Producer Andrew Watt has confirmed that he’s reunited with The Rolling Stones on their upcoming new album.
Watt produced their Grammy-winning 24th studio album, ‘Hackney Diamonds’, in 2023, while he’s also worked with the likes of Elton John, Lady Gaga and Ed Sheeran over the past couple of years. His confirmation comes months after the first reports that he was again working with the Stones.
He told Rolling Stone of working with the rock icons again, “I’ve said it before, but it’s like working for Batman.”
He didn’t go into too many details, explaining, “When the tongue is up in the air, you just go… I can say we did some recording together, but that’s all I can say.”
For his part, Watt said told Rolling Stone February that the Stones had music leftover from their ‘Hackney Diamonds’ sessions. He explained that, while it would be up to the band whether the material would be finished, “it would be great”, adding, “ It was a prolific time for the band. They had amassed, like, 18 years of material. There was so much to go through and choose from initially, and then there were new songs that just came because everyone was rolling and kind of flying.”
It was reported a couple of months later that the band had been working on a new album since April, completing 13 songs at Chiswick’s Metropolis Studios. And earlier this month, guitarist Keith Richard’s son Marlon shared that the band were working on a new album, describing it as being “nearly done”.
“They’re in town right now, recording,” he said in an interview for the Rolling Stones edition of Record Collector, conducted back in May. “They’re in Chiswick [West London] or somewhere like that; I think they’re nearly done. They still maintain these ridiculous hours: after lunch until, like, two in the morning. I’d rather be somewhere else at that time of night! Unless you’re in it, it’s pretty boring.”
When pressed on what the band were working on, Richards said: “I guess an album – they have enough left over from the last one,” Richards replied.
“They gave them a Grammy, so now they’re all hyped up on that: ‘Oh, yeah – we can do another one like that! We’ve got more like that if you want…’. I think they’re doing the
Follow-up.”
He added that he thought his dad’s band were “planning a tour of Europe”. They toured US stadiums last year, but earlier this year, reports came out that The Rolling Stones had abandoned plans to go on tour in the UK and Europe because of scheduling issues, and there have been a lot of rumours of a 2026 European tour in the works instead.
They last played the UK in 2022, when two huge BST Hyde Park gigs followed a stadium show at Liverpool’s Anfield.
As for the new music, when NME spoke to guitarist Ronnie Wood in 2023, he said that they had to cut “about 23 songs” and that he didn’t “think it would be” another 18 years until a new album.
Of the other tracks, he explained: “Well, Stones tracks evolve but they’ve either got the essence when we first hit the song or they haven’t. Some of the songs were a little hesitant. We need to look at them again. That’s the way you make good music – to mould it like a clay model. You know, the car out of stone like Michelangelo.”
NME gave ‘Hackney Diamonds’ a four-star review upon its release, describing it as an “absolute barnstormer” and adding, “If ‘Hackney Diamonds’ does round off the most successful career in rock music ever, it wouldn’t be a bad place to leave it. A natural end, but definitely not a normal one.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nme.com ’
