The Rolling Stones are set to release “Blue & Lonesome,” their first studio album in over ten years, the band announced on Thursday.
Recorded in just three days in London, the album was produced by Don Was and The Glimmer Twins for Interscope Records.
It was recorded in December last year at British Grove Studios, just a stone’s throw from Richmond and Eel Pie Island, where the Stones started out as a young blues band playing pubs and clubs.
Their approach to the album was that it should be spontaneous and played live in the studio without overdubs. The band — Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood — was joined by their long time touring sidemen Darryl Jones, Chuck Leavell and Matt Clifford and, for two of the 12 tracks, old friend Eric Clapton, who happened to be in the next studio making his own album.
“This album is manifest testament to the purity of their love for making music, and the blues is, for the Stones, the fountainhead of everything they do.” Don Was said.
The band’s last studio album was “A Bigger Bang,” released in 2005. It peaked at number three on the U.S. charts and was certified platinum.
“Blue & Lonesome” will be available in various formats beginning on Dec. 2.