Christopher Polk/Variety (Jagger and Richards); Chris Willman/Variety (McCartney and Starr)
Nearly 60 years after they first met, it looks like the Rolling Stones and the two surviving Beatles could reunite on a new Stones album. Variety learns from multiple sources that Paul McCartney has recorded bass parts for an upcoming Rolling Stones project helmed by 2021 Grammy Producer of the Year Andrew Watt. Ringo Starr is also expected to perform on the yet to be announced album.
Recording sessions have been taking place in Los Angeles for the past few weeks, and while it’s unclear which tracks will make the final cut – or if McCartney and Starr will end up on the same song – album production is approaching. of the mixing phase. Frontman Mick Jagger said in 2021 that the band had “a lot of material”, and guitarist Keith Richards said in a New Year’s Eve Instagram post last month that “there’s new music on the way”.
Watt, who shared two Grammys at the Feb. 5 ceremony for his work with Ozzy Osbourne, has become the go-to for rock veterans, despite a discography that leans heavily on the pop terrain — like Justin Bieber’s “Peaches.” and Dua Lipa. “Break my heart.” The guitar virtuoso has sat down with artists such as Pearl Jam, Iggy Pop and, of course, Ozzy. He also enjoys a close relationship with Elton John, with whom he worked on John’s 2020 “Lockdown Sessions”, which included the Dua Lipa-assisted “Cold Heart” and the Britney Spears-John duet “Hold Me Closer” in 2021.
McCartney and Watt have worked together in the past. In a 2021 interview, he said so, describing a meeting with the producer. “I went in for a cup of tea, and sure enough, we ended up creating a track,” McCartney said. More recently, he was asked in a Q&A posted on his official website what he’s looking forward to in 2023. The Beatle said, “I’ve recorded with a few people so I’m looking forward to doing even more. . I started working with this producer called Andrew Watt, and he’s very interesting — we had a great time. Although he added: “Beyond that, I don’t have anything huge planned…yet!”
Variety has reached out to reps for the Stones, McCartney, Starr and Watt for comment.
The Stones, who haven’t released a new album of original material since 2005’s “A Bigger Bang,” have been working on new albums for years, with the occasional new song released as singles or as part of a long-running series. greatest – hits collections linked to their semi-annual tours. Their last album of newly recorded material was “Blue & Lonesome”, a collection of blues covers released in 2016 and featuring Eric Clapton on two songs.
Whatever form the Stones’ next studio album takes, it will most likely feature songs recorded with the band’s legendary founding drummer, Charlie Watts, who died in 2021 at the age of 80. While the band has since toured with longtime friend and collaborator Steve Jordan on drums, Jagger and Richards confirmed in a 2021 Los Angeles Times interview that Watts – who has only missed one gig in nearly 60 years as Stones drummer – had recorded his parts for a number of songs before his death. “Let me put it this way,” Richards said. “You haven’t heard the last of Charlie Watts.”
Despite their long acquaintance and fierce but (usually) seemingly friendly rivalry, members of the Beatles and Rolling Stones rarely collaborated musically. The Stones’ second single (and first hit) was a cover of Lennon-McCartney’s 1963 composition “I Wanna Be Your Man”, although no Beatles played on this recording.
Four years later, Lennon and McCartney sang backing vocals to the Stones’ single “We Love You” in a show of generational support: The song, barely the Stones’ best, celebrated the overturning of a bogus conviction for drugs which saw Mick Jagger and Keith Richards briefly imprisoned. That same year, Stones multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones played saxophone on a Beatles track that eventually became the jokey B-side “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)”, despite not being not released until 1970. Unsurprisingly, 1967 — the year of the “Summer of Love” — was probably the high point of the relationship between the Beatles and the Stones: they even greeted each other on the covers of their albums released that year there, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Request of Their Satanic Majesties”.
In November 1968, Lennon and Yoko Ono performed two songs for the television concert special “The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus” (which was not released until 1996) as part of a single supergroup which also included Richards on bass, Clapton on lead guitar and Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell.
Over the next few years, various Beatles and Stones not named Lennon, McCartney, Jagger or Richards crossed paths in the studio when invited to sessions by artists such as Leon Russell and Billy Preston, amid thumping casual against each other in the press.
Yet, even though the members of the group have become octogenarians, the rivalry remains. In 2021, McCartney said of the Stones, “they’re a blues cover band, that’s sort of what the Stones are. I think our net was a little wider than theirs. A few weeks later, Jagger replied at the band’s Los Angeles gig that McCartney was in the audience and “would be joining us in a blues cover”.
New Rolling Stones recordings would be released by Universal Music Group worldwide. While no announcements had been made at the time of this article’s publication, the Rolling Stones have been touring every year since 2012 (except 2020, whose dates have been pushed back to the following year) and a 2023 summer tour seems very likely.