I didn't know what I was doing sometimes when I was sitting in the Dust Brothers' studio in Silver Lake and it's just me and I've got absolutely nothing to start with and I'm going, I wonder if this is really such a good idea I'm doing this. And they've got this little drum machine going, which is called an 808 which everyone uses, and it's just tinkling away in the back there, like, in this teeny way and I'm quite used to all that but... So I'm sitting there playing my keyboard and playing Saint of Me and I'm thinking, Sounds like shit, this is terrible, how is it ever going to work out? And how I am gonna... And it was very, you know, it's quite slow. I was having fun with it, but it's very low tech in that studio and I just didn't know how it was gonna build up.

But then, as it goes on, you know, and I took the tapes, transferred them and then went to the studio and Charlie sort of played on them. And then I'd bring them back and... it comes in piece (by) piece. It still had to really take shape but it was quite fun doing that. I mean, it was just good to do it in another way, really, and I had a lot of fun with that one.

There are many, many ways to make a Rolling Stones record... (But y)ou can only push it so far. We used to try and sound like Howlin' Wolf. But we never ACTUALLY sounded like Howlin' Wolf, because it's always going to sound like the Rolling Stones. You can run 89 loops, and it STILL sounds like the Rolling Stones.

I had a lot of songs that I was just writing last autumn (1996) and I had thought, you know, I was gonna do a solo record and there wasn't really talk about doing a Stones record, so I was just writing songs really. I mean, I was having a really nice time doing it. And I did write a lot all around the world but I was just sitting there doing these songs... And everyone said, We should do an album and tour. And I said, Well, isn't it a bit soon to do an album and tour? But I thought, Well, we might as well get on with it sooner rather than later. You can just wait and wait and wait, and then it gets more difficult to do. 

I had written a lot of songs coming into this project that I'd already done. I'd written them and they were all finished and completed. I didn't really necessarily know we were going to do a Stones record at that point.

There is usually some sort of phoning after six to nine months (after the last tour). Well, you know, whaddya think?... I'm ready. It kind of starts from there. I guess in a way it's an itch.

I think there's a sort of inevitability about it (laughs). That was no sort of, Oh awwlright about it. I turned around and they said, Let's go! With the Voodoo Lounge tour, right up until the final show, the band was trying to cut itself every night. It didn't cruise at all, and that's what kind of keeps the edge on it. Towards the end of the tour it gets, you know, quite SHARP up there.

I talked to Keith about it. I talked to everyone in the band about it. I didn't want to do a record same as the last record, Voodoo Lounge - I don't want to do that record again. And if everyone wants to do that, I think it's a mistake. And I'm not interested...  The other thing was, if I write a song, or Keith writes a song, or we write one together, if I see it one way, I want to try it. I don't want to be some committee where everyone has 10 cents' worth of it. That's the bad part of being in a band. But if you have an idea of what a song should sound like, I want to be able to try it that way. So that's what I said; everyone seemed to agree with that. 

Mick: The plan was to... I mean, the last time at the studio... was very much a solid kind of band working in the studio. We went to Dublin, and we all sat in the room together more or less all the time and it was very much an old-fashioned or whatever word you want to use - I mean, a very straight-made record. So, I thought, well, if we're going to do this one differently, we'd have to take a slightly different approach to it... (S)ome (songs) that lend themselves to other treatments can be taken out of that live environment for a moment and brought back and rebuilt... And so Charlie and I talked a lot about the different ways of creating this. Changing the grooves a little bit, you know, 'cause from my mind a lot of certain songs lend themselves to this, to messing with the grooves, because you get a slightly different feel than you would get than if you play live.

Keith: Anything's better than being boring (laughs). A lot of it is experimentation, at least for the Stones. And I look upon that as a good thing - anything but sitting around, saying, OK, let's be the Stones... I start to feel good about records when I realize I can toss away the rule book. 

We began writing this album around November), down in (Greenwich) Village (in New York City), in a little demo studio called Dangerous Music. I wanted to cut the whole album there, it was sounding so good, but it was a bit too small for everybody. Mick and I started Low Down there and Anybody Seen My Baby?, Already Over You, (Always) Suffering and Any Way You Look at It. We got 5 or 6 tracks together in a week there...