Martin Scorsese: I wanted to capture the music and their interaction on stage. I wanted people to feel like they were onstage with them in the film. In editing it, it was clear that each song had its story to tell, it was as if we were hearing it for the first time.

Their songs always come off extraordinarily well in movies - there is a drive and authority to their music and also an edge to it. I've used Gimmie Shelter twice now in my pictures... The Stones were key in creating images in my imagination, feelings and impressions that found their way into a lot of my movies  - it became the signature of Mean Streets, for example, the use of Jumpin' Jack Flash. All that came before I even saw them in person... It became the basis for most of the work I've done in my movies from Mean Streets onto Raging Bull all the way over to Casino and The Departed.

The issue was, ultimately, why are we making this film? We are not making a film compilation, a history of the Rolling Stones, which would be very interesting but very comprehensive - epic in length and a number of years to make. And they are probably the most documented band in rock & roll history... The music, its performance, that's what was important. 

Keith: When you're actually up there doing the work, you really pass all of that onto the director so that in a way, you just do what you do and try to do it as well as you can, and at the end you see whether you did it or not and then you stop to see - ahh! his vision of it. As it slowly unfolded with Shine a Light, Marty's great use of old footage and live footage, for instance, had a great feel about it. It slowly dawns on you as you're watching it.

There are a few things that are the same from what you see from 1964, but that was so long ago you can't expect me to remember. (My reaction was) So good-looking. No wonder they were successful. Well, there's a striking resemblance to my own son, James. It's fantastic. My younger son thought it was James, when he saw a picture... I'd just warn (my younger self) to watch out for what was coming. There's an incredible naïveté there, and the charm of it is that naïveté. I've seen all those very early cuts before, of course, and we spent quite a lot of time picking those, as I was trying to find some that haven't been seen too much, but still said all the things we wanted to say about the different time zones.

(My immediate plans are to do a)s much kicking back in the islands as I can. I'm lying on a beach here in 85 degrees. I've got my dogs and a couple of mates with me, and we're just hanging. Bit of fishing, and letting the weather go by.

At the moment, I think we're all still getting off that tour. It takes about four or five months to come down off all that adrenalin. It's really only in the last two or three weeks that I've stopped waking up wondering if it's a play day or a travelling day. It takes that long, yeah. I always expect it, but still you've go to go through it. It's like a long withdrawal. When you finish, you want to start again. Especially after two years, you get so used to that adrenalin punch, and when it gets cut off, well... it's not as bad as smack, but it's pretty bad.

It warms my heart, man. Are you kidding me? That others guys want to play what you played. That's how I started. The idea that you've passed it on, like some kind of troubadour thing... yeah, of course. It warms the cockles of my fuckin' heart.

Once we're up there, it's let's go, we're The Rolling Stones, man, we want to give them the best show we've got and we want to give ourselves the best show we've got. We always want to impress ourselves. (I n)ever (feel like just clocking in.) Even if you feel like that before you go on, what I've found is that there's amazing adrenalin. Even if you don't feel like doing it when you're going up to the stage, by the time you're into the first song, everything changes, and you sometimes come off cured, which is amazing.

(The difference is we're m)uch older! (laughs) I'm still singing the same old songs, you know. It's just a more matured style of playing, with maybe some of the more extravagant edges taken out. You know, the band - they were very inconsistent back then. They would do a fantastic show one night, fucking raise the roof and be amazing, and the next night they would do a terrible show, where the tempos are wildly wrong - too fast, too slow, terrible train wrecks and awful mistakes. Now it's a much more consistent-playing group.

Keith: I think we might make another album. Once we get over doing promotion on this film.

Charlie: I think we should carry on. It seems that whenever we stop I get ill. The last time we had a break I got throat cancer.

Keith: We love what we do, simple as that. We were the whipping hounds, you know, but that's calmed down. Now we're the wrinkled rockers, right? But I still have the energy. I put that down to not eating a lot. And drinking a lot. Not eating a lot, and good weed.

For me, doing a Rolling Stones show for two hours a night, that's enough fuckin' exercise, you know? Then I've got to go to bed with the old lady, bonka bonka. You know?

Charlie: I do all my exercises, I don't smoke, and I don't drink, yet I'm the one in the band that got (cancer).

It was a little bit too much. But directors always like to use slow numbers to have these lingering shots. Yeah, I didn't care for it too much. Boring. It didn't look very good.

All of these songs have characters. They're all different. That's the thing about the Stones, they have lots of other kinds of facets which make them kind of interesting. They're not really stuck in classic-rock mode... Don't force me to intellectualize it. I just do the characters. I've done a couple of songs - even very early, on those songs like "Dear Doctor" and all that - they're that sort of chracter. I have an affinity with that country thing, I think.

Mick: I wouldn't mind releasing it. It's fine. That's a good movie. It didn't come out - but that's a classic. I wanted to make one kind of movie, but the director fucks you over because he doesn't want to do the movie he's agreed to make. I said, You could make this dark movie, but you got to have these other up moments because being on tour is all about going onstage, you know? What you have for breakfast is fascinating, and what drugs you're taking and what birds you're shagging, that's all very lovely. But then for you, the going out onstage is the important part, and you have to include that. And (Robert Frank) wouldn't include it. So I got really mad at him, as we fired him. That's the problem you can get into with hiring directors.

Keith: My memory of that time is a little hazy. That's why I watch it so much (smiles), so I can remember what happened. The monument to the unknown junkie is one of the best bits of cinema. But some of the cats died, like (cameraman) Danny Seymour. There wasn't anything involved in making that movie. We got used to the cats hanging around, in everybody's rooms. You carried on, doing what you did.

It is only a little taster, just scratching the surface of our career, but it was good fun. I did The Last Waltz with Scorsese and 30 years later I end up doing this other picture. I said to him I look forward to doing the third, so perhaps I'll be in The Departed II, who knows?

I mean, I got me dogs, me kids. I go out and garden occasionally, depending on the time of year. Everybody lives, man. It's the same old life however you look at it. As Chekhov said: any idiot will face a crisis, it's this day-to-day grind that'll get you down.

I don't think the Stones have any intention of doing anything for a year or so. Sooner or later, there will be a phone call, usually from Mick: Keith, feel like doing anything? Meanwhile, I write songs or work with other people. I'm in contact with nefarious friends in the X-Pensive Winos. We're talking about cutting three or four tracks for the internet. Nobody wants to go in for a whole album anymore.

I'm basically giving the (Stones) a year off. I'm not pushing. But I might withdraw their wages (laughs) and see how they feel then.

Keith: It will give you a feel, the sensation. I'm not going to spill all the beans and name ladies' names. You can read between the lines.

Mick: I would have thought that you'd actually have to be able to remember your life in order to write about it.

The playing of the music itself and the response of the audience is what keeps them going. There's a life force in them, and it's defiant and very beautiful.

He was a wonderful, original musician who was an enormous force in music and was a big influence on The Rolling Stones. He was very generous to us in our early years and we learned a lot from him. We will never see his like again.

Watching Bo Diddley was university for me. Every set was twenty minutes long in those days. When he came off, if he had two strings left on the guitar, it was a fucking miracle. The Duchess was there, and Jerome Green, with the maracas in each hand. It was my job to be Jerome's minder. I used to fetch him from the pub. You're on, mate.

You don't really want to be (performing) all the time. Like when you're young, you think if you're not having sex, you're wasting your time. But as you get older you realise everything has its place. You don't want to be thinking, I'm not performing tonight. Why am I not performing? I'm just going out to dinner with my friends - I should be on stage somewhere! So it's a great thing to do but you don't want to be doing it all the time. But a lot of people are like that - a lot of actors. They do eight shows a week on stage. It's addictive. And if they don't go straight into the next one, they don't think that their life's worth living. I mean, you go to dinner with some comedians and they're trying out their jokes on you. They're still on. I'm not saying I'm boring, but you have to have a reguar life. You don't want to be a performer all the time. You don't want me on the table singing.

We’re ready to go. It’s like no time has passed by... We just have to sort out when and where and drop all of the management egos and just do what we can... It’s just a matter of getting everyone’s availability sometime next year.