ist in english und ich hab auch keinen Link,
hier geklaut von Rocks Off.
(morgen soll es dasselbe mit KR geben.....)
Stones Talk With Mick & Keith
By Melinda Newman
The Rolling Stones' first studio album in eight years, "A Bigger Bang," is due Sept. 6 via Virgin. The band's iconic frontman, Mick Jagger, and guitarist, Keith Richards, talked to Billboard first about the new project, life after drummer Charlie Watts' cancer scare and hitting the road again for an article that ran in the Aug. 6 issue of the magazine.
The separate phone conversations took place as the band was gathered in Toronto to rehearse for its latest world tour, which opens Aug. 21 in Boston.
Today's (Aug. 16) Q&A with Jagger and tomorrow's with Richards are exclusively available on Billboard.com.
Q&A MICK JAGGER
When you went into the studio, producer Don Was says he really stressed a team approach, almost from a Zen perspective, based on [Los Angeles Lakers coach] Phil Jackson's coaching techniques. How did that change how you made this album?
I told him, "forget it." I've never heard such a load of bollocks in all my life. (laughs)
So his trying to create this team approach had no effect?
None. I know what he means, you know, he just wants everyone to work together and I said, of course we're going to work together, but there's a lot of times when it was just me and Keith and Charlie and we all work together pretty good. And then a lot of times we put Ronnie on afterwards and Keith and I have played a lot of bass, and that was kind of fun. Charlie wasn't available because he was sick so Keith and I started off, it was just Keith and me. So I know what kind of basketball team that is, it's one-on-one.
I was playing drums and all that sort of stuff I never usually do, and that was fun. So it was very different. What it really was is you know Keith and I started doing a lot of stuff just on our own, and then we were just having a laugh with a lot of it. I'd already written quite a lot of material, and Keith had written some, so it wasn't like we start from nothing.
Is that your usual writing style?
Well, I always sit down on my own first because I hate to come in a room with nothing. That's not an approach that I favor. It's good to come with things and then they can be altered, changed, you know, stuff like that. And then also you're going to get new things, obviously. But if you come with nothing you're really pushing it.
So how did this differ from how you'd recorded previously?
What I'd say it was a better vibe than last time but you never know why that is.
The recording process sounds monastic: the band, engineer, producer, waiter, and a cook in your house in France.
We weren't only in my house in France, but wherever we were, yes it was. We were in places where there wasn't a lot of distraction. And there wasn't a lot of sort of hangers on and all that sort of thing.
Is that abnormal?
If you record in the studio in L.A., for instance, like we've done before in the past, you do get a lot of distractions and you do get a lot of hangers on. So there wasn't any distraction so we just got on and did what we did with this small group of people and we were very focused.
In virtually every song on "A Bigger Bang," there is a moment where you tap into the most basic emotions, so whether you're a garbage man or a millionaire, it's all the same emotion. How do you do that instead of bitching when the private plane is late?
Well I don't like bitching about the private plane. It can be annoying when the wrong one comes, but I'm not going to write a song about it. (laughs) As a writer, it doesn't matter if you've got money or not. You do have to observe life as it is. You observe other people's lives as well as your own.
There's a lot of humor also.
For example with the song, "Oh No, Not You Again."
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff like personal stuff, but it's leavened with a lot of humor and odd rhymes and things to keep it [from getting] too serious. And there's other stuff like "Streets of Love" which is perhaps more serious and it doesn't have any levity. It's kind of quite a dark piece.
Musically, this album is one of your more diverse.
My idea of that, which I discussed a lot with Don, was I like all kinds of different music, popular and otherwise, but I do think it's very important to do great rock tunes, to provide the essential core and, you know, a couple of great ballads, but not too many ballads because I don't like too much. I like the very good ones and then I don't want anything mediocre. And then outside of that, there's other strands of the musical themes that I like to touch on. You know dance music and country music, and just about anything, so as long as you've got that central core you can go outside it and no one is unhappy.