Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season. The British rock band that initially launched into superstardom back in the mid-1960s is still as famous as ever. The Stones have even been snagging most of the music headlines from their younger colleagues this week as the tickets to their 2019 North American tour have started to go on sale, while the demand for tickets has been so high that they’ve added extra stadium shows to their schedule.
Even in 2018, as the band’s members push well into their 70s, The Rolling Stones remain immensely popular and bankable for promoters, especially here in the States. In the wake of the band’s 2019 U.S. tour announcement, guitarist Keith Richards spoke with Rolling Stone about a range of topics including his surprise at said popularity. He also filled fans in on what he and Mick Jagger have been up to in the studio recently.
“Mick and I got together for a few days a month or so ago in the studio, just playing around,” Richards told the long-running magazine, which counts the band as part of the inspiration for its own title. “It was great, man. We knocked out a few songs together with [producer] Don Was. We’re just working things through. We had a great time — got some nice stuff out of it.”
Classic rock fans should of course be very familiar with Don Was, as the musician, producer, and current Blue Note Records president has worked on numerous Rolling Stones album reissues including 2010’s Exile on Main Street and 2011′ Some Girls. He has also produced some of the group’s studio albums including 1994’s Voodoo Lounge, and their Grammy Award-winning Blue & Lonesome LP in 2016. Was also lent his skills in playing bass and keys on their 1997 studio album, Bridges to Babylon. More recently, Was has been on tour as the bassist in the new Grateful Dead-themed trio, Bob Weir and Wolf Bros.
Richards didn’t go into much further detail on what came out of those writing sessions with Mick, as their follow-up to Blue & Lonesome is still very much in its early stages, according to the 74-year-old guitarist. Richards considers picking up where he and Mick left off sometime in the next year as more of a “reasonable projection.”
Fans can click here to read the full interview, and can visit the Rolling Stones’ website for tickets to their 2019 North American tour when they go on sale to the general public tomorrow, November 30th.