“A real man would never turn down The Rolling Stones - that’s how I looked at it. But I did realise very early on that this would not be a classic Stones album. This was going to be a strange and difficult record.

“Mick had just released his first solo album, She’s The Boss, which became affectionately known to Keith and his gang as ’that fucking disco album.’ Keith was very annoyed at Mick for making that record. To him, loyalty is everything, and he saw Mick going outside the band as no different from seeing your wife cheating on you.

“Mick and Keith were hardly in the same room together - the tension was pretty thick. So I kind of saw my role as being the Henry Kissinger for the guys, keeping the peace. The album had some OK tracks on it: Harlem Shuffle is cool… One Hit To The Body is half-cool. Still, it was the worst Stones record they had made up till then. On the other hand, every subsequent record has been worse, so I don’t feel that bad.” [laughs]