You’ve given your creative life to rock music. But in 2026, the biggest rock concert draws are Gen X bands and baby boomer bands. I’ve seen data that suggests that catalog music, older music, has more streaming market share than younger music, and that things are continuing to trend that way. If you think about the buzziest younger rock band of today, which is a band like Geese, even that feels culturally marginal. What do you mean “culturally marginal”?
Not in the center of the culture. Everyone was talking about this band, and when I played them, I thought it was going to be more like an indie band, but it was much more experimental, which I thought was great. It’s very hard for a band as experimental as that to be in the center of mainstream music. Maybe in 1970, but now, I wouldn’t have thought so.
But do you have thoughts about the vitality of rock music as a whole, or its place in the culture now, given that the most popular exponents tend to be older artists? Despite the fact that rock music as a genre is not really the mainstream center of music, it still has a lot of supporters, lots of young teenage people that want to play it, and you hope that it evolves. Rap was the center of our music 20 years ago, and now rap is not the force it once was, but everyone incorporates it into everything. It’s one of the strands of popular music. All these strands in popular music, it’s really rather artificial a lot of times. When you have to market things, you want to tell people what they are: This is mint-flavored, I’m selling mint-flavored products. It’s a bit like that in music so that people know what they’re getting, so you don’t scare them. We’ve cut up all our genres in little slices, but the reality is that most musicians appreciate all kinds of music. What I’m saying is that a lot of music has a lot of history, and intelligent people shouldn’t be slicing it into little bits and saying, “I only like this bit.” It doesn’t mean anything. What’s folk music? All these invented things.
Right, they’re arbitrary distinctions. They are.
I saw a quote from Keith Richards the other day saying that the band is probably not going to be able to do long tours anymore, but there are hopes to do residencies. You must have some doubt about whether or not the Rolling Stones will ever go on a big tour again. I have doubts about it when I hear that! I don’t mind touring at all. If you can’t go anywhere, then you have to do residencies.
But do you think the Stones will do another world-spanning tour? I hope so. I’m up for doing it.
Will you know when you’ve walked offstage with the Rolling Stones for the last time? No. Maybe I have! I could get run over by a bus outside of my house. You never really know, do you? You don’t know what’s going to happen to you in life. But I personally hope to be able to tour. I like going places. I like meeting people. I like to go to weird countries to do shows. I did a show in Indonesia once on my own, which was so crazy. It was so hot. It was unbelievable. I was out there and it was daytime, there weren’t any lights, and I thought, What am I going to wear?