I got there like 20 minutes early, and I was playing a couple songs. (Mick) came in and started singing along, just this fucking gold. It's good to know that Mick's still a guy that gets an idea in his head, picks up a pen and goes with it. 

I wouldn't have minded (if the Rolling Stones hadn't lasted): Oh dear, I'm gonna miss that bit. But looking at the life I've led, it's very nice, very privileged really. I get paid very well for doing what I love doing, you know. (I wouldn't have preferred playing with a jazz band.) Maybe because I enjoy being with the Rolling Stones.

There's a room (in my studio) called L, which some people pronounce Hell. But it's called L because it's L-shaped, a sort of unique shape for recording, but one part of the L happens to be for my pool room and the other is the bar. I was working down there and allowed in some guys, Blondie Chaplin and a few other cats that I'm working with. And I got this request to do the something for Timeless, the Hank Williams compilation that came out last year. I said, Yeah, I'd love to do - I was firmly convinced that someone else would have cut it - so I said I'll do it if I can do "You Win Again", and they called back and told me that, funny enough, no one had tried that one. So I said, OK, I'm in. So we cut it down in the basement and it came out and we got a Grammy!.

I made a determined effort after the last tour to get up with the family. Which for me is a pretty impressive goal. But I did it - I'd get up at seven in the morning. After a few months, I was allowed to drive the kids to school... I read a lot. I might have a little sail around Long Island Sound if the weather is all right. I do a lot of recording in my basement - writing songs, keeping up to speed. I have no fixed routine. I wander about the house, wait for the maids to clean the kitchen, the fuck it all up again and do some frying. Patti and I go out once a week, if there's something on in town - take the old lady out for dinner with a bunch of flowers, get the rewards (smiles)

As I was making the record at home, I started by shooting everything myself, put the camera on a tripod or asked visitors to film whatever I was doing because it was so fascinating and interesting (laughs). Then I got a bit more professional and decided to make a proper film... Of course I wanted to control it: that way you don't have to pull punches. I'd have been very guarded over what I'd have said and let be shot if I had no control over it.

I don't believe in having bands for solo records. It's pointless. I mean, I've got a very good band in the other world.

I was just trying out the (studio) room with a couple of ex-members of my son Jessie's band, Martin and Mark... (T)he album was accidental really. Instead of me working with a Bernard Fowler or a Bobby Womack, this is totally my brainchild... My son Jessie is playing guitar on a lot of the tracks and Leah, my daughter, sings on a song called This Little Heart.

We usually like to start out with something by Charlie Parker, one of my favourite players, or by Duke Ellington. But the band works best with originals. Both Gerard (Presencer) and Peter (King) have contributed outstanding tunes and charts. I feel the band really picks up and takes off on these originals. It's like with my other band.

It can be more personal, and I think it's nice to have a change and work with other people. It's refreshing, and then you go back to the other thing in a slightly different frame of mind, which I think is good for both things.

It's a lot easier (making a solo album) (laughs). Without the so-called democracy. Democracy in music is not always a good thing... The thing with this record is that, one, it's a lot easier to do. You don't have to be beholden to the committee. Quite often in a band people just want to be heard for the sake of being heard, you know. Also a band like the Rolling Stones which has been around for so long has quite a sort of collective identity which you're stuck with. Which is a good thing to establish an identity as a band. It's what you're searching for. But in some ways you're quite restricted. You can't imagine a Rolling Stones record without it being a rock record. It's not possible. It's just nice to change musical gears for a minute, really. It's just a different kind of experience, making a record like this.

I think that would be interesting for some people. For others it would be the ultimate in boredom. I don't want to do that job. I'm not really interested in that. I mean I'm interested in hearing the result, but sifting through the tapes? I mean, nooo! Please! Show me your favourites at the end. I don't think (Keith is interested) either. I mean he wouldn't actually want to do it. He wouldn't mind listening to it when it's done, but none of the Rolling Stones are all that interested. The only one who liked that kind of stuff was Bill, who is no longer in the Stones, but he had that librarian sort of mentality. He's the diary-keeper.

I would love to do a blues record, and I think a blues record would be very good to do with the Rolling Stones. But I'd also like to do a blues record on my own. The songwriting limitations upon the blues are rather too much of a structure, you know, and that's a real forced-into-a-corner kind of style. It's difficult to be forward-looking in that genre, and that's a really tough one. I like to be a little bit contemporary. I'm not a slave to it, but I like to be a little bit contemporary.

I was in a state of shock because my daughter Elizabeth lives about 15 blocks away in New York City. We couldn't get through. In the evening, we managed to get through via South Africa, which was really weird. What I feel from a lot of my American friends, although they're not really able to put it into words, is a sense of violation. It's a horrible thing to have that feeling broken - that America was this place where they all felt safe... I lived in New York City for a long time so I have a huge sympathy with the town. I identified with it perhaps more than any other city in the United States so I know it very well. Yeah, you feel a great closeness especially when there's trouble, you do.

It's like everyone I have dinner with, I'm having an affair with. Who was it I met the other day? Minnie Driver! There were like eight of us at dinner and I never met Minnie Driver and she seems charming, but I mean that's the only time I've ever met her. And then I was reading I was having (an affair) because she's just broken up, so that was a natural. But people don't bother to check with anything like that anymore. Tkey just like to speculate in print. We like fact-checking!

I'm sure I could be in a full-time relationship but I'm not at the moment. I don't think that being in a full-time relationship is necessarily for everybody all of the time. It's not necessarily some state of grace that you're in, you know, but I think it's great and who knows what will happen in the future?

I don't think (Keith) was mad at all (about me doing a solo album this year). I don't think we ever intended to do any touring this year. We were always talking about working next year and we've been planning what we're going to do. We're going to be working next year which is coming up to our 40th anniversary... I think there should be something new and good out there but what it's going to be, I don't know... 

The last tour was so long, I don't think Keith and Ronnie would want to do that again. Strange things happen to you on a tour that long. No matter how rooted you are, it plays with your perspective on life. It's too long to be getting so much attention. I don't feel I'm being creative enough on tour. I know how Honky Tonk Women goes by now and I don't need a lot of my faculties to sing it. A tour like that becomes a test of how strong you can be. It becomes a fitness thing, which isn't really where you want to be.

We're trying to cook something up. The 40th anniversary is a good party to give, hopefully there will be something happening... I don't think there will be a completely new studio album. I hope there will be something.

I was very pleased to do it because it was, first of all, something I felt close to and a good cause, and also it sounded like it was going to be a fun evening... (Keith) decided he wanted to do it at the last minute and I always wanted to do it with him and I was very pleased. And I gave him a ring and said, It's all coming together, because the thing about these events is that you never know what they're going to be like. It's a bit hit-and-miss sometimes.

I don't know why (Salt of the Earth) just jumped into my head because I thought that was a song that we haven't done very much but I thought it was good for the moment. And (Miss You) was like a song about being in New York. So I thought that was kind of appropriate. It seemed to work out.

It is just about the last year, it is about the recording, making Enigma and whatever else was happening around me, looking after my kids and going on holiday.

Mick: I am very saddened by George (Harrison)'s death and will miss him enormously. As a guitarist, he invented many classic lines that were much copied by others, and he wrote several very beautiful songs that we will always remember. He was a very complex character, both quiet and funny with a very sweet nature, but he also could be rather combative at times. He was the first musician I knew who developed
a truly spiritual side, and he was generous with his time to both charity and to friends. 

Keith: To me, George was, always will be, above all, a real gentleman, in the full meaning of the word. We both felt we held similar positions in our respective bands, which formed a special knowing bond between us. Let's hope he's jamming with John.