My energy's usually pretty good (just before I go onstage). Sometimes I think, Oh, Jesus, do I really have to go on now? You have to finally switch into the fact that you're just about to go on, because before it can be unreal. As you walk down to the stadium from the dressing room, you start to buzz a little bit. And you hear the audience, what their response is when the music starts. And then just before we go on, just while the music's really warming up, you get an extra buzz then.

When you first walk on, it's really - let met think. I walk out to an empty stage; I'm very confident. This is what I do. I've done it so many times. I'm not at all nervous about going on. It feels very comfortable and like home. But having said that, there's certain feelings you get, you know: Jesus, all those people! There's a few empty seats sometimes I see, and you say, Oh, God, how many empty seats? And funny things that you think of - just silly things - and you must not think of those, because as soon as you start thinking, I hope that the heavy rains that we've had in London don't block the gutters up (laughs) and the roof leaks again. (Laughs) It's just - anything can come into your mind, but you have to throw it out because you  just have to really concentrate on what you're doing.

It's very high adrenalin. If you've ever been in this high-adrenalin situation - like driving a car very fast or being in a championships basketball team in the finals or whatever it was - it's really high adrenalin.

But it's quite hard to describe just in trying to offer a description. I've sometimes tried to write it down. I have written it down - what it's like, what you feel like. But there's so much going on, it's hard unless you're really in a stream-of-consciousness thing. Because there are so many references. Oh, I'm doing this, and I'm doing that, and you're sort of watching yourself doing it. Oh God, look at that girl; she's rather pretty. Don't concentrate on her! But it's good to concentrate on her, she's good to contact one-on-one. Sometimes I try to do that. They're actually real people, not just a sea of people. You can see this girl has come, and she's got this dress on and so on, and so you make good contact with one or two people. And then you make contact with the rest of the band. You might give a look-see if everyone's all right.

I don't let myself get transported on the first number, because that is very dangerous. I used to let myself do that, but it's not such a good idea, because there's too much to check. I mean, is everything working? You seem to be split in various parts. There's part of you which is saying to you, OK, don't forget this, don't forget that. And there's this other part of you, which is just your body doing things that it isn't really commanded to do, which I found is the dangerous part. You can hurt yourself if you don't watch out - because you've got so much adrenalin. That's why I like rather doing Not Fade Away, because I don't do much physically on it. (Laughs) But if you start off with a number like, say, Start Me Up, which we did on the last tour, your body starts to do all kinds of things on this adrenalin thing. You've got to watch out. You can really hurt yoruself - or just tire yourself out too quickly in the first five minutes, and you're just wiped out.

At some point in the show, you just lose it. You get such interaction with the audience that it feels really good. And it should be pushed. You should let yourself go. I mean, have those moments when you really are quite out of your brain... It comes in isolated moments. It's just a transcendent moment - I don't know whether you can say it's joyful. Sometimes it can be joyful; sometimes it's just crazy.

(When the show's over, y)ou just let yourself go, just tired, you know. And then you recover pretty quickly. After about 10 or 15 minutes, you feel OK.

The germ of the idea for what would become the live album, Stripped, came from (the Toronto) rehearsals. We were rehearsing for six weeks, doing five or six maybe ten or twelve hours a day in there, listening to playbacks every night, just to check the sound and do the uusual night watchman bit. They started to sound good. The tracks had a certain different feel - the guys think they're not recording, they're working and playing and having fun. At the beginning of this tour we realized that if we didn't watch out we'd end up with Voodoo Lounge: Live At The Stadium. Both the band and Virgin said, Nah, enough already. OK, so now I've got a negative directive. I know what I don't want. But what do we want? That's where the germ of the idea started.

You catch guys unaware - that's the feel on it. You get a chance to play some of the old songs again, maybe put in a few licks you wish you'd put in the first time.

It took us 20 years of doing shows before we actually put on these big stadium concerts. It will be interesting to see if any of these bands today ever do the kind of shows we're doing. I don't think they will, because they don't seem to be that interested in it. You have to be really interested in showbiz to do this; you have to be interested in theater, otherwise there's no point doing it... Now the whole ethos is to not be that. Which I understand. But it doesn't lead you to anything theatrical. None of these bands in America have that. The Chili Peppers have a sort of sense of the theatrical, but they can't take it anywhere. It's become a  bit cliché, just a guitar thing. Everybody wants to be Neil Young, and Pearl Jam is trying to drive ticket prices down. Doing that, they will never get themselves on a stage this big.

(Keith and I) have a very good relationship at the moment. But it's a different relationship to what we had when we were 5 and different to what we had when we were 20 and a different relationship than when we were 30. We see each other every day, talk to each other every day, play every day. But it's not the same as when we were 20 and shared rooms.

All sitting on stools in a line - that wasn't really the Rolling Stones. Also, I thought (Unplugged) was really BORING television... (The results of the filmed Tokyo sessions were t)errible. It was the dullest TV I'd ever seen - and boring without an audience. So we finally decided, Let's do a club show. And we lighted on the Paradiso. It's an interesting old place. We'd never actually played there. But I went there to score drugs once (laughs).

We had to do this nod to the acoustic business, to see if it works. In rehearsal, Beast of Burden was really good. But last night, with the audience, it was a bust because I couldn't hear anything. I wasn't singing on my own out there. I had 100 backing vocalists going, Never, never, never in funny Dutch English.

I felt that we would take the best elements from Unplugged, the intimate thing of it, without actually doing it completely unplugged.

When this whole thing came up, I said, Guys, forget about the acoustic guitars. It's about ATTITUDE. Scale it down, take it back to where the song was when you were cutting it.

There's really no one as experienced as I am doing it... People who are involved in tour directing, they don't understand what it's like to be on the stage. And just on a very simple level like booking the rest of the tour in Europe: How many shows are you going to do in a 10-day period? My agenda is, can the band do this? Is this feasible? That is, making it a tour that the Rolling Stones can actually function, do have a good time on - not just a crazy skedaddle around with no time to think and eventually become totally exhausted.

Keith: From my point of view, the more Mick is willing to go out on a limb and try a different song, that's a sign of confidence in the band and I encourage it all the  way. I can see where there is room yet for the Stones to expand into some very interesting music rather than just BE the Stones. We've all got to feel that - otherwise it would be close-the-shop time.

Mick: Shine a Light (was one of the unusual songs we picked), which is a song from Exile. We had never done that before, being something that was just hidden. And I was really surprised when we first did it - that people knew it. The audience starts singing along, and I was like Uh.

Keith: (W)e're reinforcing that part of our music by doing it in a small place like this, for a record. It is a part of the band that we always need to remember - so we can keep drawing on it.

Charlie: The Rolling Stones are a better band than you might think. In the big shows it can all sound like crash, bang, wallop. But as a band, when we're all together, it can be very beautiful, very soulful.

I'm Free, I had forgotten about that for nearly 30 years. It just came out of a dinner break. I wasn't hungry, nor was Chuck Leavell, and we started playing Tracks of My Tears for fun. Everybody was eating while we were playing and having fun. I looked at Chuck and said, Do we have one that goes like this, like '60s soul? We must have one somewhere. Suddenly, from somewhere, it came to me: I'm Free.

It was great. He said to us, If I come up onstage and sing that with you, how do you do the choruses? Bless Ronnie's heart, he goes, We don't worry about that. We leave it to the audience. After that, Bob relaxed.

I haven't made up my mind (about returning to the United States)... (It) would be a bad mistake (repeating the same show). We have to do another show. It's fine being on the road; there's nothing wrong with it, it's lovely. But it is a slightly unreal version of reality - it can be very addictive, and it can be very tempting to stay on the road, because you're absolved of a lot of responsibilities in your life. I don't think Charlie's wildly enthusiastic, nor am I. Sure, you can keep touring forever if you want, but I don't know whether Keith and Ronnie have thought it through. I don't think they'll turn anything down. They just go, Yeah, cool. They accept everything. Never question four shows in Edmonton. Never look at it and go, Do you think there really are four shows in Edmonton? If that's what they're told to do, they do it. I'm sure Keith would never say no.

I'm all messed up when a tour ends. Eight o'clock rolls around, and I'm looking for the gig. And what I really miss is the police motorcade. Even better than a platinum record is going through a Manhattan rush hour in 20 minutes.

I've been really busy since I finished the tour. I haven't really had any break, with all this stuff that we're doing - the (live) record, the CD-ROM and all that. It's the same as being on tour, except that I haven't been doing shows in the evening (laughs). I'm doing my day job.

(I'm going to t)ake a vacation. Then I'm going to write songs, and then I'm going to work on my movie-development stuff, and then it's Christmas, and then it's the next bit of shows. We're going to be doing some shows in the Far East and maybe one or two in South America.

It's never been better, really. That's the medical bulletin today. I've never seen Charlie Watts so happy on the road; he's a happy guy, normally, but the road can get to anybody. He's brought his old lady with him more, and I think he's enjoying playing with Darryl, playing with the Stones. I think part of that comes from taking his own thing around, the jazz band. He took it around the world, and he learned a lot, found a lot more enjoyment and possibilities of playing. Mick is extremely charming these days, even me. We're getting along great. The band just feels good about iself, which is why we're going back on the road.

We've got these dates in Asia and what not, and after that, I don't know. I guess everybody will kick back for a bit, mull it over... All I want to do is make good records - I always have.

My tastes are very much dance music of the '70s, which always enjoys a lot of popularity - people will always love it because it's got a lot of different time signatures - but it's not necessarily groundbreaking. On all three solo albums you can hear it. And it's quite obvious that that's what I like to do. And if I do another solo record, I'll probably take that a lot further. I don't know when I'm gonna do it. But I'll probably do one. I look forward to it very much.

Mick: To me it was never a kind of life-shattering event, this record. We tried to get a twist on a live record 'cause I didn't want to go back and repeat the previous live record. I thought we just had to give something different. We eventually got into it and developed a more intimate record. And we got a few unusual tracks going on, which is always good for a live record - not original songs but reworked. I think Like a Rolling Stone was unusual to do. We've never done a Dylan song before.

I think it's more relaxed. It's more soft. Most of the album is songs that we were doing on the road that are acoustic songs. It's the Stones as a smaller club band; there's blues and country, and we're showing that side of the Stones rather than the big, huge stadium version.

I like the club version of the band. But this is the quieter moments of the club version without the raucous parts of the club version.

The Rolling Stones should do something adventurous for their next album, but I never thought you could, around the time of the tour, do a completely groundbreaking record. It would have been nice, but I don't think that was possible. 

Charlie: One of the best records we've made in the past few years was the album called Stripped. I think that's one of the most interesting records we've done, the best-played record we've made for years.

To me it was never a kind of life-shattering event, this record. We tried to get a twist on a live record 'cause I didn't want to go back and repeat the previous live record. I thought we just had to give something different. We eventually got into it and developed a more intimate record. And we got a few unusual tracks going on, which is always good for a live record - not original songs but reworked. I think Like a Rolling Stone was unusual to do. We've never done a Dylan song before.

I think it's more relaxed. It's more soft. Most of the album is songs that we were doing on the road that are acoustic songs. It's the Stones as a smaller club band; there's blues and country, and we're showing that side of the Stones rather than the big, huge stadium version.

I like the club version of the band. But this is the quieter moments of the club version without the raucous parts of the club version.

The Rolling Stones should do something adventurous for their next album, but I never thought you could, around the time of the tour, do a completely groundbreaking record. It would have been nice, but I don't think that was possible. 

The next day there's a knock on my door, and the only person in the world who could record something like this stood there in front of me - Rob Fraboni, who had just gotten married in Jamaica and who knew the guys. It was really strange. It dawned on me that my holiday would be entirely cancelled, and that some secret forces somewhere had become active.

One of the things that can be appreciated most about the Wingless Angels is that they - apart from some members - have never earned a living by making music. They are craftsmen, fishermen and diverse... During the evening they enjoy making music. They play purely for the fun of it.

This music is so antique, so ancient. It's pre-reggae, pre-Jamaican. It's all about expression, the desire for being cured. And those feelings are as spiritual as I can imagine... I wanted to present a tape to the Jamaican Historical Society. Pure Rasta Nyabinghi, my contribution to the recording of ethnic music.

Rob: (G)radually we did overdubs... in a very experimental fashion - really, in the beginning, just to try to make it work and feel congruous, like it was all done at the same time, which we were able to do... We ended up spending a couple of months with this experimental music... We wanted to kind of enhance their bit but keep the esssence of it untouched.

Keith: I realised these songs were old English and Scottish and Irish hymns, reworked and adapted, and I thought about that Celtic sound over the African chanting. It's a weird mixture, but somehow it works. I had to cross my fingers on that. Early on, the guys were very strick about not using instruments, but they've loosened up a bit since then.