The Rolling Stones may be well into their sixth decade as a band but they are showing no signs of stopping. Not only did the group announce earlier this week that they will be taking their No Filter Tour to the UK, Ireland and Europe, but in an interview published by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Keith Richards shared that the Stones are, in fact, working on a new studio album.
This will be their first original record in well over a decade, the most recent being 2005’s A Bigger Bang. However, fans will need to be patient… it could be a while, according to Richards. All told the band has only spent about three weeks in the studio over the course last two years, working on the material.
“I’m going to sound like Trump ‘It will happen; don’t worry about it’ – but it’s in the early stages,” he explained. “We have some stuff down, which is very interesting. It’s more difficult for us to write together the further apart we are but it also has its benefits in that we come back to if from a different angle.”
Richards also acknowledged the role that the contentious relationship between him and Mick Jagger has played in the Stones’ music. “Mick and I live off this fire between us.”
He then fanned the flames, joking that the 73-year-old frontman should get a vasectomy – Jagger and his girlfriend Melanie Hamrick welcomed their first child (Jagger’s eighth child) in December 2016.
“Mick’s a randy old bastard,” said Richards. “It’s time for the snip – you can’t be a father at that age. Those poor kids!”
He went on to say “I find it an interesting challenge to write for Mick. There’s no point in my giving him a song that’s beyond his range or that he’s not comfortable with. What I really like to do is write a song where Mick goes, ‘Yeah, right, I’m in!’ That’s what I try and do, because I’m writing for the lead singer of the Rolling fucking Stones, and that is my job – to give him a riff that he leaps on and goes, ‘Right, I know what to do with this.’”
Shortly after the interview was published the guitar player realized that he may have hit on a touchy subject and posted this apology on twitter:
I deeply regret the comments I made about Mick in the WSJ which were completely out of line. I have of course apologised to him in person.
— Keith Richards (@officialKeef) February 28, 2018
As a side note: The Rolling Stones have just added another London show to their No Filter Tour on May 25, 2018.
