You've been a Rolling Stone for about fifteen years. How does it feel?

What a funny question! It's a long time, maybe too long. Maybe it's time to restart a cycle - yeah, restart a five-year cycle.

Along with the Who, the Rolling Stones are two of the last Sixties English rock groups that are still together.

I think both groups are very fragile

There are rumors that the Rolling Stones will break up very soon.

That's rubbish. They said it in 1969, too. They say it all the time. Both groups are fragile because they've got problems of various kinds. The Who's are different from ours. In our case, if Keith [Richards] gets put into prison, it makes the future of our band a bit shaky. I mean, he goes on trial October 21st, and you know what the charge is: peddling heroin, which is punishable by life imprisonment.

Maybe we can start talking about "Miss You," which you've released in three versions: a 45 disc, an LP track and a twelve-minute version, on which there's a fantastic harmonica solo by a guy named Sugar Blue, who plays like a snake charmer.

Yeah, Sandy Whitelaw discovered him playing in the Paris Metro. He's a blues harpist from America, and he plays not only in the subway, but in a club called La Vielle Grille. He's a very strange and talented musician.

The lines in the song about being called up at midnight by friends wanting to drag you out to a party remind me of "Get Off My Cloud."

I've a limited number of ideas [laughing].

And I like the line, "You've been the star in all my dreams."

Dreams are like movies, in a way. Or movies are like dreams.

You once sang: "I only get my rocks off while I'm dreaming."

I don't dream more than anybody else. But dreams are a great inspiration for the lowliest rock & roll writer to the greatest playwrights. Chaucer was a great one for dreams. He was a great one for explaining them and making fun of the astrological explanations. He used to take the piss out of most of them, but some of them he took seriously. Shakespeare, too, knew a lot about early English witchcraft and religion, and Chaucer had some sort of similar knowledge. Today we have psychiatrists to interpret dreams.

Have you ever been to one?

Never, not once. I've read a lot of Jung, and I would have gone to see him because he was interesting, do you know what I mean?....Anyway, dreams are very important, and I get good ideas from them. I don't jot them down, I just remember them - the experiences of them - they're so different from everyday experiences. But the line in "Rocks Off" is really a joke.

How about the beautiful line, "I'm hiding sister and I'm dreaming," from "Moonlight Mile"?

Yeah, that's a dream song. Those kinds of songs with kinds of dreamy sounds are fun to do, but not all the time - it's nice to come back to reality.

When Their Satanic Majesties Request came out - and that was a real "dream album" - you were roundly criticized.

People didn't want that from our band, they wanted that from other people....Tangerine Dream, for instance. But I didn't want our new album to be all dreamy, lost in a haze.

What about the girl with the faraway eyes on your new album ("Faraway Eyes")? The lines "And if you're downright disgusted and life ain't worth a dime/Get a girl with faraway eyes" make it sound as if this dreamy truck-stop girl from Bakersfield, California is really real.

Yeah, she's real, she's a real girl.

Is she a girl you know?

Yeah, she's right across the room....a little bleary-eyed.

Well, there's no one else here except for that poster of a Japanese girl. Is that whom you mean?

Naw, she's not in a truck stop.

Right, she's standing under a parasol in fact...Let me have another glass of wine and maybe I'll see her too [laughing].

You know, when you drive through Bakersfield on a Sunday morning or Sunday evening - I did that about six months ago - all the country-music radio stations start broadcasting from L.A. black gospel services. And that's what the song refers to. But the song's really about driving alone, listening to the radio.

I sense a bit of a Gram Parsons feeling on "Faraway Eyes" - country music as transformed through his style, via Buck Owens.

I knew Gram quite well, and he was one of the few people who really helped me to sing country music - before that, Keith and I used to just copy it off records. I used to play piano with Gram, and on "Faraway Eyes" I'm playing piano, though Keith is actually playing the top part - we added it on after. But I wouldn't say this song was influenced specifically by Gram. That idea of country music played slightly tongue in cheek - Gram had that in "Drugstore Truck Drivin' Man," and we have that sardonic quality too.

The title of your new album is the title of one of your most powerful and outrageous songs - "Some Girls" - and I wanted to ask you about some of the girls in your songs. Here are a few lines taken at random from several of your older albums: "Who's that woman on your arm/All dressed up to do you harm?" ("Let It Loose"); "Women think I'm tasty/But they're always trying to waste me" ("Tumbling Dice"); "But there is one thing I will never understand/Some of the sick things a girl does to a man" ("Sittin' on a Fence").

I didn't write all those lines, you know [laughing].

All right, we'll reduce the charge. But obviously, in your songs of the mid-Sixties, you were at pains to accuse girls of being deceptive, cheating, greedy, vain, affected and stupid. It was a list of sins. Whether you were singing about rejecting the girl ("Out of Time," "Please Go Home") or about the girl rejecting you ("All Sold Out," "Congratulations") or about both ("High and Dry," "Under My Thumb") almost all of the songs from that period...

Most of those songs are really silly, they're pretty immature. But as far as the heart of what you're saying, I'd say...any bright girl would understand that if I were gay I'd say the same things about guys. Or if I were a girl I might say the same things about guys or other girls. I don't think any of the traits you mentioned are peculiar to girls. It's just about people. Deception, vanity....On the other hand, sometimes I do say nice things about girls [laughing].