“It’s a stop-bugging me, post-teenage-alienation song. The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early ’60s, and I was coming out of it.”Mick Jagger (553)

“It captures a spirit of the times, which was alienation. Or it’s a bit more than that, maybe, but a kind of sexual alienation. Alienation’s not quite the right word, but it’s one word that would do.”Mick Jagger (553)

“It’s not about sex at all. People are never bright enough to see where songs really are dirty. When the chap says: ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ he just means he’s fed up. I am a cynical person because I don’t see any kind of end to anything. If you want satisfaction, there’s got to be an end. Some people say ‘Now I’ve got the house and the three children and this is the end.’ But nobody’s existence is really going towards an end, is it? Maybe my satisfaction is not being satisfied; because if I was, there would be no satisfaction for me.”Mick Jagger (816)

“It’s like a metaphor for being old: You’re watching children playing and realizing you’re not a child.”Mick Jagger (553)

“It’s a bit of a jokey number really. It’s not really an anti-feminist song any more than any of the others. It’s a caricature, and it’s in reply to a girl who’s a very pushy woman [but nobody specific – Ed].”Mick Jagger (553)

“I think that was taken from an old idea of Baudelaire’s, I think, but I could be wrong. But it was an idea I got from French writing. And I just took a couple of lines and expanded on it. There’s all these attractions of opposites and turning things upside down. It’s a very long historical figure – the figures of evil and the figures of good – so it a tremendously long trail he’s made as personified in this piece. My whole thing of this song was not black magic. It was different than that. We had played around with that imagery before – which is Satanic Majesties – but it wasn’t really put into words.”Mick Jagger (553)

“That’s a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It’s apocalypse.”Mick Jagger (553)

“Brown sugar being heroin and…[And pussy? – interviewer.] That makes it…the whole mess thrown in. God knows what I’m on about on that song. It’s such a mishmash. All the nasty subjects in one go [slavery, interracial sex, eating pussy and heroin – Ed].”Mick Jagger (553)

“It’s about a man after an accident, really. It’s not about being addicted to morphine so much as that.”Mick Jagger (553)

“That’s a straight gay song.”Mick Jagger (554)

“”Miss You” is an emotion, it’s not really about a girl. To me, the feeling of longing is really what the song is – I don’t like to interpret my own fucking songs – but that’s what it is.”Mick Jagger (554)

“”Respectable” really started off as a song in my head about how “respectable” we as a band were supposed to have become. My wife’s a very honest person, and the song is not “about” her. It’s very light-hearted when you hear it…it’s not supposed to be taken seriously.”Mick Jagger (554)

“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.”Mick Jagger (555)

“The same feeling [as in “Rain Fall Down” – Ed] is in “Back Of My Hand”: that we’ll go too far; get away from our original values, and this overarching imperialism will take us to a place where we eventually collapse.”Mick Jagger (555)