Sir Paul McCartney will make an appearance on The Rolling Stones' next studio album. The collaboration will unite the two bands that dominated the British rock scene of the 1960s.
A spokesman for the Stones said McCartney had found himself in a nearby recording studio while Sir Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were mixing their record. The former Beatle, 80, provided a bass part to one of the tracks expected to feature on the upcoming album, which remains untitled and is due to be released later this year.
The LP will feature the late Charlie Watts on around half its songs, with current drummer Steve Jordan on the others, it is understood. It will be first collection of new Stones songs since 2005's A Bigger Bang - their last studio effort, 2016's Blue and Lonesome, was dedicated to blues covers.
The Stones' spokesman said reports Sir Ringo Starr also featured were untrue.
It isn't the first time members of the Beatles and Stones have teamed up, despite the two groups being portrayed as rivals in the past. The Stones had an early hit with I Wanna Be Your Man – a song written by McCartney and John Lennon, and later also recorded by The Beatles.
Then, during the Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus show in 1968, Lennon made an appearance as part of a supergroup dubbed The Dirty Mac while Brian Jones played on the light-hearted Beatles track You Know My Name (Look Up The Number).
Last summer the Stones – who now consist of Jagger, Richards and Ronnie Wood following Watts' death in 2021 – toured Europe for the group's 60th anniversary. They stopped in cities including Madrid, Milan and Paris, as well as playing two shows at Hyde Park in London.
