Stones in Exile Page #5

it's not a five-piece band any more.

It is an eight-piece band,

with the horns,

Jim Price, Bobby Keys,

with Nicky Hopkins.

And, all those people,

they have kids.

And it's like, the Rolling Stones,

it's like a tribe.

During the night,

all those musician and technicians,

during the day, all those kids.

So, it's impossible

to separate the family life

from the professional activity downstairs.

The tribe grows bigger and bigger

and bigger.

Running.

Which amps are you coming out of?

Now he asks us.

That Fender...

The basement of Keith's house

was in fact a lot of separate rooms,

that made up a basement.

In the end,

the separation was so poor

that we would have to have

the piano in one room,

an acoustic guitar in the kitchen,

because it had tile,

so it had a nice ring.

There was another room for the horns.

And there was one,

probably, main studio,

where the drums were,

and Keith's amp,

and Bill would stand in there

but his amp would be out the hall.

The place was absolutely atrocious

and was very, very difficult to deal with.

It was so humid and the guitars would go

in and out of tune all the time.

And Mick kept complaining

about the sound and...

The gear wasn't working properly,

the lights would go off,

and there were fires,

and it was just insane.

It wasn't the best conditions at all.

It was difficult for all of us.

The wires would go out the door

and down the hall into a mobile truck.

Every time I wanted to communicate,

I would have to run around to all the

different rooms and give the message.

Should we listen to it?

Well, I broke the string on that one.

A lot of Exile

was done how Keith works,

which is:
Play it 2O times, marinate,

play it another 20.

Keith's very like a jazz player

in lots of ways.

I mean, he knows what he likes,

but he's very loose.

Keith's a very Bohemian and eccentric,

in the best terms, person.

He really is.

I never plan anything.

Which is probably the difference

between Mick and myself.

Mick needs to know

what he's gonna do tomorrow,

I'm just happy to wake up

and see who's hanging around.

Mick's Rock, I'm Roll.

I wanted to be a hotshot record executive,

and they were the Rolling Stones,

they had their own record label.

Atlantic distributed

Rolling Stones records,

we got a dollar an album

and a big budget to produce the records.

The whole deal was, "Can you get

the Rolling Stones to make an album

"every year or 18 months?

"Cos they're floating around,

they're flying around."

And I said, "Yeah. I can do that."

Then I started to watch

their creative process.

Watch how it worked.

I was amazed that Keith could fall asleep

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