I read in the paper today that this is probably our last show at the Garden. I don’t think so! 

We did a live HBO special during the second leg of the U.S. tour dates, which added another level of pressure. Although in principle the show was just another show, anything can go wrong when you're playing live and the thought of it all being shown on live television can drive you mad... I find it quite nerve-racking... I'm not a great thrill person like that. But I do love it when everything goes right; it's what keeps you doing it, really.

The first time we played in Japan, one of the most amazing things was that everyone came in their suits, and changed into their rock & roll t-shirts, with their shirts sticking out from under the sleeves and their ties underneath. They all clapped and went home, and this time it's truly different. Nowadays in Japan nobody was in their seats from the first song onwards.

A tour like this is a repetition of what I've been doing for the last 40 years. For me there's nothing new as far as the Rolling Stones are concerned... (T)he most important part (is that it's still satisfying) and that's why I am still with the Rolling Stones. I am happy with it - although the group has never played the kind of music I am really interested in...

I've never been very ambitious. If the Stones would call it quits, I would say, Thanks, we've had a good time. I don't have a problem with it. Those were good years, no more than that. I have never showed off the fact that I am with the Rolling Stones.

I have always had the fortune of a solid home base. My wife and I will have been married for 40 years next year. We first met on the day I started playing in Alexis Korner's band, even before I became a member of the Stones. My wife has known Mick and Keith for as long as I have. She's a sensible woman, she has always kept well away from the Stones.

On the Forty Licks tour, when we were preparing the set list for a show in Yokohama, Chuck Leavell suggested we play Loving Cup, the ballad from Exile On Main Street. I didn't want to play the tune and I said, Chuck, this is going to die a death in Yokohama. I can't even remember the bloody song, and no one likes it. I've done it loads of times in America, it doesn't go down that well, it's a very difficult song to sing, and I'm fed up with it! Chuck went, Stick in the mud! so I gave in and put it in the set-list. Lo and behold, we went out, started the song and they all began applauding... Which just proves how, over time, some of these songs acquire a certain existence, or value, that they never had when they first came out.
People will say, What a wonderful song that was, when it was virtually ignored at the time it was released. 

The Chinese are being a bit obscure - let's put it that way. But we wanted to play there. I hate to miss gigs. I'll play outer Mongolia, even inner Mongolia. If you are scared of a rock & roll band, you've got problems. We're not running opium.

Occasionally (Mick and I) go out together. When he was still with Jerry, we saw each other quite a lot. But after those two separated, it's become less and less. But on tour he's still the one I hang around with most. For instance, we go to museums together. Through the years we've developed the same cultural interests.

We just go about our business. The Stones, you all suddenly come together just before you go onstage because there's wardrobe and perestroika - that's make-up... reconstruction. Everybody's flying about so over the years we've got used to gathering together five minutes before we go on. What's the first song? You want to have dinner after?

I could never knock the benign weed but apart from that there's a time and a place for everything... (I)t's totally weird (at customs). It's totally the other way around. They used to go through me with a fine-tooth comb. Now it's, Oh, it's KEITH, he's not a real problem. Whatever he's got, he probably forgot it anyway. I'm meticulous, I don't carry a lot of shit... (I'm n)ever (totally straight). Not since I first tasted it. I mean, my father said to me, Keith, there's a difference bwetween scratching your arse and tearing it to bits. I've always borne that in mind. I do drink through the day, but I don't wake up in the morning and get stoned right away. I like to work my way in, but I can take it or leave it. I guess it's because of heroin. If  you've been through that one and got through it, the rest of it is really like gnat's piss.

Ronnie's done what he had to do. I drink, Ronnie was a piss artist. He never stopped. After the last tour I stayed round his house and he'd wake up in the morning and go sambuca and water! No, no, no, Ronnie, no!

It kind of depends on the hotel. Sometimes we have a whole floor, sometimes we're scattered around so you don't see people so much. There's always a knock at the door and you say either fuck off or come on in, have a drink. Charlie is the most reclusive, I'd say, he always has been. You have to go and see him, but now and again he'll pop in. Ronnie's round my place a lot.

They're a communal celebration, these big outdoor shows. I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but it is amazingly successful to do this kind of tour at any time. Whether you're 20 or whether you're 60, there are very few people out there - I mean you can count them on the fingers of one hand - the bands who can pull off a tour this size. It's great fun, really. That's the thing. It's hilarious watching the whole of Barcelona get wound up for the Rolling Stones - there's the most enormous build-up. Reading all the papers, I go out on the street and they're all going, Oh, I bought my ticket 3 months ago, and there's all these footballers all lined up with their model girlfriends to come to the show. I mean, it's hilariously funny. To have that effect, it's an enormous laugh. And, of course, you get paid for it really well. You feel fantastic at the end of the evening if you give 50 000 people a great time and you're earning tons of money. So who's losing out? 

(Johnny Depp and I) met about five or six years ago and started swapping clothes. This is Johnny's shirt, by the way. He has an incredible guitar collection. We have dinner sometimes and get together: his kids and my kids. He's a good guy. I like him a lot. But I had no idea he was studying me. Everybody that's seen it is, like, God, it's you. (Laughs) This is the only time I've been accepted by Disney!

I am what you would call a loner; I can get along just fine without people around me. We live on a farm, you know. Even worse, we have two - one in England and one in France. My wife runs the farms and I live there, so to speak. The only people about the house are men and women who are in agriculture... 

Occasionally we go out and dine with friends, but not too often. I'm not like Ronnie Wood who needs to have people around him all day. If I'm honest, I enjoy the conmpany of dogs more than that of humans. Not that I loathe my species, but I'm of no good to them. They would find me a miserable little man after a while. Keith doesn't go out at all either. He lives with his wife in Connecticut and his life isn't all that different from mine. Mick is the only one who, through the years, has succeeded in dragging me out of the house, time and again... (I)f it was up to Keith and me, we would never set foot outside our homes, so to speak.

Keith: The small shows make it possible to do a tour and keep it interesting and alive, because you are able to try a new idea or a new song out. If it really works, you can bump it up to the medium show, and if it really, really works, then you bump it up to large. We did rehearse a lot of songs for Forty Licks and I was always pushing Mick to use them: Why did we rehearse all these songs, Mick, if you're not going to sing them on the road? Mick's general inclination is to stick on the safe side of what he knows, whereas I usually like to take a few more chances, and so the small gigs give us the opportunity to say to him, Go on, throw it out to the wind... In general I would let Mick decide the set lists because he's the one who has to sing the songs, and his decision depends on how he feels on any particular day, but sometimes if I thought he was flaking me, I would push him... For instance, Mick would want to open the shows with Start Me Up because he'd say it was totally obvious, and I would say, Yeah, that's what wrong with it, it IS totally obvious. That is the difference between our brains. That's Mick and me.

Ron: On the Forty Licks tour we changed the set list every night, throwing in some songs and often going back to the drawing board... We all got off on the challenge of a new surprise every day. The variety and the choice of the songs helped contribute to keeping the liveliness of the band alight, plus the fact that we were still doing a soundcheck before every new show.

I don't think Keith likes it at all. He's lost his drinking partner. I only went to his room three times on the last year-and-a-half tour. I used to be in his room every night, or he was in my room. But last time I would just go back and suffer in my room. I'd take my mind off it with Jo by renting a great movie.

Keith: Actually, I haven't read it all... I know Charlie was involved with a lot of the layout... It's a coffee-table book, isn't it? No one's going to spill the whole fucking beans. That stuff can't come out until after we're dead.

Charlie: Didn't even read it. It's wrong. It's full of lies or myths. People get things down wrong, someone repeats them and...

We call this the Y-Front Tour because the gigs come in small, medium and large... The big gigs are always fun, but you don't have a lot of room to manoeuvre. You're locked into video screens, lighting - whatever it says on the list, that's what you're gonna play. The small gigs: you get up there and suddenly you're back in Richmond. It keeps us in touch with where we come from... We couldn't just do stadiums again.

Oh blimey, (the Stones' songs) all terrify me. The music scares me. The drums scare the life out of me. Can't You Hear Me Knocking: it's great if it hits the groove. It can be fantastic but some nights it's a real struggle.

I didn't cancel any (because of illness). I postponed three out of 115. Which is better than the last tour.

Mick: We are like the proverbial old building. We've been around so long, we've bone gack into being cool. We were so baroque on the last (Bridges To Babylon) tour, I wanted to tone it down a bit. This new format really dit break it up. I was surprised and delighted. It worked for the audience, and it kept us awake. Routine kills spontaneity. As a result, I am not as tired coming off the tour, not as drained. 

Ron: It was the best-ever tour. For me, it was the first tour I really saw, knowing everything I am playing... and remembering the next day. In the past, I did a lot of hard work, still played good, but it wasn't with clarity, it was using the crutches of alcohol and dope. Doing it with a new and more sober attitude was quite a lesson for me. Quite a kick. It was very rewarding to know I was someone who could be relied on.

Keith: When you work with guys this long, a deep friendship can appear as antagonism. Ronnie and I insult each other terribly, so that anyone else in the room runs out in horror. It's perverse. These guys are not given to talking about their emotions. Neither am I. But there's a strong bond, stronger than we admit. 

Charlie: We got on the same as usual. Actually, it was a bit better. We didn't have as many dramas. Keith brings emotion, Mick brings direction.

I can't see us stopping. Not at the moment. Maybe we won't tour as we did - 16 months nonstop - but more regularly. I don't like to stay away from the stage too long, but I don't see us as just a live act. I think we have to do a record soon... (But b)eing a live band gives you instant gratification; records don't.

Keith: We've flown basically half way around the world (laughs) to do two gigs because we said we'd play here.

Mick: It's hard to know what actually drives you to do that but I think it's your own self, sort of esteem, and what your own goals that you set for yourself. And you don't want to give up on that.

Charlie: Well over 40 years we've rarely missed anything. In fact there are very few. It's harder than just doing two shows after Zurich, which was the last show we did in Europe. If we had to come here and do two shows (just after Zurich), it would have been fine but that month off you go through so many... You know, you've stopped. And then suddenly you're up there again, doing whatever. It's just remembering all the sections really.

You know you kind of realize that somewhere along the line we're being used as a political football between the mainland and maybe the Ministry of the Interior or Security and maybe the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Sports because they've got to think about 2008, the Olympics. They're probably more progressive. So which is why we end up in Hong Kong. But that's where the English started anyway, selling opium (laughs).

We just want to make our mark here. And just see what the mainland thinks about it. After all, there's a lot of them out there (laughs). They might wish they invited us now.

You always want a stab at something new. We held back on any deals or TV rights until we worked this out. Our worry was that it would ve very expensive, like buying the whole season of Sopranos. We wanted to get the retail price down.

(My wife) is at home. So when I get home, mentally I'm still on the road, but I'm actually straight back into being there, with people who have been there for two years and I've been there twice in two years. That's a very strange thing.

People say I've got a manic lust for life. But I've got no idea about that, really. To me it's just the way I am. As far as I'm concerned, life is all you get and I'll make the best out of it... I want to be here. And I want to see where I'm going.