everybody congratulates everybody, and it's Thanks for a great show! We were all bumping into each other after the last show of the tour and everybody was saying to everybody else individually, Thanks for a great tour, man, THANKING each other for how good the tour was, and we'd never do that before. And I really got off on that. Woody's fabulous! He's made this band come back to life again.

Coming off a tour is the most - ONE of the hardest things. Totally disoriented, your weight - your whole life for months has been run by a piece of paper that comes out of the door that says 8:30 you do this, and you fly to there. And then you're surrounded by all these people you get very close to and rely on and then suddenly - BOOM - in a matter of 48 hours everybody's gone and you're sitting there with a pile of dirty laundry in a hotel room saying.... help. You know (laughs) What do I do now?

And it can take a month, a couple of months, to come out of it. I used to lock myself up. A few years ago, I was dumb enough - that's when I would get on to dope. Come off a tour and I could just not adjust, you know, to domestic life, saying, Hello son (laughs), Hello darling, Good morning darling. I just couldn't go back to that. I was still waiting for the piece of paper to come under the door and say Where's my adrenalin today?

I feel very good about it obviously, you know. I think it's fair. Slightly strange. I mean, why not? It gives me a chance to carry on with what I've been doing for the past 18 months, which is kicking the habit, etc. etc. 

I don't think it was Canada's fault or that it had anything to do with it. It could've happened anywhere. Mind you, you should do something about those Mounties (laughs).

That whole period (of the '70s) was very dark. I sound like a mental patient but the whole of the '70s was very hard to deal with. The whole of the '70s was very tense because you were constantly being drawn into this vortex of horrible events. But I was never as scarred up as Keith, thank God. Keith had a very rough ride. You can say, Well whose fault was THAT? But it still remains he had a very, VERY rough ride culminating in getting busted in Toronto. It was rougher and harder than anyone really knows and he's still recovering from it and he's not allowed to forget. If he was sitting here h'ed be going, Oh, here it comes again. I have to play this part. Yes, I'm an ex-junkie. People don't forget. 

I think punk rock was great theater, and it wasn't all crap. The music was all incidental, like background music. You just had to see it. It's a little too image-conscious from my point. It's like the in 1960s, We'll put this band in these clothes, we'll dye his hair. As long as the band's good, I don't care what color they dye their hair. But anything other than California rock, anything but complacency, yeah, sure.