When I interviewed Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones for the cover of RS 907, we spoke for over five hours, in two epic sessions held in Boston, the night after the band opened its current tour at the Fleet Center, and a week later in Chicago, on the first anniversary of 9/11. On both evenings, Richards was warm, funny, sharp and unafraid to speak his mind on any topic -- drugs, alcohol, Altamont, the late Brian Jones, the very-much-alive Mick Jagger. If you couldn't get enough of the published Keith, here's more from the original 28,000-word transcript.

I. SHOWTIME

I was surprised to hear the Stones screw up a couple of times on opening night. Somone went into the wrong key in "If You Can't Rock Me," and the O'Jays cover, "Love Train," fell apart at the end.

You expect that now and then. You hope to pick up and reassemble as quickly as possible. I look at Charlie and go, "Hold it steady." Within a bar or two, the band rights itself. This is an unsinkable craft.

Starting a song in the wrong key -- I do that [laughs]. But to be note-perfect, to sound like your record -- that's not my idea of a show. We walk around, have a couple of drinks, smoke a little something. We're a club band. Even though we've played on some of the biggest stages of all time, we're acting very much the opposite.

Do you get nervous before an opening night?

I know that all the band needs is an audience. To rehearse anymore would be pointless. It would be blunting the sword. I get a little icy feeling, which builds up until just before you go on: "Open up the cage, let the tigers out." By the time I get up there, it really is us leaping out: The cage is open, here we come.

The emphasis on this tour is on older material that you haven't played live in decades, if ever. Is Mick becoming more comfortable with the past?

Somebody told me that in Boston we did over sixty different songs in three shows. That's what I've been looking for for years -- to get out of the straitjacket. Mick is very anti-nostalgia. He wants to deny it.

But I think Mick is coming to terms with what he is, and that he's still got a lot in him if he wants to get in there and deliver. I can't remember another tour when he didn't lose his voice after the first show. Because Mick's tendency, at most rehearsals, was to half-cylinder through the songs, not put the power in it. When he finally got to the show, boom -- shock to the system. The voice would go. It became a point where you would expect it.

Mick rehearsed hard this time. He went all the way, and the proof was in the second show [at Gillette Stadium in Boston]. His voice was in fine form. After that, you feel like, "Yeah, we're rolling."

Have there been Stones tours that sucked -- where you felt the band was not living up to its abilities or reputation?

Steels Wheels [1989] was a bit difficult, mainly because we hadn't played together for so long. It was really start-again time, and it was very difficult to pull everything together. Otherwise, I don't think of things in terms of tours -- it's "the next gig." In 1964, '65, '66, we didn't think in terms of touring. You were just on the road. The idea of your own tour, with its own specific image and identity, didn't happen until the 1970s, when you started to design the tour along with the record. The Some Girls tour [1978] was the first one that I saw as an entity unto itself, rather than, "Well, you're just on the road."

My own personal low point was the 1981 stadium shows: Mick in the lemon-yellow tights, riding the cherry-picker over the crowd.

You gotta hand it to him -- he'll try anything [laughs]. It was circus time. You're up there, and the place is so enormous. You say, "Let's try everything." And if it don't work, it don't work. The lemon-yellow tights and the cherry-picker were the low point for me too [smiles]. I gotta stand behind him and watch it.

Stones live albums are notorious for being a letdown -- never as good as the experience they represent. Even Get Your Ya-Yas Out, which is the best of them, had a lot of post-production done on it.

We are uncapturable live. You gotta be there. The funny thing is, when you know you're recording, you can always guarantee that the Stones will not deliver. It's typically perverse. Either we try too hard, or something went wrong early on, and we're like, "Oh, screw it."

But isn't it frustrating that the thing you can't properly document is the one thing you do best -- playing live?

That is why it is live. All you can do is make a recording of it. It's like movies: Everybody's getting splattered, blood and bones flying about. But it all just sits there on the screen; you can't smell it or taste it. That's the difference between the vicarious and the real. You gotta be there. All I can say is, buy a ticket -- if you can find one [laughs].

I'd love to have a great recording of it. In actual fact, there are thousands of really good shows that were bootlegged, that are much better-sounding than any of those records. But to me, live recording is always a toss of the coin, at the very best of times. We might get the one we want this time around. We'll get it one day [laughs]. But it is an awfully hard thing. You don't just go up there and be the Stones. Because the Stones are a band that wants to top last night. If last night was awful, we definitely will. And if it was really good, we'll try even harder.

II. BRIAN JONES, HELL'S ANGELS AND THE DEVIL

Why Jagger-Richards? Why not Richards-Jones? You both played guitar, and Brian was the original leader. Why couldn't you write songs together?

Brian was not a natural songwriter -- his mind was too confused. He could talk his head off, but he couldn't write well. He was an interpreter more than a writer. I stumbled into songwriting; so did Mick. You know the story: Andrew Oldham locked us in the kitchen and forced us to do it. You either find you've got it or not.

Andrew could just as easily have locked you and Brian in that kitchen.

We would have come out with nothing. There was no spark. Brian was a gifted musician, but he didn't have the drive to write. He wanted to, because he saw where the money was. He could get green, that boy.

After you were arrested for heroin possession in Toronto in 1977, Mick said the band would keep touring if you went to jail: "We can't wait five years." Could you imagine a Stones without Keith Richards?

It looked pretty grim. Because on top of that, with a conviction, I wouldn't be allowed back in the States, which severely curtails the movements and the revenue for the band. A few days after I got busted, I went and looked over Niagara Falls. I thought, "This is as close to the line as I'm gonna come. I'm too close to the edge" [mimics looking over a precipice].

The Stones without me -- it was a possibility in the late Seventies. But we're down to the hardcore now: Charlie, Mick and me. If you took one of those three out, we'd say, "That's it." But at the moment, no one has the least intention of leaving the band. So we should be alright.

How did you feel about the Who touring right after John Entwistle died?

I put myself in Pete and Roger's shoes. I thought, "Oh, they won't go on without the Ox." But when I heard that Pino [Palladino] had stepped in, who's a great friend of mine, I thought, "Go for it. That'll keep your mind off of what's happened."

But is it the Who?

Is it the Who without Keith Moon?

People have asked the same question about the Stones since you fired Brian in 1969.

That was a monumental thing. And it happened at a time when it wasn't just a matter of whether that would put an end to the Stones. The authorities tried every trick in the book to make sure there would be no Rolling Stones. Brian dying, in a way, is directly related to their harassment. I know who killed Brian -- it was basically the English cops. They did him in. He couldn't take the pressure. He buckled.

You actually went to jail after being convicted on drug charges in Britain in 1967. Were you scared?

I had a room at Her Majesty's expense: thirty hours at Wormwood Scrubs, a heavy-duty prison. [He was released on appeal, and his conviction was later overturned.] Scared? There was a twinge of panic, waking up the next morning. The cell was a dungeon: eight feet long, quite tall, with a little slit of a window. I felt like the Prisoner of Zenda [laughs]. I got a bit romantic about it.

Exercise time was real nineteenth century. You're all in drab blues, in a circle, tramping around this courtyard with sixty-foot-high walls and barbed wire. Some guy goes, "Hey, Keith, want any hash?" "Oh, let me hang in for a day or two -- you might be a plant."

Late that afternoon, I'm working in the library, and there's a buzz. Some little wizened prisoner comes up to me and whispers, "Keith, you're getting out. We heard it on the radio." Suddenly, I'm taken up to the governor's office. He was very polite. I go down to the yard, and there's my Bentley arriving. But this top screw, a right bastard, goes, "You'll be back." I said, "After your time, pal." And by now, I'm sure it is.

Do you have any fear -- of anything?

My reaction is to get ice cold. And that makes me mad. I have to worry about this. This red curtain comes down, and then I'm liable to do anything. But fear? As a kid, I knew it real well. I'm this little squirt, and everyday when I go home from school, no matter which route I take, I'm gonna get beat up. It was around then that I banished it -- fear. I learned how to take a beating and how to get a good one in now and again. It taught me to toughen myself up.