Ronnie Wood says The Rolling Stones’ new album contains a Brian Wilson tribute — a one‑take guitar solo on “Back In Your Life”

Ronnie Wood has lifted the curtain on one of the most touching moments on The Rolling Stones’ upcoming album Foreign Tongues: a tribute to the late Brian Wilson that began as a nine‑minute guitar outpouring and survived the edit as a five‑minute centerpiece on a track called “Back In Your Life.”

The reveal came on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where Wood said he was in the studio working on the record when he learned of Wilson’s death last June. The news flooded into his playing, he explained — a visceral reaction that he captured in a single take.

“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. “I wrote a nine‑minute guitar solo… It came out through my guitar, the feeling, in just one take. I didn’t do that, the guitar played itself.”

Wood also noted the week was heavy beyond Wilson: Sly Stone died around the same time, and that collective sense of loss fed into what the band was making. What started as a cathartic jam was pared down for the record, but the emotional core remained.

What we know about Foreign Tongues

The Stones officially announced the album title and release date this week and hosted an album launch event in New York City, saying they’d written with an appetite to push their musicality after more than 60 years together. So far the band have revealed guest appearances from Paul McCartney, Robert Smith and others, and the record will contain 14 songs in total.

Only a couple of tracks have been released: the lead single “Rough and Twisted” — originally dropped under the playful alias The Cockroaches — and “In The Stars,” which arrived digitally on May 5 and will see a physical release on May 15. The full tracklist hasn’t been made public, but based on Wood’s Fallon interview, the album includes “Back In Your Life” and reportedly a cover of Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good.”

Foreign Tongues is due July 10 via Polydor/Universal Music — visit here to pre-order — and the record features one of the final recordings from late drummer Charlie Watts, plus guest turns from Steve Winwood and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith. Andy Watt produced the sessions; he’s the same producer who worked on 2024’s Hackney Diamonds.

According to the band, the whole album was completed in less than one month at Metropolis Studios in West London, a brisk timeline that suggests a band working with clarity and purpose rather than nostalgia.

Touring plans remain murky. The Stones scrapped a planned UK and European stadium tour for 2026 after saying Keith Richards was unable to “commit” to the trek. The group did mount a major North American outing behind Hackney Diamonds in 2024 — a run that landed at Number Six on the highest‑grossing tours list that year — and their most recent UK shows were the two giant BST Hyde Park nights in 2022 followed by a stadium concert in Liverpool.

For fans, the idea of the Stones channeling a Brian Wilson‑like concision and heartbreak through guitar is oddly fitting: a band still capable of surprising tenderness, even as they brawl with the long shadow of their own legend. Whether “Back In Your Life” becomes one of those late‑career Stones epics people argue about for years remains to be seen, but the single‑take backstory gives it an intimacy that will matter to listeners who care about what the players bring to the music beyond the marquee.