All of my books are about researching. I do all the research and I give it to a writer who can put it in the written word better than I could.
And that's why I opened that restaurant just to get some of it out of my attic, to put up on the walls.
Because I had to do everything in bits and pieces, I was never quite satisfied when I finished a solo album or a soundtrack because I knew I could have done them better if I could have focused on them 100% until they were done.
Because of the fashion, the young people don't have any access to the history of music, unless people like me revive it. There are very few people to revive it, because you can't earn any money doing it.
But in my band, I have 4 great singers, so why singing myself ?
But why is it that in music, anything more than 5 years old - apart from a few hits - is never played on radio to the young public ?
Everybody in the band does it for the same reasons, as I do, to have a good time and send the crowd home with smiles on their faces.
Everything had to be done in-between Stones time.
I always got great respect as a bass player.
I always listen to a lot of different music when I am working on a project.
I always say that I am very proud of the work that I did with the Rolling Stones and that I am also proud of what I have done with the Rhythm Kings.
I am much more my own man than I was when I was with the Stones.
I came away thinking maybe we are not right for America, although I thought we were.
I can dig in my garden and find stuff that dates back to the 1100's.
I didn't do music for a couple of years; I just focused on other things.
I didn't want to stay in the Stones, and be stuck in a position having to play a music I didn't like anymore and that restricted me from doing all the others things I'm interested in because of time.
I don't make any money.
I had a wonderful time with the Stones but after 31 years, I thought it was time to move on.
I have found two Roman sites in the area that I live in.
I have no restrictions, no limits, no musical history to live with.
I have very interesting hobbies like archeology and photography.
I live in a house that was built in 1480. It has a moat around it. It is like a little baby castle.
I love digging back through the past.
I love to play smaller crowds with the Rhythm Kings.
I open events for museums and I do charity work and photography.
I think anyone would want to see their favorite band in a small club over a large stadium.
I try to listen to the music channels but you hear stuff where people sing terribly out of tune and they play the wrong notes and chords.
I want to be creative, more adventurous, and that's why I left.
I wanted a variety in my life but after a couple of years I thought that music is what I do so maybe I should start doing it again.
I was listening to music long before rock 'n roll.
I'm always shy in front of an audience, so I'm always at the back, in the shadows, just doing it. I don't like the front, the adulation.
If they were doing something special, like maybe a TV special for the year 2000, playing the old songs, then maybe I'll do it.
If you are any competent musician, if you have creative ideas, ideas of songs, of arrangements, in a band like the Stones, where these 2 people do all the things, there is no freedom.
In the Rhythm Kings I get to play smaller venues and to me that is the best part of it.
It wasn't the be all and end all of my life.
It would have been the first time the Beatles and Stones collaborated on stage I suppose. We have played together on record in the past.
It's also great to work with people I've known for many years.
It's like a record, when you make a record and you mix it and it sounds good and then it's mastered and you hear the mastering when it's all been heightened and all that and it sounds better still - it's the same thing with a book.
My first record I owned was by Les Paul.
My life is really full. I am really enjoying it.
Our first time in America wasn't a very good tour because they didn't know us because we hadn't had a hit record.
Our record was at 98 in the charts when we went so no-one knew us, so people just didn't come to our shows - we'd be in a 10,000 stadium and there'd be 300 people there.
People will say that they never heard any of those songs before but back then, no one had heard the obscure songs the Stones were doing.
So I was releasing this tension with my solo albums, but I didn't want to play music just for money.
The first records I heard were from Dizzy Gillespie and people like that.
The last ten years have been the best of my life.
The Stones always tried to do the odd smaller gig when they could.
The Stones introduced all these young people to the blues music, and I'm doing the same thing.
The Stones used to do that a bit. Sometimes we would pull a song that was ten years old out and put it on the album.
The whole idea behind the band was to play music that we love.
There are a lot of songs that I absolutely love what I did.
There are things that I am very proud of and there are things that you are not so proud of. But I think that applies to any musician.
This small tour, playing clubs, where the music is best, and where the music was actually written for is not a way to make money.
We courted adversity, took risks, and drove mothers crazy.
We don't sell so many records. When I make the album, I pay the musicians.
We usually do things a bit more jazzy.
When you pick it up you realize that you are the first person to touch that object since someone left it there 800 years ago.
With the Rhythm Kings, I can involve myself in arranging and producing the music as well as the choice of songs.
You can go to art exhibitions, from van Gogh or Leonardo, you can see the whole history of art in museums and exhibitions. You can see the oldest film that was ever made, etc etc, so why not the same with the music industry?
You never know what your next dig is going to find.
You're always frustrated, you don't have the chance to do a song on the album, like the Beatles did with Ringo and George, or like Led Zeppelin, where everybody was given a chance to contribute. There never is a chance with the Stones.
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