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people don’t know what a band is. The musicians are there to contribute to the band’s sound. The band isn’t there for showing off solos or egos. A lick on a record—it doesn’t matter who played it. All that matters is how it fits. The chemistry to work together like that has to be there. It’s not an intellectual thing you can think up and just put there. It has to be there. You have to find it."

“It’s tribal. We can actually assault each other on a regular basis and nobody gets pissed off."

“Bands take a long time—especially this one—to mature."

“It’s addictive. And addiction is something I should know something about."

“Coca-Cola know[s] what their ingredients are. We only know there is four guys … very different people … but the chemistry is there. The ingredients are right. So it works. That’s the difference between Coca-Cola and the Rolling Stones."

“There’s no way you can say that any one person is the band and the rest are just padding. It is such a subtle mixture of characters and personalities and how you deal with each other. And if it works right, you never think about it yourself, because … if you analyze it, you’ll blow it. So you don’t really wanna know."

THE BLUES

“It’s probably the most important thing that America has ever given to the world."

“To learn the blues, it takes a while, and you never stop. I learnt how to learn the blues, but I ain’t stopped."

“That is the whole fascination with rock ’n’ roll and the blues— the monotony of it, and the limitations of it, and how far you can take those limitations and still come up with something new. It’s the restrictions and the form and the monotony that make it so interesting."

“If you don’t know the blues … there’s no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock ’n’ roll or any other form of popular music."

“This music got called the blues about a hundred years ago, but the music is about a feeling, and feelings didn’t just start a hundred years ago. Feelings start in the person, and I think that’s why the blues is universal, because it’s part of everybody. Muddy is like a very comforting arm around the shoulder. You need that, you know? It can be dark down there, man."

“It’s an amazing form of music that has a strength and vulnerability which seems to me to be translated throughout someone’s life. At nine or ninety, it’s utterly timeless."

“You have to go through a bit of life, I think, in order to play the blues for real … You gotta be able to have a few stories to tell."

“The only blue I knew was the school blazer I’d just shed."

—on being nineteen years old and touring

with blues master Bo Diddley

CATASTROPHE

“Hey. Shit happens."

“Oh, it’s all show business. Every day of my life is show business."

CHANGE

“Nothing is static in this life—and thank God."

“I like to let things change. I don’t like to put things in a cage."

“It’s gotta go up and down. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know the difference. It would be just a bland, straight line, like lookin’ at a heart machine. And when that straight line happens, baby, you’re dead."

CHARLIE

As Stephen Davis wrote in Old Gods Almost Dead: “There’s an old saying among those who have known the Stones. It’s that Mick wants to be Keith, and they all want to be Charlie … He’s genuinely hip, he’s got innate good taste, and understands restraint. Charlie kept his family together, and he never got off on the star trip … When the job’s over, he goes home and feeds his horses."

Plus, Charlie is the only one who’s ever punched Mick out.

“Charlie Watts is my absolute favorite. He has all of the qualities that I like in people—great sense of humor, a lovely streak of eccentricity, a real talent, very modest. He’s always hated being a pop star."

“Charlie is the most modest, the shyest man … the idea of stardom horrifies him, but he’s managed to live with it."

“It’s Charlie Watts’s band—without him we wouldn’t have a group."

“Charlie’s quite an enigma—the quiet conscience of the Stones. A great English eccentric.