Back with a Bang

It's easier to write about conflict. Try writing "I'm at peace with the world" in a rock tune. See where that gets you. But if you went into some country singer's songbook, you'd find a lot more heartache than in the Rolling Stones.

How much of the conflict and heartache is autobiography?

It's a mixture of your diary and creative imagination. That's what being a writer is about. Totally autobiographical songs are cringe-y. Teenage girls love that shit. When Britney broke up with Justin and he did that tune ["Cry Me a River"], my daughter was explaining to me, "You see the scene in the video? That actually happened, Dad."

If I wrote about what my life is really about, directly and on the money, people would cringe. "Oh No, Not You Again" is based on a real incident. But I made it funnier than it was.

So was there really an "Angie"?

I don't know. That was one of Keith's songs [laughs]. I just filled in the gaps.

"Sweet Neo Con" is direct in its politics and accusations. Who are you singing to?

I don't want to overexplain it. But it is very direct. During the presidential election, I was asked by the New York Daily News which side I was on. I said it's not polite to take sides in foreigners' elections. But we're not in an election now.

So whose side are you on now?

I'm not on anyone's side. There is no side that has an absolute answer. That's the trouble with politics. You might say, "The Republican take on the Middle East is incorrect." The Democratic policy wasn't that brilliant, either.

The most explicit thing in "Sweet Neo Con" is your own fear: "There's bombers in my bedroom/And it's giving me the shits." You sound pretty scared.

It is a scary time. Since I wrote the song, London's gotten even scarier. "Rain Fall Down" is a song about London. It has a line, "Feel like we're living in a battleground/Everyone's jazzed." That was in my head already. There were so many armed police in the streets. Walking around, seeing machine guns, is not how you imagine London to be.

If we keep going down this track, we're not going to get back. The same feeling is in "Back of My Hand": that we'll go too far, get away from our original values, and this overreaching imperialism will take us to a place where we eventually collapse.

Music technology has changed so much just in the three years since "Forty Licks." How has that affected the way you oversee the business of the Stones?

The first important thing has nothing to do with technology. You have to create new songs. If you don't, you are definitely set into a time zone. We recorded this album digitally, without any tape, which is pretty normal now. The rest of it is just distribution: ring tones, different kinds of digital delivery. We used to tour to support a record. In 1972, I would have said, "We're promoting Exile on Main Street." Now you're touring, you have a new album, there's merchandising and television shows. We have partnerships with the NFL and Ameriquest to get our music on television. It's old-fashioned, but you reach more people than you do with downloading.