Imagine being a living legend and still getting starstruck. That is exactly what happened when Paul McCartney walked into a recording session with the Rolling Stones.
McCartney plays bass on a track called “Covered In You,” which appears on the new Rolling Stones album, Foreign Tongues. The album comes out on July 10.
Mick Jagger recently told NME how it all came together. He said he was a little nervous about asking McCartney, because the song is a punk tune and he wanted overdriven, simple bass. No fuss. No flourishes.
He did not need to worry. As Jagger put it, “Paul did exactly what was needed in, like, 10 minutes.”
McCartney, for his part, was anything but cool about the whole thing. He told NME earlier this year that walking in and seeing Mick, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood was genuinely exciting. “It was like, ‘Wow, there’s Mick! Ooh, there’s Keith! Whoa, there’s Ronnie!'” he said.
He went home that day telling everyone he knew. “I just played with The Stones!” Those were his words. He added, “Not everyone plays with The Stones!”
This is actually the second time McCartney has done this. He also played bass on “Bite My Head Off,” from the Stones’ 2023 album Hackney Diamonds. His work on both songs was recorded during the same session.
The two musical worlds have crossed paths before in other ways. Jagger was the one who inducted The Beatles into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 1988. McCartney was not there that night. George Harrison and Ringo Starr accepted the honor.
All four Beatles were later inducted individually as solo artists. John Lennon went in first in 1994, followed by McCartney in 1999, Harrison in 2004, and Starr in 2015.
Sixty-plus years since both bands first played their way into our lives, and they are still making music together. Some things just never get old.
