"You can have a posthumous business now, can't you? You can have a posthumous tour": Mick Jagger hints at life after death for the Rolling Stones

Mick Jagger onstage
(Image credit: Kevin Nixon)

In a new interview, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger has hinted that the band might continue as a working entity after the members themselves are no longer able to.

Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Jagger admits that the Rolling Stones brand may outlive the individual band members, saying, "You can have a posthumous business now, can’t you? You can have a posthumous tour. The technology has really moved on since the ABBA thing [the Voyage show, which features 'ABBAtars' of the Swedish pop group 'performing' live, is currently enjoying a hugely successful run in London], which I was supposed to go to, but I missed it."

Elsewhere it the interview, Jagger talks about the period in the mid-1980s were at loggerheads, saying, "There were a lot of disputes. And then, with Charlie [Watts] not functioning too… probably because it was his way of escaping. You get to a certain age and you don’t want to have to deal with this stuff. I mean, everyone was taking drugs, the 1980s was a big drug period. Well – so were the 1970s! And the 1960s!”

Jagger also reveals that upcoming album Hackney Diamonds might not be their last, telling writer Neil Shah, "We have a whole album of songs we haven’t released! I have to finish them. But we got three-quarters of it done."

Hackney Diamonds is due to land on October 20 via Universal, and is the band's first album of original material since 2005's A Bigger Bang. It was produced by Andrew Watt and recorded in Los Angeles, New York, London and the Bahamas.

Fraser Lewry

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 38 years in music industry, online for 25. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.