Keith Richards doesn’t look for old Rolling Stones records – until he comes up with a blank trying to remember one of their many iconic riffs. “I’m like, ‘How the hell did that song go? I better get ready.’ “
But avoiding the music of rock royalty is no easy task. Richards has four adult children, and they “will play my stuff”, he admits. “Sometimes I hear it on the radio, and it comes out of nowhere.”
In these moments, the guitarist is under stress like the rest of us. “It strikes me,” he says with a devilish smile. “Hey man, this is good.”
Sitting in a chair in a midtown Manhattan hotel overlooking fog-shrouded Rockefeller Center, Richards still radiates eerie, live-wire energy at age 82. He fidgets with a pair of glasses and shows a knuckled index finger to emphasize a point, shakes his leg uneasily and, at one point, imitates playing the guitar.
Broad and shrunken, with a quarter-sized ring dangling from his left ear, he relies on gestures – a shrug, a grimace, a giggle – to deliver concise responses. He’s discussing the latest Rolling Stones album, “Foreign Tongues,” due out July 10, which brought the band together in New York. Mick Jagger Nearby, roaming in the corridor of the hotel.
The Rolling Stones release their first new collection of original songs in 18 years “Hackney Diamonds” of 2023; Now the group is making its second appearance less than three years later – a rate of productivity unmatched since the 1980s. “Their fans were responding to the new music, and they got a little momentum,” says Andrew Watt, who produced the previous album as well as “Foreign Tongues.”
Richards offers an alternative explanation for the explosion of studio activity: “Andrew is a little ball of fire, full of energy; he doesn’t mind getting ass kicked, and it doesn’t even matter whose ass it is.”
With Richards’ twangy, twangy guitar lines and Jagger’s drawling and declamation, there’s no mistaking the band behind “Foreign Tongues.” The album was preceded in May by “Rough and Twisted”, a wandering blues number with barbed wire-like riffs, and “In the Stars”, which softens arena rock with polished backing vocals.
Logan Peterson, a 25-year-old fan, calls both of these songs “a step up” from their performance on “Hackney Diamonds”. “
He added, “It felt like they were hot off the last project.” “It almost felt like some old school rock.”
“After toiling in obscurity for years, This is their time,” Conan O’Brien joked while introducing the band to a crowd of fans in Brooklyn in May to preview some new songs.
When O’Brien questioned Richards, many of the guitarist’s answers were incomprehensible; It seemed like he had no interest in having his microphone near his mouth. Describing the incident the next day, Richards says, “I’m still trying to work my way back.” “Can’t say I didn’t train long.”
When the Rolling Stones first arrived in America from England, “It was a different world,” Richards recalls with wonder in his old voice. “We made it to America. You dreamed about it.”
The group’s original musical stew was made up of entirely American ingredients: ragged blues, chugging rock, heady country and raucous soul. Richards would sometimes spend days without leaving the studio, dreaming up rugged riffs while playing a slick guitar. About two dozen of these still have a deep, immediate impact on a wide segment of the population, and the band released a series of horror albums between “Beggar’s Banquet” in 1968 and “Tattoo You” in 1981.
“Most artists never even come close to showing greatness the way the Stones once did,” says Peterson. “And he did that four or five times.”
In Brooklyn, O’Brien expressed surprise that Jagger still sounded the same as he did in 1968. Without revealing any secret to vocal longevity other than exercise, the singer replied, “I was taking a lot of drugs in 1968.”
“You never believe what Mick says,” Richards says laughing the next day.
That said, “The truth is, he has the same voice,” the guitarist adds. “If he doesn’t do it, I’ll fire him.” Laugh, laugh, laugh.
“Bless his heart, he’s full of beans,” he continues, describing Jagger that way twice in 30 minutes, “and plays some really great blues harp on this record.”
Over the years, the relationship between Richards and Jagger has deteriorated. One pole of warmth might have been the duo recording “Wild Horses,” which came on “Sticky Fingers,” a crowning jewel of a 1971 album: “They were both standing at the microphone with a fifth of bourbon, passing it back and forth, and singing lead and harmony into a microphone,” pianist Jim Dickinson recalled in Richards’ autobiography “Life.”
At the other end of the spectrum, while recording the 1983 album “Undercover,” “feuding and bickering” and barely able to tolerate each other, Jagger took the afternoon shift and Richards would work in the middle of the night so they wouldn’t get in the way. The chapter of “Life” devoted to this period begins with the line, “It was the early 80s when Mick was beginning to become unbearable.”
Some friction is productive – “One guy goes to the left and another guy goes to the right, and that’s how you get the songs you like,” explains Watt – but too much becomes a problem if the goal is to finish an album.
While producing “Foreign Tongues” he worked as both a buffer and translator. “My job was to take something that Mick thought Keith wouldn’t like and bring it to Keith if I liked it. And then maybe he liked it and said, ‘I think it might be even better if you do this.'”
It wasn’t always sunshine and roses. “They often don’t anticipate appropriately or correctly how the other person will feel about what they’re presenting,” says Watt. “You get your head bitten off sometimes. But then you screw it back on, and you get up, and you go for another round.”
Today, Richards praises Watt for finding “a working understanding between Mick and me”.
there are many different factions Rolling Stones fans each have their own idea of when the band was at its peak – and when the band waned. “‘I don’t like the production on the new Stones record’ is something people have been saying for 50 years,” says Christian Bonner, co-host of “Under the Radar: A Rolling Stones Podcast.”
But even if fans show off hot looks, they still keep coming to the group’s shows. The Rolling Stones remain stadium-filling legends, grossing over $100 million more than anyone else in history.
Justin Sosa, who has seen 25 shows and hosts his own Rolling Stones podcast called Hang Fire, explains that, at this point, the band’s concerts “instill a sense of wonder that they are able to do this at their age.” “You walk away impressed, proud, delighted. Even though that crazy emotional thing is probably the last thing Mick wants to hear, you can’t help but feel like, ‘Hey, look at these guys, they’re still doing it.'”
In 2024, Bonner and his co-host, Tim Lindsay, travel from Toronto to New Jersey to see their favorite band perform following the release of “Hackney Diamonds”.
“Both shows were really great,” recalls Lindsay. “We were so close to the action and it felt amazing. We were ready to see them anytime, anywhere.”
However, the band has not announced any shows in 2026, and nervous speculation has spread online: perhaps this is it, and the group will not tour again. In recent years, Richards has suffered from arthritis in his hands.
Possibly because the man once broke a lung falling down a flight of stairs in his home library and later fractured his skull falling out of a tree in Fiji, he brushes off arthritis as if it were a dangerous mosquito. “It’s not painful; it’s benign,” says Richards. “It’s just that I needed more space. So I made some guitars that widened the headboard” to give his fingers extra room to work.
He refused to take to the streets this year. “But I don’t see any reason why we won’t (tour) next year,” says Richards. “Mind you, I could be wrong.” he has ideas flowed Striving for residency rather than multi-city grandeur.
“If it’s just a matter of energy, then yes, we’ve got it,” he adds. “It conserves and then opens the valves again. Learn how to put yourself in a little reserve and play with the energy – rather than letting it dissipate.”
Write to Elias Leet elias.leight@wsj.com
