Keith Richards says he’s “a fantastic grandad” after becoming a great-grandfather, arriving at 82 with a blunt philosophy about listening to his body and pacing himself. He’s also back with new Rolling Stones music, Foreign Tongues, released 10 July via Polydo
Keith Richards first mentions it with the kind of energy that doesn’t sound like a press schedule at all.
“ This is true!. This is true!. ” he enthuses over video call. speaking from somewhere in the depths of the Hit Factory in New York—an old Rolling Stones stomping ground and the studio first patronised by the band 46 years ago when they were making Emotional Rescue. Then he clarifies, simply: “It’s been a couple of weeks. It’s a new thing for me.”.
He has become a great-grandfather. The baby’s name is Luna Richards-Von Bismarck.
“Great-grandadding is … I try to let them hang with me for as long as humanly possible. then I hand ’em back. ” Richards says. smiling through a wheezy chuckle. “I’ve been doing a lot of grandfathering in the last year or so. I’ve got three or four new ones, you know. When I say new, I mean … two or three years old. Or four. Or one, or maybe five.”.
When it sounds vague, he shrugs—then laughs again. “I lose track, you know.”
The story lands with extra weight because of what almost didn’t happen. Richards speaks as a man who has outlived some of the people who once predicted he wouldn’t make it to the end of the year. given the “chemical and alcoholic havoc” he was widely believed to have caused himself in earlier decades. Now, at 82, he describes the practical, almost matter-of-fact changes he believes helped him keep going.
“I’d listen to my body before it screamed for help,” he says. “I mean, I wasn’t far from the end of the runway before I screamed for help. But you tend to slow down if you want to keep going; you pace yourself.”
He points to smoking as a turning point. Richards quit smoking cigarettes six years ago. “Suddenly. I felt like after all these years of smoking – because. you know. a man smokes – I was sat around with this silly thing in my mouth thinking: how childish. ” he says. “It was that that put me off more than anything, although I smoke a lot of weed.”.
He adds that he’s not drinking this week, but otherwise: “yeah, in moderation.” Another wheezy chuckle follows—then the line that sums up how far his days now are from the chaos people used to assume would swallow him: “So, yeah, it’s only a ton of heroin a day now.”
The moment is still a shock in its own way—because Richards is also talking about the work. Foreign Tongues, the next Rolling Stones album, is out on 10 July via Polydor/Capitol.
A Rolling Stones record arriving this quickly. and with Richards still clearly driven by momentum. would have sounded improbable when he last sat down with the interviewer who spoke with him in 2015. Back then. he had just released a solo album called Crosseyed Heart. and he spent a substantial portion of the conversation insisting he didn’t want to make a solo album. He said he was “only doing it to keep my hand in” because the Rolling Stones were “in hibernation.” He had also told his bandmates he was going to retire as a way to galvanise them—“punching them in the back of the head. ” as he put it—while admitting he’d sometimes thought wistfully about making “one more Rolling Stones album.”.
What followed is a different kind of proof. The band made three more albums after that 2015 meeting. In 2016, they returned with Blue & Lonesome, an unexpected collection of blues covers. Then. in 2023. they released Hackney Diamonds. an album of originals released a couple of years after the death of drummer Charlie Watts.
Now, Foreign Tongues arrives less than three years later.
Richards says some of the material predates Watts’s death. He singles out the tender Richards-sung Some of Us, which he says dates back about 20 years. That track, he says, was chosen with producer Andrew Watt’s help: Watt “cherrypicked from the can.”
Other songs were recorded during a month-long flurry of activity in London. Richards highlights Ringing Hollow. Mick Jagger has described it as a “love letter to America. ” and the song includes lyrics Richards quotes as a critique of the US under Trump’s second term: “There’s always a scoundrel trying to whip up the crowd … there’s always a king trying to pick up the crown … Lady Liberty don’t look so good when she’s wearing a scowl.”.
Richards says the speed of Foreign Tongues is tied to Jagger’s recent work. “Mick’s been very prolific lately. ” he says. “which is one reason this album has come out so quick. because he won’t bloody stop. And the momentum from Hackney Diamonds was such that this is basically carrying on in the same breath. I was just letting it roll – we had enough stuff if we wanted to keep pushing. and so Mick and I gave each other the usual wry look and said: ‘Yeah. let’s keep pushing.’”.
He credits Watt with steering the band’s current energy. Watt is 35 years old. Richards says. and “very much the rock aristocracy’s current producer of choice.” Richards points to Watt’s recent work with Paul McCartney. Elton John. Iggy Pop and Michael Stipe. For Richards. Watt has brought a no-nonsense approach: Watt “being a breath of fresh air and a kick up the ass. He knows his stuff musically and technically. and he doesn’t put up with any bullshit – he just gets on with it. So I found him very easy to work with. He’s a bit impetuous at times, but then so what?”.
The conversation turns to whether Richards has ever needed a talking-to. “When you say he doesn’t put up with any bullshit, has he ever had to give you a talking-to?” Richards narrows his eyes.
“No. But he may have given somebody a talking-to.”
For a band that once made headlines for strained studio conditions, Richards says the atmosphere isn’t what it used to be.
Years ago, Rolling Stones albums were often made amid disagreements between Richards and Jagger. Richards traces the relationship back far earlier than most fans might imagine. telling his own version of their closeness: “I’ve known Mick. I think. roughly since preschool. so let’s say about four years old. ” he says. “and when you’ve known a chap that long. you always say: ‘Listen to me. boy. I’ve known you since you were four …’ And that seems to have an effect.”.
He says the conflict now is less constant. “But these days. the Jagger/Richards relationship is apparently less inclined to what Richards calls ‘jousting’. even accommodating for his famously dismissive attitude towards Jagger’s solo career. including collaborations with the likes of Skepta or Tame Impala.” Richards recently characterised those collaborations as “fairying off into the modern world.”.
“No, there’s not as much jousting,” Richards says. “He’s broken his sword, he’s broken his lance. It’s another thing that Mick and I gave up, probably down to age. Or at least he hasn’t come at me for a while, so I presume we have. But you never know – I could be off my horse and have my shield up and have him stab me in the eye with …” The sentence ends in another wheezy laugh.
There is still tension, just not in the old place. Richards speaks with frustration about modern life—especially technology and celebrity culture.
For all that the Stones are digitally de-aged in their latest music video, Richards says he’s “had it up to here with technology.” He complains about what he calls celebrity culture, adding: “Even my grandchildren,” he glowers, “are not quite as imbecilic.”
He mourns the cassette tape. “If it wasn’t for a cassette. there wouldn’t have been a Satisfaction. because I got the riff in my sleep. hit record and then the next day played it back and it was Satisfaction in a very raw form.” He also says he can’t say “synthesisers” without prefacing it with “damn. ” and he notes how this conversation is even managed: “our video call has been set up by an assistant on the grounds that Richards’s daily relationship with tech extends to what he calls ‘an electric kettle and that’s about it. pal’.”.
“I stick to the old ways, as my dad would have said,” he continues. “I’ve seen records go from being made on two-track tapes stuck to the wall. to suddenly eight tracks. then 16. 24. then digital and it hasn’t really helped the music at all. But it’s something you live with. I mean, personally, I think the world would be better off without the damn phone. AI is killing me, you know. Do I fear for the future of music?. I fear for the future of everything. They don’t know what the hell it does, so now we all dangle and wait.”.
Still, Foreign Tongues manages to hold two impulses at once.
The album includes tracks that Richards says resemble a 21st-century reboot of the disco Stones of Miss You and Emotional Rescue. as well as a cover of Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good. Another highlight is an unexpected guest appearance from the Cure’s Robert Smith. Richards says he professes ignorance about how it happened.
“How did it happen? Don’t know. I wasn’t there. Andrew said: ‘Do you mind if I put in so-and-so?’ And I said: ‘No, man, if it’s a piece that’s necessary, do it.’ So that’s how he got slipped in.”
On the other side of the album’s reach is a cover of Chuck Berry’s Beautiful Delilah. rendered as Richards says “as more of an old acoustic blues. like it was made 30 or 40 years before Chuck did it.” He points out that the song arrives at the end of Foreign Tongues. as if the band is returning to where they began in 1963—when the Stones’ debut single was a cover of Berry’s Come On.
Richards calls Berry his formative inspiration. “There’s something about those early records of his,” he says. “They have an ease about them and a sophistication in a way. particularly in the lyrics. which always made me think that rock’n’roll didn’t always have to be the way that everyone used to think about it” — he pauses. then clarifies what he meant by that: “ie that it wasn’t just trash for teenagers.”.
He describes what he learned from Berry’s physical approach. “I loved his naturalness when he was playing, the way he moved – his whole body became part of the guitar. He made me focus on what was possible for me. at the time. which made my mother shell out for an electric guitar. I just felt a natural affinity for him, even though he was a cussed bugger.”.
And in a story that has the shape of a truth he can’t stop repeating. Richards recalls the only time he was physically checked. “He punched me once, years ago, in the 60s, I think,” Richards says. “We were in his dressing room. I was having a peek at his guitar and I was just about to stroke it. and he went: ‘Nobody touches it!’ And bam!. Quite right, Chuck!. I would have done the same. I’ve never had to, but then I’ve never caught someone doing that.”.
Richards also links the Berry choice to the broader closing gesture of the album. “As with the cover of Muddy Waters’ Rollin’ Stone on Hackney Diamonds. Beautiful Delilah comes at the end of the album.” Richards demurs when it’s suggested to him that it was intentional. “I wouldn’t say it was intentional.”.
There’s one question Richards can’t dodge forever: after 64 years with the Rolling Stones, how often does the idea of “the last time” visit his mind?
“By now I’m fully set on my path and I’m just going to see where it goes,” he says. But he also admits the thought crosses people who live this long with music.
“Oh, come on, you’ve been in the Rolling Stones for 64 years,” he’s asked. Richards answers with a line he wrote himself: “This could be the last time? I wrote it, mate! No, I think it might cross the mind occasionally – you’d be an idiot not to. But it’s not something you dwell on.”
What he does dwell on now is different. The past is sharper because time has narrowed the frame.
“I mean, you do suddenly turn around and say: Christ, I’m 82. It’s a long thing to look back on,” Richards says. “But it’s a fascinating thing, especially now we go into the whole great-grandkids thing. They suddenly give you another mirror to look into where you’re from. I don’t know: is it called maturing or something like that?”.
Again, he laughs, wheezily. “God forbid.”
Then, as if to underline that this isn’t just reflection, he returns to the present. Foreign Tongues is the next chapter—coming out on 10 July via Polydor/Capitol—and Richards is still, in his own way, pacing himself rather than stopping.
He’s only just handed back a newborn version of his legacy. And he’s already talking about what comes next.
Keith Richards great-grandfather Luna Richards-Von Bismarck Rolling Stones Foreign Tongues Polydor Capitol Mick Jagger Andrew Watt Charlie Watts Hackney Diamonds Blue & Lonesome