The worlds of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles have long been intertwined, both from within and from without, but a report published on Tuesday by Variety indicates that an unprecedented connection is on the horizon: Are the Stones really recording an album with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr?
The report, published on Tuesday afternoon, cites “multiple sources” confirming that Paul McCartney has “recorded bass parts for a forthcoming Rolling Stones project being helmed by 2023 Grammy producer of the year Andrew Watt,” and added that “Ringo Starr is also slated to play on the yet-to-be-announced album.” Variety also noted that recording sessions for the new project took place in recent weeks in Los Angeles, CA and added, “while it’s unclear which tracks will make the final cut — or whether McCartney and Starr would end up on the same song — the album’s production is nearing the mixing phase.”
An ensuing report by Rolling Stone offered some conflicting information. In an article published on Wednesday morning, the magazine cited an unnamed source “with knowledge of the sessions” who said that Paul McCartney did record bass parts on one new Rolling Stones track produced by Watt, but that the session did not include Starr on drums.
Whether or not McCartney’s Beatles bandmate is also involved, the topic of drum personnel on a forthcoming Rolling Stones album is a point of curiosity for many fans following the 2021 death of Charlie Watts, the Stones’ drummer for nearly 60 years. In March of 2022, Keith Richards told Rolling Stone that the new Stones project would feature some of the final sessions with Watts as well as his touring replacement, Steve Jordan.
We also know that there’s recent precedent for Paul McCartney and Andrew Watt linking up and recording on the fly. As McCartney said in a Q&A post on his website earlier this year, “I’ve been recording with a couple of people, so I’m looking forward to doing even more. I’ve started working with this producer called Andrew Watt, and he’s very interesting — we’ve had some fun.” As Paul had previously noted of his free-form creative connection with Watt in a 2022 interview, “My manager said ‘you might like to go say hello and meet him,’ So I went around for a cup of tea, and of course we ended up making a track.” Plus, McCartney has always been inclined to pop in on sessions that pique his interest—have you ever checked the personnel listing on James Taylor‘s “Carolina In My Mind“? That’s a cool story, too.
Of course, any Rolling Stones/Beatles story will eventually make its way back to rivalry. While most of the ever-present “Beatles vs. Stones” debate has been waged by fans—over countless pints in innumerable pubs in every corner of the world—the band members themselves have never entirely steered away from competitiveness in the six decades since they first met as young musicians in the U.K. Although they have traded various barbs in recent memory—from Richards’ subtle goading about the Beatles never having mounted a full stadium tour to McCartney’s quoted 2021 comments about the Stones being a “blues cover band”—they have appeared to maintain a mutual respect.
As Richards told Rolling Stone of the incident in early 2022, “I got a note from Paul about that, saying ‘I was taken totally out of context,’ … Paul and I know each other pretty well, and when I first read it. I said, there’s been a lot of deleting and editing going on here. And the next day I got a message from Paul saying, ‘If you’ve read this shit, it’s all out of context, believe me, boys’… Paul’s a great guy, man. I mean, Jesus Christ, look at the songs he’s written.”
The Rolling Stones have yet to make any official announcements about their next album, which would mark their first original studio LP since 2005’s A Bigger Bang as well as their newest material since 2020 single “Living In A Ghost Town“.
So, are the Rolling Stones recording an album with the surviving members of the Beatles? In short, no, but a Paul McCartney feature on the long-awaited new Stones LP does look like a genuine possibility. Either way, with news like this intensifying, we’ve got a feeling that the nearly two-decade wait for a new Rolling Stones album may finally be nearing its end.
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