A cross between the spirit of Exile on Main Streetor the dirty, raw and blues musical soul of Keith Richards, and the pop taste of Mick Jagger in the times of Some Girls. In a review on Times and in an interview on Mojo Will Hodgkinson brings up two '70s classics to describe the new Rolling Stones album Foreign Tongues which will be released on July 10th. He is the first journalist to write about it after listening to it. He appreciated the “live” feel of the album, which was recorded largely in Chiswick, London over the course of a month with fan-producer Andrew Watt.
Something not to be taken for granted for the Stones in recent years, who in their songs have essentially stayed away from politics, the album contains some references to current events. One is Ringing Hollowa piece that evokes country music and is a reflection on the state of America. There Jagger sings that “the Statue of Liberty doesn't look great with a tear in her dress.”
Ringing HollowJagger explains to Mojospeaks «of America as an idea. The American dream is still alive for some and I'm sure there are wonderful immigrant stories that have happened in the last 12 months, but there we are dealing with the decline of the American empire. Is war with Iran America's equivalent of Suez? Ok, it's not the same thing, but we ask a lot of questions about imperial excessive expansion and the lobby system. An absurd amount of money is spent on elections: it is not in itself a form of corruption, but it is a waste. Is this indicative of this administration or is this something that's been going on for a long time? In any case, it is no longer the place it once was.”
But Ringing Hollow it is also a love letter to a great country that has always influenced the Stones, who as is known began by covering blues and rhythm & blues pieces by African-American artists. As Richards says to Mojo«we were 14, 15 years old and we wanted nothing more than to listen to black music from America and little by little we understood that rock'n'rollers had learned everything from Muddy Waters. Even today, when I'm looking for an idea, I go back to the blues because it's a limited musical form and that makes the challenge intriguing: are you telling me you can make something new out of that stuff? Ringing Hollow it's a way of saying: we love you.”
In another piece, Mr. CharmJagger brings up Elon Musk. In the text he tries to seduce a woman. While trying to make himself charming in her eyes, Jagger sings that an evening with him is much preferable to a trip to space with the “mad mogul Mr. Musk”, the mad tycoon Elon Musk.
In Side Effectshowever, Jagger sings about the side effects of rock'n'roll life (but also the obsession with a woman) in one direct phrase: “There's a price to pay for everything you inject into your veins.” Even though Watt said that the Stones were very disciplined during the sessions, with Richards always showing up punctually at the studio, it is known that all the Stones used various substances and had problems. “It's the only job where you can get away with working under the influence of substances. You don't have to drive,” he says to Mojo Richards, who was under the influence of LSD when he was arrested in Redlands and mistook the police officers for hobbits. “But the idea that everyone was always high… that wasn't the case. We worked very meticulously, with a few doses here and there, and the drugs were used either to stay awake and finish a song, or to say, “Give me a break.” That's how things went in those days, the '60s and '70s were a period of great openness in this sense.”
Other songs cited include Curtis Mayfield's falsetto soul Jealous Lover with Steve Winwood on Fender Rhodes; Hit Me in the Head (“One of these days I'll collapse dead and it will take a lot less if you hit me on the head”), taken from one of the last sessions with Charlie Watts on drums and which on Mojo it is described as evoking the Ramones, with Jagger saying at the presentation in May that “it's a very fast, super fast punk piece”; Divine Interventionbased on the intertwining of the guitars of Richards and Ronnie Wood and with guest guitarist Robert Smith of the Cure; Covered in Youwith Paul McCartney on bass; Never Wanna Lose Youwith Smith on synths and backing vocals.
Speaking of his involvement with the record, Smith told Matt Everitt how things went down for the podcast Speaking in Tongues: The Making of Foreign Tongues. He explained that «in recent years I have been on the phone with Andrew Watt, but we have never managed to meet» until in spring or early summer the producer invited him to have a beer with him, since he was in London recording with the Stones at Metropolis Studios. “Mick could be there too.” Feeling like an intruder, because he knows that when you record vocals “atmosphere and context are everything and the last thing you want is a party when you're trying to work,” Smith showed up at the studio and was told by an assistant that Jagger would be happy to meet him. She listened to him sing beyond the glass, a private concert.
«We started talking and he made me feel very, very comfortable. Then he started playing me some pieces and asking me what I thought. Perhaps because I had been drinking, my tongue loosened and my suggestions became increasingly absurd. And he suddenly said to me: 'Would you like to do something on the album?'” At first Smith said no, he wasn't prepared for it. “I went there imagining myself getting drunk, not playing on a Rolling Stones album.” However, when Jagger left the studio, Smith said to the producer: «Gee, let's plug in the guitars and try to do something on a few songs». Moral: «I started playing and one thing led to another…».
In addition to the pieces already known Rough and Twisted And In the Stars (the one from the video with Odessa A'zion in which the Stones are rejuvenated), and a Some of Us which should be sung by Keith Richards and Back in Your Life (Wood: «Recorded in one take, I didn't do anything, the guitar played itself»), on the album there are covers of You Know I'm No Good by Amy Winehouse, with Jagger on harmonica, and by Beautiful Delilah by Chuck Berry which represents a sort of closing of the circle (a bit like Rolling Stone Blues it was the last piece of Hackney Diamonds) as the band essentially started in 1963 redoing Like Hon of Berry. “It's a modern miracle that we're still around,” Ronnie Wood tells Hodgkinson. «And with this album we raised the bar. Mick sings better than ever. I've never played as well.”
TO Mojo Jagger says that “I'm a performer” and that television appearances like on the Jimmy Fallon show or the performances he does every now and then like the one last November at Dartford Grammar School are ok, but “I want to do big concerts.” Will they make more? The arthritis of Richards, who became a great-grandfather after his granddaughter Ella Richards (Marlon's daughter) gave birth to a baby girl called Luna Richards Von Bismarck in May, prevented the group from embarking on a planned stadium tour and at this point it is not known whether the Stones will return to tours or do some isolated concerts. When Hodgkinson asks where they're headed, Richards laughingly replies with the name of the cemetery in the Hollywood Hills, Forest Lawn Memorial Park. «The question is not to take the Stones somewhere», says the guitarist, «it's to see where they will go. And the well hasn't dried up yet…”.
