The Boys Are Back In Town. Again.

By the measure of overwhelming rational opinion The Rolling Stones haven’t released a decent album since 1981, with ‘Tattoo You’. It is by no means a classic, but it does contain a handful of songs, albeit most of them originally started many years prior, which still hinted at a band that knew how to cook when the kitchen was open. That said, the title is terrible, as is the cover art, and had it not been for a good first single, ‘Start Me Up’, and a vast and very lucrative tour to promote it I wonder just how well it would be regarded today. I say decent – it’s solid at best; their last truly solid album. Wow, that is faint praise indeed. Connoisseurs usually also agree that their last truly great album was ‘Some Girls’ from 1978, at which they tried to take on the punks at their own game, though how they figured they would do this by releasing the flappy disco behemoth single ‘Miss You’ is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, the brittle, edgy, ants-in-Mick’s-pants feel to much of the rest of the album seemed to do the trick, although the two real gems are cut from different cloth entirely: gently comical country in ‘Far Away Eyes’ and the beautifully rendered Keith feel of ‘Beast Of Burden’. To me ‘Some Girls’ is no more a classic than ‘Tattoo You’, and part of the reason for that is Ronnie Wood. Nice bloke and all that, but possibly the worst thing that ever happened to The Rolling Stones, musically at least.

I write this off the back of an announcement that there is a new Rolling Stones album on the way. It has a stupid cover, entirely lacking in taste but not entirely lacking in some fashion of merit, and it has very Stones sort of title – ‘Foreign Tongues’ – which is ever so Stonesy because no matter what you say about them they always had a sense of humour and they never took themselves quite as seriously as many of their peers. And even if you don’t like the cover or the title they are both still better than the cover and title of their last album: ‘Hackney Diamonds’. And better than the cover and title of ‘Bridges To Babylon’. And ‘Steel Wheels’. And ‘Undercover’. And ‘Voodoo Lounge’. I think you can see where I’m going here. Even better than that is the new single ‘In The Stars’, which is as good a single as they have released since, well, would suggesting ‘Start Me Up’ be going too far? I’m not sure, but it is just a suggestion; you’d have to be a fully paid up Stones fan if you really want to get into an argument about it – I am allowed to take the piss a bit because through it all I still know they are the greatest band that will ever set foot on this planet. Perhaps it might be better to put it like this – the new single is nothing special but it isn’t half bad for a pair of 82 year old men. Oh, and Ronnie Wood.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about all this is the video to the single, which is set in a big warehouse bar or club filled with the youth of today having all sorts of fun (nice to see that someone is still promoting the benefits of smoking actual cigarettes). The Mick and Keith and Ronnie Wood of 2026 are notable in their absence and have been replaced by AI versions of themselves from the 1970’s. One problem with this, and it is a pedants problem, is that the Mick and Keith shown here seem to be from their early 70’s absolute prime, which means that Ronnie bloody Wood seems a little out of sync, because by the time he joined the band not only had they already released the best music they ever would but they had also started to look not quite so drop dead cool (it’s still all relative); hence the sentiment that Ronnie Wood was just about the worst thing that could have happened to the music. What they’re trying to do is make Ronnie Wood fit in a way that many Rolling Stones fans, or certainly me, find quite hard to swallow. Having said that, they’re also trying to make the Stones look relevant to young people, which is almost as hard a task. So much for slowing down in your old age.

I can see why Mick and Keith are trying to appeal to the youngest generation possible (Mick in particular is as much a salesman as a front man and he’s very, very good at being both), but I’m not entirely sure the youth of today deserve to know about a band that were as cool as The Rolling Stones were in their heyday, let alone be allowed to enjoy their music, their image, the very essence of their ‘thing’. With a million young people of a working age doing everything possible to do anything but actually work it doesn’t seem fair to share a band as good as The Stones with them. I suppose you could say that every generation gets the culture they deserve, and I feel inordinately lucky that I went back a generation to find something better for myself – not that there is anything wrong with the 80’s and 90’s, it’s just that they can never dream of being as lush and fertile and flat out fucking brilliant as the 70’s. In fact it seems rather fitting that the members of Generation Z have such a wet, limp bank of contemporary music to listen to and look at. Is Taylor Swift all that good? Of course she’s fucking not. And nor are Imagine Dragons (what a terrible name for a band, or indeed anything) or The Last Dinner Party or Zayn Malik (the list could go on for quite some time), but then we also have a new style of music journalism these days that exists purely to blow smoke generously up the arsepipe of the next act that will offer them hospitality seats, a handy quote about the benefits of Pilates and chai seeds and a chance to meet Beyonce back stage.

If the video that what is left of The Rolling Stones have presented to us is possibly a bit too much, it at least comes tied in with a good tune and serves to spark the memory of how rock and roll sounded when it was genuinely rock and roll. It’s hard to get excited about someone like Lewis Capaldi or a rapper called Dave or the vast ranks of dribbly, homogenous, shit that turn up every year to pick up Grammy and BRIT awards. These days people want to hear music played and sung by musicians they can ‘relate’ to, because it makes them feel like they’re not alone and that it’s ok to cry five times a day and to move back in with mum and dad and claim benefits for a couple of years while they deal with their anxiety or sexuality or wonder how many mental health diagnoses they can tick off on their big wall chart of excuses they can use for not doing anything half-useful. Instead they should be putting on (as opposed to streaming) some good music at a suitably loud volume and gazing in awe at the rock gods of decades passed – gods that showed us treasures to aspire to in vain, rather than relate to in misery. And that’s where Mick and Keith come in – you’re never, ever going to be as good as them, but that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying the swing and swagger of them when they stood at the top of the mountain, looked up and saw no more worlds to conquer. How very nice of them to remind us how cool music used to be…….until Ronnie Wood turned up and started to spoil the show, of course.

G B Burton. 30.05.2026