The Rolling Stones reportedly collaborating with Paul McCartney on new album

The Rolling Stones are reportedly working with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on a new album.

The two surviving Beatles members are set to contribute instrumentals to the Stones‘ new record, according to Variety.

As per multiple sources, McCartney has recorded bass parts for the forthcoming project, while there are also plans for Starr to contribute to the currently unannounced new album, which is said to be produced by Andrew Watt.

While it’s not clear if the tracks will make it onto the album, recording has apparently taken place in Los Angeles in recent weeks as it nears the mixing phase.

While not much else is known at this time, the project would mark the first album of brand new material from the English rock icons since 2005’s A Bigger Bang. They also released Blue & Lonesome in 2016, an album of blues covers.

Back in 2021, Keith Richards told the LA Times that the band “might’ve finished the damn thing” if COVID-19 hadn’t closed everything down and halted work on the album.

 “We have a lot of tracks done, so when the tour’s finished we’ll assess where we are with that and continue.”

While Richards and Mick Jagger were tight-lipped about what their new music might sound like, they did share that fans “haven’t heard the last of Charlie Watts,” the band’s late drummer of more than 50 years who died in August 2021.

Richards also shared in a New Year’s Instagram post last month that “there’s some new music on its way”.

As for McCartney, the Beatles frontman spoke about collaborating with Watt in a Q&A posted on his official website (via Variety). “I’ve been recording with a couple of people, so I’m looking forward to doing even more,” he said. “I’ve started working with this producer called Andrew Watt, and he’s very interesting – we’ve had some fun.”

News of the potential collaboration suggests the respective bands are on better terms following a decades-long rivalry, which McCartney appeared to reignite when he described the Stones as “blues cover band” back in a 2021 interview with The New Yorker. Jagger soon responded at a live show when he joked that Macca was “going to join us in a blues cover later”.

Elsewhere, previously unseen portraits taken by McCartney at the outset of The Beatles’ fame will be displayed for the first time later this year.