As we approach the release of Foreign Tongues, the new album by the Rolling Stones, frontman Mick Jagger has been discussing Paul McCartney’s contribution to it.
Macca plays bass on an as yet unheard song called Covered In You, and Jagger has told the NME that he recorded his part in the same session that yielded Bite My Head Off, from the Stones' 2023 album, Hackney Diamonds.
However, in the case of Covered In You, he says that he had to seek assurances from producer Andrew Watt, who would go on to work with McCartney on his recent album The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, that the former Beatle was the right fit.
“Obviously, I've known Paul for ages – he’s not a stranger – but I mean, he’d never played bass with us before,” says Jagger. “It's a different thing, you know? I’d sung with him before, done harmonies and stuff. But you were thinking, well, it's a punk tune.
“I said to Andy, ‘Is he into this?’ Because it's really a punk tune, and it's going to go really fast, and I want it to do that, and it's going to be… I want overdriven bass. It's gonna be simple. No mucking about, you know.”
We’re guessing that means hammering away on the root note rather than taking the bassline ‘for a walk’, so to speak, but Jagger says that Watt set his mind at rest.
“He said ‘No, no, no. Paul can do that,’ and he did it,” he remembers. “He did exactly what was needed in like, 10 minutes.”
Also speaking to the NME recently, McCartney shared his own memories of that Stones studio experience.
“It was really exciting, because I normally don’t play as a session guy,” he said. “And it's really nice to just show up at a studio with your bass and say 'Right, where do you want me? Where do I plug in?’ And you start playing and they show you the song and I start thinking, ‘I’m playing with the Stones.’ And I’m well chuffed, you know? You could be a bit blasé and go, ‘Yeah, OK, so what?’ But for me, it wasn’t – it went the other way. It was like, ‘Wow, there’s Mick! Ooh, there’s Keith! Woah, there’s Ronnie!’ It was exciting. It was really good. And the great thing is all I had to do was play bass and not make mistakes, so it was good.”
Foreign Tongues is released on 10 July.
