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Mick's riffs still rule

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Do you feel sometimes that you should've stayed with straight blues instead of getting into hard rock and metal?

"This is a really difficult one for me, 'cause I sometimes feel I should've been true to myself and stuck with the blues. All bullshit aside, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Alvin Lee, Jimi Hendrix - that stuff was the total shit to me. Don't even tell me about Ace Frehley and that kind of stuff. Fuck man, that stuff sucks."

Let's talk about your medical condition. It's pretty serious.

"It's no walk in the park. In fact, it's why I kind of walk like Frankenstein. [laughs] The thing about Ankylosing Spondylitis is, it's caused by a gene; you first start noticing pain in your hips, usually when you're in your teens. What it does is it slowly fuses your bones together - your spine, your ribs…With most people it stops in their 30s, when the disease is still in their lower back.

"In my case, I have a rare form of the disease that hasn't stopped, so it's all the way up my whole back and into my brain stem. It's literally squeezing my rib cage together, so I've lost some height. And now that it's up in my brain stem it's hard for me to move my head in any direction, be it up and down or sideways. So I can't drive, I can't do any of that kind of stuff - this isn't a 'boo-hoo', it's just the facts."

But if anybody's entitled to a good 'boo-hoo', it's you.

"I'm going to get an operation at some point. There's no cure, but the doctors say they might, might be able to chip away some of the bone growth at the brain stem; it'll still grow back but I'll take any improvement. If I could just move my head a little and stand up straight, I'd be a happy man."

This hasn't affected your hands or fingers?

"Nope. It's not in my hands or finger joints; I can be thankful for that. We really, really, really have to get going on stem cell research. It can help so many people - people in wheelchairs, spinal injuries, osteoporosis. There's so many diseases and conditions we could stop in their tracks if we just got serious."