Mick Jagger reveals how Robert Smith ended up featuring on new Stones album
By Georgia Bates, Press Association
Mick Jagger has revealed how an impromptu encounter led to The Cure frontman Robert Smith collaborating with The Rolling Stones on their new album Foreign Tongues.
The musician, 82, said he met Smith, 67, for the first time outside a studio in London which he had attended to record vocals for the record, set to be released on July 10th.
Speaking at a launch event for the album in New York, Jagger said he had noticed a “bloke standing there with his back to me with this long gown on”, adding that when he turned around he was “covered in lipstick”.
Jagger said he told Smith “You’re Robert Smith of The Cure”, adding: “While you’re here you better go and do something.”
The singer added: “That’s how collaborations work sometimes.”
The new album, which follows 2023’s Hackney Diamonds, will also feature appearances from former Beatles bass player Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, formerly of The Spencer Davis Group and Traffic, late drummer Charlie Watts, and Red Hot Chilli Peppers drummer Chad Smith.
Vocalist Jagger and guitarists Ronnie Wood, 78, and Keith Richards, 82, spoke to American TV host Conan O’Brien at the album’s launch event on Tuesday.
Asked by O’Brien how his voice still sounds the same as it did in 1968, Jagger joked: “Well, I was taking a lot more drugs in 1968…”
He added: “The secret is practise I think.”
Discussing the album at the event, Richards said: “Anything you do, you want it to be better than you’ve done before.
“You don’t just want to sit on what you’ve done. You do this because you say I think there’s a little more in there boys.”
A new single, titled In The Stars, was released on Tuesday alongside the record’s opening song Rough And Twisted.
Alongside the band’s current members, core collaborators Darryl Jones, Matt Clifford and Steve Jordan are also featured on the new album.
The cover for Foreign Tongues is designed by American artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn and shows the band members’ faces mashed together.
The album comes after the band released Rough And Twisted as a mysterious limited white label 12 inch record under the name The Cockroaches, which appeared in a number of UK record shops.
The Rolling Stones reunited with Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt, who also helmed Hackney Diamonds, for Foreign Tongues.
An Instagram post from the band said the record would be “rooted in blues, country, rock and classic Stones songwriting”.
The album will be available on a wide range of formats, including CD, cassette, vinyl record, and special box sets, alongside the single In The Stars which will be released on CD and vinyl formats.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time, The Rolling Stones have achieved eight UK number one singles and 14 UK number one albums.
Their best known songs include (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, Start Me Up, Brown Sugar and Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
The Stones’ line-up on their first album included Jagger, Richards and Watts, who died in 2021, along with guitarist Brian Jones and bass player Bill Wyman. Jones died in 1969, while Wyman left the band in the early 1990s.
