![Array]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/1779850244_Array.svg.svg+xml "Have the Stones played their final show? “Maybe I have!” says Mick Jagger. “You never really know, do you?” 18"){kind=small}
The Rolling Stones’ 25th studio album Foreign Tongues came out last week and Mick Jagger has given a lengthy – and very philosophical – interview to the New York Times in which he talks about his long career with the band and raises the prospect, albeit playfully, that they might have already played their last show.
When asked by the interviewer if he will ever know if he’s walked off stage with the Stones for the final time, the singer replies: “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.”
Elsewhere, the interview visits places that few on-the-record conversations with Jagger have ever ventured. How fronting a band like the Stones has changed him: “It does affect you. You can become disassociated… from other people. You get disassociated from what people might call ‘real life.’”
Jagger says that he has fought against that by doing supposedly ‘normal’ things. “But, nevertheless, that’s only temporary because psychologically your actual state of mind is permanently damaged. Your late 20s and early 30s is a very tough time for people in this business because it’s a big ego trip, and you have to have a huge ego to do this.
“People that do this that don’t have huge egos have huge problems because they have to manufacture a completely different (personality).”
The NYT man also confronts the elephant in the room regarding the remaining Stones in 2026: ageing. “There’s nothing good about it,” says Jagger, who will turn 83 in two weeks’ time. “It’s not particularly pleasant. You can’t do things as quickly as you want to. Physically you’ve got to be more careful. You know, when you’re playing football, they put you in goal a lot. I’m not very good at it!”
The band’s last album but one, 2023’s Hackney Diamonds was their first of original material for 18 years, a gap that clearly peeved Jagger. “Obviously everyone has frustrations,” he says. “I was very frustrated professionally for years that the Rolling Stones never made any new music. That was a huge frustration for me, and I solved it.”
And the philosophy? Apparently, there’s a reference to Plato on one of the tracks on the new album, Jealous Lover. “My interest in philosophy is superficial,” the singer admits. “But I find it a hard subject to educate myself into.
“I’ve recently read a couple of books, and I’m really finding it hard. They’re always having so many arguments, these philosophers, and always disagreeing with their masters…”