Keith Richards on Rolling Stones’ Stadium Tour: ‘Maybe This Will Be the Last One’

The guitarist also reveals the status of the band’s first original album since 2005’s ‘A Bigger Bang’

By Patrick Doyle
November 28


Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards tells us about the group's upcoming U.S. stadium tour and plans for their first album since 2005.
Danny Payne/Shutterstock

Keith Richards seems genuinely moved that, after 57 years as a band, the Rolling Stones will be playing to stadium crowds this spring in the U.S. – the country he calls the band’s “original hunting ground.” “I really can’t put words on it,” he tells Rolling Stone, when asked what a 20-year-old Keith Richards would have thought about playing stadium shows when the band first played stateside in 1964. “It’s just amazing, man. I never expected to get around to Louis Armstrong status, you know?”

The latest leg of the band’s No Filter tour, which kicks off April 20th at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, will mark the group’s first U.S. shows since 2015’s Zip Code tour, and include cities like Jacksonville, Florida, which they haven’t played in decades. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. Here, Richards talks about what songs he wants to play, the magic of Charlie Watts and the Stones’ first original album since 2005’s A Bigger Bang.

What have you been up to?
Lately, uhh, not a lot. Mick and I got together for a few days a month or so ago in the studio, just playing around. Apart from that, there might be a session sometime in December, but I’m not crossing my fingers on that.

How was the session with Mick?
It was great, man. We knocked out a few songs together with [producer] Don Was. We’re just working things through. We had a great time — got some nice stuff out of it.

Do you have any idea when you might put that record out?
Oh man, no. Like I say, early stages. I would say if I’m looking at it, we’re going to do this tour, so maybe this time next year, I would say. Maybe. That looks like a reasonable projection. I can’t describe it – you know that! It’s guitars, drums and bass.

And you have a lot of stuff coming up. I saw the tour’s second leg opening night in Dublin. How did that leg feel to you?
I remember that show – it was a cold night, but a very warm crowd [laughs]. Actually it’s probably one of the reasons we’re doing this one. It felt so good, that last tour. And it was mostly Britain. But it ended and everyone looked at each other saying, “No, we’re just getting going!” In a way, that feeling is why the idea came to especially play the states – which we haven’t done for a while – and it’s really our first hunting grounds.

How do you decide to do a tour? Is there a meeting where you all get in a room or is it just emails and phone calls?
Well, actually I think the idea was thrown out just at the end of that last tour. And in its very basic forms, it’s, “Lets do another one — and where?” Sometimes it seems to be quite haphazard, how it happens. But in a way there’s an inner clock in the Stones when they feel that they’re timing things right – as a band and for themselves. After all, we’ll have been off the road nearly nine months by the time we start this one. And so we’re going to have quite a long rehearsal [period], because we have to. You can’t just jump in after nine months and expect it all to fall together. Quite a lot of work goes in beforehand, you know.

After playing for decades, what is the necessity of rehearsal?
On the surface of it, I understand that question. But if you’re not doing it all the time, it’s a matter of all of us getting together again and clicking through the gears. It’s kind of like pulling out a great car that’s been sitting on the blocks for nine months. You’ve got to break it in again. Also, rehearsals are great fun. They’re great times where you can say, “Hold on, let’s try that again or let’s try this.” It’s where the actual show takes its form – the setlist, how you’re gonna start it. It grows during the rehearsals.

What are the biggest differences touring the U.S. since when you first came here?
The difference is we used to do it in a station wagon. America was a very different place in the middle Sixties. Quite honestly, I can’t believe I’ve been around this long, man. I’ve watched this country grow up. I know it better than most Americans, because I’m older!

What do you make of where the country is right now?
Right now? I’m not gonna get into it because it’s not worth talking about. We all know what’s what. God help you. [Laughs]

What do you like about playing stadiums? Are they better than playing arenas?
I kind of like the mix. I love stadiums when the weather’s perfect, when there’s not too much wind, because you’re kind of in God’s hands. I do like to play indoors; it’s a controlled environment. But at the same time, you take chances outside. It could be pissing rain.

Personally, what do you get out of playing? What still drives you to do it?
It’s a living [laughs]. Um, it’s what I do, man. Give me 50,000 people and I feel right at home. The whole band does. As Ronnie and I often say before we go on, “Let’s get onstage and get some peace and quiet.”

It’s incredible. Do you see the blues continuing as an art form into the next generation?
Yeah. I hear a lot of new blues players. It seems to be really alive and kicking. Some great players. I don’t know their names, but great little bands I’ve heard. This is an essential part. It will always be there.

The new Gary Clark Jr. record coming out is incredible.
Yeah? Yeah, man. I love him.

So it’s still the No Filter tour, but you guys are going to get together and rehearse. It sounds like it might be a whole different kind of show than the one you’ve been doing.
Yeah. Different orders. We’ll try different things out. Mick sometimes has different ideas about staging for a certain number and you’ve got to figure things out. But basically just when we get the band into top form and top gear flight by April.

So you were doing “Like a Rolling Stone” on the last tour almost every night. What prompted that?
It was feeling great. Mick was having a lot of fun with it, especially with the harp at the end, which extends the song out a little bit. It’s a lovely song. Hats off to Bob Dylan, one of the best.

In Europe, the band played “She’s a Rainbow” which you don’t do a lot.
I know, it’s strange playing that. Because that song is like a music box. But it really is just that era, you know, we were trying different things. And also [organist] Nicky Hopkins really made that song so beautiful.

You also were doing “Sweet Virginia” and “Dead Flowers.” What are you going to be campaigning to play this time?
I was already throwing in the last time, but it didn’t get to the show, but it was “Cry to Me,” the old Solomon Burke thing we did. So I want to try that one on for size. See how it goes.

The video of you and Solomon doing “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” on the Licks tour is incredible. Do you ever see the Stones doing a theater tour again?
I don’t know. I take it one tour at a time really. I don’t really plan out. I’d love to. I love playing theaters: that’s heaven, you know.

Drumming is so physical and Charlie Watts is 77. How does he do it?
He’s a very secretive man [Laughs]. I think it’s just him. I don’t think he does anything particularly. That is just Charlie. That’s what’s so amazing about the man. It’s my privilege to play with Charlie Watts.

Do you stay up with Charlie and talk at the hotel sometimes?
No. Charlie usually keeps very much to himself on the road. And usually by the time you get back from a show, you’re kind of knackered. But if we go to the bar or something, he’ll pop in. And we’ll throw dinners occasionally. But yeah otherwise you’re usually very much in working mode on the road.

What about you and Mick? Did you have some good times on the most recent tour?
Yeah. Once you’re actually on the road, everybody pretty much does their own thing. There’s a couple nights you hang and a couple you don’t. We don’t all get in one room and play, being the Rolling Stones or anything. It’s a very professional event.

In the last year there have been a lot of retirement tours. What do you make of those? Rod Stewart recently said that Elton John’s three-year farewell tour was “dishonest” and “stinks of selling tickets.”
Well, you can look at it either way. If you mean it, that’s the way it is. I just haven’t gotten around to thinking in that head yet. I don’t know if you never know. Maybe this will be the last one, I don’t know.

Do you do anything physically to prepare for a tour?
I get up. [Laughs]

[www.rollingstone.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2018-11-29 14:53 by bv.

Brilliant! As usual… Thanks for sharing Cristiano!!!

My pleasure, MadMax. I loved what he said about the great late Nicky Hopkins.

No new album anytime soon.

Do you have any idea when you might put that record out?
Oh man, no. Like I say, early stages. I would say if I’m looking at it, we’re going to do this tour, so maybe this time next year, I would say. Maybe. That looks like a reasonable projection. I can’t describe it – you know that! It’s guitars, drums and bass.

Why do people say in January - April!!

You wonder why Keith agreed to the interview. A bit of PR for the next tour? Surely not.
Probably a phone interview.
If we take Keith's comments literaly ( a dangerous thing to do), the new album thread should be closed down....and reactivated in 12 months time.

Thanks, Cristiano.

So, there won't be a new album before the tour. The tour is going to be the usual suspects then. What a wasted opportunity.

'Early stages' for the album they had been working on this time three years ago.

Take the hint, guys. The muse isnt there any more.

To me seems like Keith was more candid and open

He is as secretive as mick n fooling us. MAY 2019 ..a new Stones baby will be there.
Jeroen

Totally bizarre and inexplicable. Are they humoring us or themselves, I wonder? After Crosseyed Heart, Keith had a full of steam; CH gave him "leverage" — "C'mon, Rolling Stones," he said — to wring a new album from the band.

The "muse" isn't missing. Unless by "muse" we mean "chemistry." It seems clear to me that Keith has challenged Mick to make a "Rolling Stones" album, as he conceives of a Rolling Stones album. They simply can't be in the same room long enough to bring one to fruition.

" I get up. "

I don't know what Dublin show keith was at - "it was a cold night" - I was there and it was a lovely balmy, calm spring night - perfect for the show and the stroll back to the B&B...........

I think Keith should just go ahead and record CrossEyed Heart Mach 2

Kind of sad they can not get in a room and get songs done. The last time on ABB they were in a small room making ABB and they wrote good songs - She Saw Me Coming, Let Me Down Slow, It Wont Take Long,Back Of My Hand Biggest Mistake Under the radar don't wanna go home, These songs are great and the sad fact is they are now forgotten never to be played live.

"How was the session with Mick?
It was great, man. We knocked out a few songs together with [producer] Don Was."


it's like Keith is one of those dolls with a string you pull and he has 10 things he can say - he should at least throw something in like " Brian might come down and play some slide" just to keep it interesting at this point...

I think Keef must have shares in Rolling Stone magazine. That’s the headline-grabbing way of selling a few more copies.

Thanks Cristiano.

The Interview with Mick Is the best, new album Is coming [ultimateclassicrock.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-11-29 00:00 by DiegoGlimmerStones.

He´s just as interesting as the setlists...these days...sigh...

Keith Richards interview on the state of the Stones: 'It's better to be honest with each other'


Mick Jagger, left, and Keith Richards, of The Rolling Stones, from a 2018 "No Filter" tour date in London. The band is coming to Soldier Field in June. (Mark Allan/Invision/AP)

By Greg Kot

Keith Richards is on the phone talking about one of his favorite subjects.

“The rhythm section … I love rhythm sections, it all starts there,” says the Rolling Stones guitarist as if describing the Book of Genesis. At his most eloquent, as in the passages from his 2010 memoir, “Life,” when he reminisced about the days when he’d press his ear to a phonograph speaker to better hear the interplay of the Jimmy Reed or Muddy Waters band, the back-line figured mightily in his understanding of how music moved the soul.

Now he was thinking about his Stones compatriot, drummer Charlie Watts, possibly for a number of reasons. There’s no doubt that the ebb-and-flow between Watts and Richards gives the best Stones music its eternal elasticity, and puts some jump in the band’s hits-dominated stadium tours. But in an interview earlier this year with the Guardian, Watts cast some doubt on his desire to keep the road show rolling. “It wouldn’t bother me if the Rolling Stones said that’s it ... enough,” the 77-year-old drummer said.

The comment was made several months before the Stones announced a 2019 tour of America, including concerts on June 21 and 25 at Soldier Field (tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday). Richards wanted to make it clear that one of the biggest reasons the Stones aren’t calling it a career just yet is because of their drummer’s ability to keep swinging.

During the Stones’ European tour earlier this year, “Charlie Watts’ playing was so incredible, the band couldn’t go wrong,” Richards says. “He is inspiring to everybody, and I want more of it. A great rhythm section – Charlie and (bassist) Darryl Jones – opens up everything” for Richards and his guitar-playing side-kick, Ronnie Wood.

In a cut-to-the-chase interview this week, Richards opened up about a few things that have been on his mind recently, including the ongoing work on the first Stones album of original material since 2005. Here’s an edited portion of that conversation:

Tribune: There’s always the speculation around every Stones tour that it could be the last one. When you finished the European tour this year, did you always anticipate that you’d be playing more shows in 2019?

Richards: You’re always optimistic. The band was in such good shape, and it felt like we were still peaking so that we all kind of looked around after the last show in Warsaw and were like, “That’s it?” That’s when the idea germinated to do this one. Besides, what else would I be doing?

Q: You’ve suggested in recent interviews that you feel like you have more stamina at age 74 than you did a decade before. Why is that?

A: I don’t attribute it to anything. You hope for the best (laughs). When you play in a band that’s playing well, the energy starts to increase in between tours, and you’re itching to get back out there. I did give up the booze this year, like I’ve given up a lot of other things. The experiment is over (laughs). I’m enjoying it, though. After I quit, I didn’t find things much different, which is why I stopped.

Q: Last winter, you said the Stones would have a new studio album out by the end of the year. How’s that going?

A: Mick (Jagger) and I got together the last few months with (producer) Don Was in the studio, and we’ve been knocking up some ideas. We want to do some more sessions, but not sure when. We might do something in February and March. It’s progressing. All I can say, there are a couple of nice things happening, with the promise of a lot more, and we’re having fun doing it. We get together, and it’s always, ‘Got anything new?’ ‘Did anything else occur?’ And a couple of songs always pop up.

Q: Is it still clicking quickly for you and Jagger when you get together to write songs?

A: You jump into this familiar spot, even if we’ve been away for months. It’s comfortable kicking around ideas. We’ve been doing this for a while, so it’s not difficult to start up again. Mick is a great rhythm guitar player -- I always enjoyed playing guitar with him because we’re both rhythm guys really. We’re writing with two guitars, and I might throw piano or bass on here and there.

Q: Was it a surprise to you that the band was able to knock out the blues album (the 2016 release of blues covers, “Blue & Lonesome”) so quickly?

A: In a way it was a surprise, all of it. When we got back together, we just had the feeling the Stones had to make this album, bring it full circle from where we came, which was to do an entire album of the kind we would’ve recorded when we first played the clubs in London. We would’ve played these same songs back then. We never made an album of us doing that, and it occurred spontaneously – “now’s the time.” We did it in five days. And then it was, “I wonder if they’ll like it.” It was a great feeling to get the response we did. It may have affected what we’re doing now. Maybe hitting back on the roots for that record affects what you’re going to do later. I’m not saying we’re going to do a Volume 2 blues record, but the way you record or hear things is affected by that. It gave us great energy going forward.

Q: Have the Stones stopped making new recordings a priority because of how digital has changed the market?

A: The world changes, and what’s the point of complaining about it? You just do your body of work. Stream it, whatever. I do find it encouraging that the vinyl side of things has increased immensely. That’s still the apex of stuff -- analog recording is the best sound you’re going to get. Digital does wonderful things, visually and in every other area. But in sound, it ain’t quite the thing -- too sanitized. You lose substantial parts of the music. That’s why we always record analog, but unfortunately it comes out digitally (on-line). We’re stuck with it, so there’s no point in whining about it.

Q: It’s often said that being in a band is like being married to a bunch of people at the same time. What’s the state of the Stones marriage after 50 years?

A: (Laughs). We’re still deciding who’s Mr. and Mrs.

Q: You’re been pretty unfiltered when you speak or write about Mick and sometimes it creates headlines. Any regrets about that?

A: It’s better to be honest with each other. The fact is, we’ve been together 50 years, and 99 percent of the time we’re cool with each other. The 1 percent that we ain’t, everybody hears about it. It’s a drop in the bucket. Big f------ deal.

Q: You put out a solo album (“Crosseyed Heart”) in 2015. Would those songs have made it on a Stones album if there had been plans for the band to record at that point?

A: It was more about working with (drummer) Steve Jordan. We’ve worked together since recording “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” with Aretha (Franklin) in ‘86. Steve and I enjoyed working together on the “Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll” (Chuck Berry concert) movie, and we started thinking about putting a band together, and made a couple of albums (“Talk is Cheap” in 1988 and “Main Offender” in 1992). We had some free time, and we recorded “Crosseyed” off and on over two years, without any intention at first of making a record. We pulled in some great players and eventually got it done. It was done apart from anything the Stones might’ve done during that time.

Q: Any plans for the Stones to play some deeper cuts on this tour beyond the hits?

A: First we have to get the machinery well-oiled again, and the shape of the show will come in rehearsals. You always want to try something new. We’re up for it, but it takes time to get the songs in shape to play live. Solomon Burke’s “Cry to Me” (which the Stones covered on their 1965 album “Out of Our Heads”) is something we started to play around with in rehearsals this year, and that was coming along. A few years back, Mick came up with “She’s a Rainbow,” and I wouldn’t have thought of that (laughs).

[www.chicagotribune.com]

So he’s given up the booze? Good for him. Hope it sticks.

Slave Keith...Tell Mick you want to play Slave on this tour.

Wait till the Billen & Ball show read the Patrick Doyle article … hhhhaaaaa



ROCKMAN

Quote
Rockman
Wait till the Billen & Ball show read the Patrick Doyle article … hhhhaaaaa

Been there done that Rockman - the writing is on the wall.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

No new tunes, turning into Las Vegas touring act. Doing the hits only, sad

‘Cry To Me’
Song by Solomon Burke
Nothing could be sadder than a glass of wine alone
Loneliness loneliness, it just a waste of your time, oh yeah
But you don't ever you don't ever have to walk alone
You see, Come take my hand, and baby, won't you walk with me? whoa yeah
When you're waiting for a voice to come
In the night there is no one
Doncha feel like crying (cry to me)
Doncha feel like crying (cry to me)


2x I’ve seen Keith mention this song lately.
Does he need more women cryin’ at him? Because this is one slow weeper of a sad song.
I was crying @ ‘Happy’
I’m out of tears.

Cry To Me ….. connections ….

Written by Bert Berns …. Solomon recorded it …
Stones for Out Of Our Heads …. Keith features in recent Doco... BANG! The Bert Berns Story







ROCKMAN



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-11-29 07:22 by Rockman.

Cry To Me as done by Solomon Burke is not a slow weeper, IMHO. If you want to hear a killer take on Cry To Me check out Marc Broussard’s acoustic version. This is the kind of thing the Stones could do with it and other soul and r&b tunes from the 1950s and 1960s. Just imagine if the Stones did a blues jam on something Heartbreak Hotel as part of their show. They’d blow away the audience. This could also take care of the when hell freezes over aspect of releasing a new album: Put Don Was (ever feel he’s part of their problem?) out to pasture, let the band rock out on their instincts and give us an album combining soul and r&b covers and their own bluesy stuff. I’d be down for it.