The Rolling Stones are preparing to launch their 25th studio album Foreign Tongues and have been discussing how the tracks came together
The Stones are promoting their new album Foreign Tongues ahead of release this month(Image: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for UMG)
Keith Richard and Mick Jagger no longer waste time in the studio with The Rolling Stones – and take fully formed songs to guarantee some satisfaction. The pair, both in their 80s with time less on their side than when they began as teenagers, won’t go into the studio empty handed anymore and already have stories roughed out to save time.
They opened up and gave a rare insight into their songwriting process ahead of the release of their 25th album Foreign Tongues next week. Mick, 82, explains: “Before you come into an album, you have to have the songs done. In another world, you didn’t do that. And a lot of bands that I know still go into the studio with very little idea of what they’re going to do, and they just hope for the best.
“And I’ve never really been a great fan of that method of recording. What you want to do is prepare, and then if you get something amazing happens, that you don’t expect, then great. That’s a bonus. But I like to get things done before you go in the studio. And so I’m much more prepared now than I was in the past, as far as songs are concerned.”
The technique is in sharp contrast to all night sessions in studios in the Sixties and Seventies when albums could take months and months of time in the studio. Foreign Tongues by comparison took weeks.
Mick says when he first comes with lyrics he starts by singing into his iPhone. “Before I had to go and scramble for my workbook, now I just sing Capella into my phone,” he says.
Meanwhile, Keith, 82, has rifts and chord sequences roughed out to show his friend and co-writer of more than 50 years.
On how their co-writing begins, Keith says: “We’re usually thousands of miles apart and then we get together for a day or two and say ‘what have you got?’. And then we shatter again. We’ve gotten so used to it after all these years, actually working apart. As long as we, every couple of months, get together in a little studio. It’s a workman-like job up to a point.
“It’s kind of like this jigsaw puzzle, like it is when making anything. All of the terrible mistakes and holes make themselves obvious. They’ve got to be filled.”
Mick adds: “Keith plays me some of his song and I played songs I’d written. And then I say ‘well okay I’ll take this idea Keith and I’ll try to finish it for you’. But that’s a two way street and you get there in the end. A lot of times you use personal experiences but you combine them with fictional experiences, you might have read a poem…or a television show or something, it could be from anywhere.”
Collaboration then continues in the studio with guitarist Ronnie Wood. Speaking on the Rolling Stones’ Podcast, Ronnie explains: “It’s always positive, it’s always creative. And I love to fuel the fire of Jagger and Richards because they are a great songwriting team. It’s like lets put some more coal on that fire.”
In terms of his method for new material, Keith also likes to let things happen organically when it comes to the guitar elements of Stones songs. He says: “I play a little Buddy Holly or Otis Redding and if nothing happens I put it down and say what’s for lunch?
“Or as usually happens, something comes out of the middle of something and you go hold on. There is moment where your fingers are being taken away somewhere you hadn’t intended but its sounding pretty damn good.”
On the experience in the studio with all the others finalising arrangements, he adds: “There’s a lot of eyeballing in the room cos everyone has cans(headphones) on. I found the best tracks are when nobody’s looking at each other. It’s just happening.”
As well as using an iPhone Mick also uses drum loops and guitar when writing. A perfectionist he is also will be very hands on with the drums and final mix of albums, working with the drummer and even singing and dancing without guitars playing to check drums sound right.
For new album Foreign Tongues, featuring drummer Steve Jordan who replaced the late Charlies Watts, Mick explains: “Sometimes on this record I went in a few days with Steve just on my own and I would go through the beats.
“I go in and I just play piano and jump around and dance with Steve because I try out different beats and I sing. It’s just about how the vocal lines fit in with the beats of the drum.”
* The band were speaking on new Stones Podcast Speaking In Tongues. New album Foreign Tongues is out July 10.
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