Three or four stones in one firing will all react differently. I try to achieve a balance between those that haven't progressed enough and those about to go too far.
It's very schizophrenic because I like a lot of very straight pop, like Small Faces, Stones, Kinks; and on the other hand, I like a lot of avant garde things.
If you were looking at where you would like your career to go, then you would have to cherry pick The Stones. People love coming to see them. They are it, they are the most definitive rock n roll band ever.
I honestly believe that you have to be able to play the guitar hard if you want to be able to get the whole spectrum of tones out of it. Since I normally play so hard, when I start picking a bit softer my tone changes completely, and that's really useful sometimes for creating a more laid-back feel.
It doesn't really change, actually. I think The Rolling Stones have gotten a lot better. An awful lot better, I think. A lot of people don't, but I think they have, and to me that's gratifying. It's worth it.
When people talk about the '60s I never think that was me there. It was me and I was in it, but I was never enamoured with all that. It's supposed to be sex and drugs and rock and roll and I'm not really like that. I've never really seen the Rolling Stones as anything.
We say, 'Wow, look at Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. Their clothes were always so cool.' Maybe not Mick Jagger when he wore Spandex in the '80s.
I ran to get my cassette recorder and sang 'We Got the Beat' into the recorder to document it. I knew I had written something special. It took two minutes. I didn't labor on the lyrics. It's a simple song, which goes back to the '60s, when I had my ears glued to the radio for the Stones, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys.
The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the 'Beatles' especially, and then the 'Rolling Stones' and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our 'nouvelle vague' in Britain, films that talk about real life.
The child now shewed her a narrow and rugged descent, made by cutting the red clay and stones, of which the cliffs are here composed, into a sort of rude steps.
