The Rolling Stones: The future of rock and roll?

The Rolling Stones just put out a new album. Yes, it’s true. Whether or not it’s any good – though it absolutely is – is hardly even the point. The record’s mere existence, adding yet more to the band’s unequaled resumé and longevity, is what’s primarily noteworthy. There’s never been another band comparable to the Rolling Stones, and, really, it’s not even close.

Before we get to that new recording, let’s list a few hard-to-fathom Stones milestones from along the incredibly long road that got us here.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have now been partnered together for 28 studio albums over an absurd 64 years. They’re clearly the most prolific pairing in popular music history, and as such have stupefyingly defied father time, all logic, and the very rules of rock & roll in the process.
Ronnie Wood, the other of the “real” Stones remaining, still seems almost dismissible as the new guy after more than 50 years. In point of fact, he was far from an original member: Wood joined only after the drowning death of band co-founder Brian Jones and then the disillusioned departure of Mick Taylor – a luminous axeman perhaps forgotten by some, but easily the band’s best-ever lead guitarist.
Though never, and still not, an official member of the band, Darryl Jones has now been The Rolling Stones bassist longer than Bill Wyman.
There’s little argument that the Rolling Stones are at the absolute apex of the greatest rock bands of all time; I’ll always have the Beatles first, but there’s hardly shame in being the second-best group ever. Still, think about this: The Beatles and Stones started at just about the same time, and the last Beatles album took place 56 years ago.
The Rolling Stones have had three different eras that would essentially all be the equal of any other band’s best: the British Invasion and early years (that eventually made up the compilation Hot Rocks), the “Glory Period” (rock supremacy from Beggar’s Banquet through Exile on Main Street), and their commercial peak (which includes Some Girls, Emotional Rescue, and Tattoo You). The last of those segments ended 45 years ago.
Following the third of those three epic periods alone, this historic band could’ve easily played mega-sized (and mega-lucrative) tours based only on even a small subset of established material for as long as they ever wanted. Instead, they’ve now made as many studio albums since as, for instance, Led Zeppelin had in their entire recorded discography.
On a personal note, I saw the Stones at New York’s Shea Stadium during their six-night Steel Wheels residency, at what I’m almost positive was billed as a farewell tour. That was in 1989.

Now, back to the present tense and about that new album, cheekily entitled Foreign Tongues. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting too much. At this point, really, how could you, from what should be some stooped-over old English codgers now into their eighth decade. Yet, to my continued delight listening during a recent long walk around Portland’s Back Cove trail, I discovered that these geezers can damn well still do it. What struck me almost as much as how good the whole record is – one of the best compliments I can offer any album is that is has “no skips” and I found literally none in 14 tracks – was the crazy, multi-genre representation, and the intrinsic risk-taking inherent in doing so. Rock/pop albums of almost any era just don’t cover anywhere near the complexity of stylistic ground that the Stones are both willing and still startlingly able to triumphantly trod through.

For sure, Foreign Tongues is deliciously heavy in hooky, raunchy, sometimes thunderous rock and roll (as evidenced on the songs ‘Mr. Charm,’ ‘Divine Intervention’ ‘Never Wanna Lose You’ and ‘Covered In You’). But in gratifying piquant additions, we also hear ‘Emotional Rescue’-level falsetto in the stirring ‘Jealous Lover,’ a bluesy stomp on album opener ‘Rough and Twisted,’ and country-western sound evoking ‘Far Away Eyes’ in the drawling ‘Ringing Hollow’ – which also offers some shrewdly unsubtle commentary on the current state of the United States.

There’s the gorgeous slow-burning ballad ‘Back In Your Life,’ as ear-wormy a riff and chorus combo as you’d be lucky enough to encounter in lead single ‘In The Stars,’ and a smoking R&B cover of Amy Winehouse’s 2006 tune ‘You Know I’m No Good’ (leave it to only the Stones to have been around long enough to accomplish a retro version of an approach widely identified as retro when it had itself come out).

Of notable significance, we also get to experience the continuing miracle of Keith’s croaky vocals, jaggedly filling in spaces around Mick in what would generously be called backing harmony, and, in keeping with longstanding one-per-album tradition, taking an artfully guileless lead on the rootsy and weathered ‘Some Of Us.’

The deep pocket on drums is provided by veteran groove-master Steve Jordan, occupying the stool vacated by venerable Charlie Watts, though it is Watts’s familiar phantom fourth beat that can still be detected on the track ‘Hit Me In The Head,’ a tune he recorded with the band prior to his 2021 death. That one also opens with the Jagger/Richards lyric thread “I don’t care if I live or die…Give me a song that I can sing.” I wonder: has anyone ever lived out that edict more willfully than these two?

I guess, as much as anything, what Foreign Tongues sounds like is vintage Stones, a rock and roll quality like no other; melodic genius filtered through hard-won genuineness, with enchanting imperfections laid bare in the recordings, not Botoxed out in soulless, modern pop production factories of the likes of Max Martin or Jack Antonoff. And still, the overriding takeaway from listening numerous times through it – and yes, this word is chosen with intent – is the absolute raw energy of these age-defying octogenarians.

The death of rock and roll has been well chronicled for many years by countless critics in tedious think-piece articles. Frankly, I’m loathe to disagree, given the stranglehold of unmusical hip-hop and vapid pop country continuing to dominate popular music culture. Yet I’d submit the following: if you could somehow suspend your awareness of the Rolling Stones’ unprecedented six-plus decade run of greatness, and pretend instead that Foreign Tongues was simply a debut album arriving from some unknown band of undetermined origins, I would have no problem presenting it as exactly what’s been missing for too long from the contemporary music world, and celebrating its creators as the next big thing. That’s right, the future of rock and roll could be in good hands, in the hands of a couple of up-and-coming marvels named Mick and Keith.