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Ronnie Wood channels Brian Wilson on The Rolling Stones’ Foreign Tongues: “The guitar played itself”
Ronnie Wood says he channeled grief for Brian Wilson into a one-take guitar solo on the Rolling Stones' upcoming album Foreign Tongues.
Ronnie Wood says he poured his grief for Brian Wilson into a one-take guitar tribute that will appear on the Rolling Stones‘ new album Foreign Tongues. Speaking with Jimmy Fallon, Wood described how news of Wilson’s death landed in the studio and set off a spontaneous, nine-minute solo that was later trimmed to roughly five minutes for a song called ‘Back In Your Life’.
“I was so moved that day, and disappointed and sad, I had so much feeling because Brian Wilson died. I’ll never forget,” Wood told Fallon. “It came out through my guitar, the feeling, in just one take. I didn’t do that, the guitar played itself.” He also noted that Sly Stone died that same week, underscoring how the moment felt like an emotional release.
“I was so moved that day, and disappointed and sad, I had so much feeling because Brian Wilson died. I’ll never forget,” he said, going on to reveal that he wrote a nine-minute guitar solo which helped him channel his emotions.
The Stones have been drip-feeding details about Foreign Tongues ahead of its July 10 release; the band officially confirmed the title and date this week and hosted a New York launch that leaned into the idea of a group still intent on stretching musically after more than six decades together. So far the record has yielded two publicly available tracks: the lead single “Rough and Twisted”—which briefly surfaced under the cheeky alias The Cockroaches—and the charismatic “In The Stars,” released digitally on May 5 and due on physical formats May 15.
According to Wood’s Fallon appearance and other snippets from the band, the album will include “Back In Your Life” and even a reported cover of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good.” Foreign Tongues is set for release on July 10 via Polydor/Universal Music — visit here to pre-order — and will contain 14 tracks in total.
The record’s credits emphasize both legacy and collaboration. Alongside core members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Wood, the album features one of the final recordings from late drummer Charlie Watts, and guest turns from Paul McCartney, Robert Smith, Steve Winwood and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Production came from Andrew Watt, who also worked on 2024’s Hackney Diamonds, and the band reportedly completed the whole record in less than one month at Metropolis Studios in West London.
All of that momentum, however, sits next to a practical reality: the Stones are unlikely to announce a large-scale tour in the near future. Late last year they shelved planned UK and European stadium dates for 2026 after Keith Richards confirmed he could not “commit” to the trek. The group did mount an extensive North American run in 2024 behind Hackney Diamonds, a tour that landed at Number Six on the list of the year’s highest-grossing music world tours.
They last played the UK in 2022 with two headline nights at BST Hyde Park followed by a stadium concert in Liverpool, but the combination of quick studio work, high-profile guests and the presence of Watts’ late contributions makes Foreign Tongues feel like a band consciously threading past and present. Wood’s throwaway line about the guitar having “played itself” functions less as mysticism than as testimony: at this stage, spontaneity and memory are the Stones’ raw materials.
Whether that impulse translates into another global outing remains an open question. For now, the record promises a mixture of elegy, homage and the old rock-and-roll stubbornness the group have always traded on—Ronnie Wood’s Brian Wilson tribute is simply the most intimate example yet of how those impulses surface in the studio.
