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Keith Richards isn’t sure he’s ready for future Rolling Stones tours – but that doesn’t mean the band won’t play live again. With the new album “Foreign Tongues” out on July 10th, the Stones guitarist brought up the idea of residencies in a new interview with Uncut magazine.
“I don’t know if touring is still possible,” Richards, 82, told the magazine. “It’s the traveling that wears you out. But I certainly see the possibility of us doing a residency somewhere. Wherever – London, New York, Paris, it doesn’t matter. I’m playing in Rome too! I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do a few shows in a new format.”
Is Richards still excited about the Stones? “Yeah, it’s exciting until something inside me says, ‘That’s it,'” he said. “I like working with the boys. What else am I supposed to do?”
Jagger wants to go back on stage
The Stones last toured in 2024, with North American concerts as part of “Hackney Diamonds”. In May, Richards told the Associated Press that the band could “talk next year” about returning to the road. At the end of 2025, after the British tabloid The Sun initially reported that Richards did not want to commit to a stadium tour of Great Britain and Europe, a spokesman confirmed that these plans had been put on hold.
Mick Jagger is much more keen. “I would absolutely love it,” Jagger recently said on Sunday Today, “and I hope to do it as soon as possible.”
Meanwhile, the Stones are venturing into the podcast format – sort of. A six-part series about the making of their new album, “Speaking in Tongues” (not to be confused with the Talking Heads album), starts on June 25th, with new episodes every week. Norah Jones hosts, and the series is based on new interviews with Jagger, Richards and Ronnie Wood, as well as studio outtakes and unreleased songs from the recording sessions. Producer Andrew Watt, Robert Smith of The Cure, Steve Winwood and cover artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn are also there.
Recordings in four weeks
The Stones recorded “Foreign Tongues” in less than a month at Metropolis Studios in west London, a former power station. “It’s been a very intense few weeks,” Jagger said in a statement accompanying the album announcement, adding that the small live room helped the musicians encourage each other. According to Wood, the band had many tracks down on the first take. The album features a recording by the late drummer Charlie Watts from one of his final studio sessions. Some songs on Hackney Diamonds come from the same recording dates.
“Foreign Tongues” features 14 tracks with guest appearances from Paul McCartney, Winwood, Robert Smith and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as longtime Stones collaborators Darryl Jones, Matt Clifford and Steve Jordan. The album also includes a cover of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good.”
The band began album promotion in April by releasing “Rough and Twisted” as a limited vinyl single under the name The Cockroaches. “In the Stars” followed in May with a video featuring actress Odessa A’zion and using digitally rejuvenated archival footage of the band. A third single, “Jealous Lover,” will be released on June 26th.
