THE Rolling Stones and Amy Winehouse — somehow it was a match made it heaven.
On June 10, 2007, the original rock and roll miscreants invited the supremely gifted but wayward singer on stage at the Isle Of Wight Festival.
Amy was all the rage that summer with her second (and final) album Back To Black riding high in the charts. Britain and the world had taken her songs to their hearts — Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Tears Dry On Their Own and Love Is A Losing Game among them.
At the festival, Amy wore a pristine white shirt, skinny black jeans, a chunky belt, ballet flats and THAT towering beehive.
She looked every inch at home next to the man with all the moves, Mick Jagger — a lean, sinewy T-shirted figure in an all-black outfit.
Together, they belted out a wild rendition of The Temptations’ soul classic Ain’t Too Proud To Beg.
Together, they perfectly captured the rebellious spirit of rock and roll.
When Amy died four years later aged just 27, the world lost a generational talent — a sultry, emotionally wrought voice for the ages.
Now, in 2026, the Stones are releasing a cover of Amy’s You Know I’m No Good on their vibrant, age- defying 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues.
I’ve had the chance to speak to guitarist and lovable rogue Ronnie Wood about the song, his close friendship with Amy — and all things related to the eclectic 14-track album.
By Stones standards, it’s a rapid-fire follow-up to 2023’s Hackney Diamonds and a freewheeling confection of rock, soul, dance, country, blues and balladry.
“We just loved to pay tribute to Amy because she was such a jewel,” Ronnie says with typical warmth.
“A very lost jewel in the jewellery box but she was wonderful.”
At the time of Isle Of Wight, Ronnie was still battling alcohol addiction himself and he discovered an immediate bond with troubled Amy.
“We came back on the ferry together and had such a laugh,” he recalls. “Then shortly before Amy died, I had a real in-depth [chat] with her in the garden of a hotel in Rio.
“She was asking me, ‘Oh Ron, what am I going to do? And I was going, ‘Don’t worry because everyone knows you’ve got vodka in your water bottle. Just don’t hide it and try to go on stage tonight.
“Her band pleaded with me. They went, ‘Ronnie, please get her to go on — she’s trying to pull out of the gig.’ Anyway, I talked her through stuff and she did go on.”
“Amy needed a carer all the time otherwise she went off the rails, which of course she did.”
I ask Ronnie where Amy Winehouse should be placed in the pantheon of great female singers, past and present.
“There are some lovely singers around,” he answers. “They arrive in spasms. Chanel Haynes from my band is great — she played Tina Turner [in the stage musical] and really has the essence of Tina. I also like Jessie J.
“But Amy was like Billie Holiday. She had that once-in-a-lifetime deep blues. It’s a pity she was her own worst enemy.”
Of the Stones’ rousing rendition of You Know I’m No Good, Ronnie says: “I love the way Mick has put the harmonica over the brass riff.”
Mick himself reflected on the song this week at an intimate fan playback at Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, West London, where much of Foreign Tongues was recorded.
“We decided we wanted to cover this Amy Winehouse song. We do it in the same key as her. There’s a well-known horn lick on that record and I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do that. I’ll do it on the harmonica.”
Mick is accompanied by Ronnie but minus Keith Richards, who’s at home in the States and sends a video message saying “god bless you all”.
Wearing a floral shirt beneath a black leather jacket despite the heat outside, Mick, the planet’s most sprightly octogenarian, is in expansive mood. He saunters into the room and greets the assembled throng from countries far and wide with a World Cup quip, “Apologies to anyone from Mexico!” Cue much laughter.
With his face wreathed in smiles, he peers around the sound-proofed room and says: “We had a lot of fun making this record in this very room.
“It didn’t look quite like this,” he adds before waving his arms in different directions.
“The drums were over there, Ronnie was there, I was there, Keith was there.” Ronnie also can’t help a reference to important football matters when he describes the band’s preparations for the sessions at Metropolis.
“We had a lot of rehearsals — a bit like practising for the World Cup — at Electric Lady Studios in New York and on the West Coast at Jim Henson’s studios.”
The subject soon moves on to how the Stones have kept going nearly 65 years after Jagger and Richards met on Platform 2 of Dartford railway station and decided to be in a band together.
Listen to Foreign Tongues and you’ll be astonished by Mick’s still jaw-dropping range.
So how does he keep his most precious instrument — his vocal cords — in shape?
He says: “With other instruments, you can see them — a guitar, a piano — but you can’t see your vocal cords.
“So, you can’t say, ‘Oh they look really good today, I’ll do this.’
“If anything goes wrong, the doctor has to look at them. You have to keep them in shape like a muscle.” How does Ronnie keep his fingers nimble enough to dance across the fretboard? “There are exercises for the hands,” he replies. “And I put arnica [a herbal remedy] on them because they can hurt a lot.”
Mick says: “The thing with Ronnie is that he’s very good because he doesn’t stop playing, either with another band or doing his own gigs.”
This helps explain why Ronnie’s guitar work is a prominent feature of Foreign Tongues.
“When the first mix was finished, Ronnie came to my house and I played him the whole record,” reveals Mick. “I said, ‘So, what do you think Ron?’ And he said, ‘I didn’t really get any solos.’”
That comment was a classic piece of Ronnie mischief because, as Mick points out, “No one else gets a guitar solo on the record apart from Ronnie!
“I get a harmonica solo but Keith doesn’t really get a solo,” he adds before turning to his bandmate and asking, ‘Why is that, Ronnie?’ Ronnie gives a knowing smirk and says: “Keith told me, ‘Anyone can play a solo, it’s the riff that matters!’
“And I said, ‘OK, you’ve done the groundwork there but I’ve got the icing on the cake.”’
This brings us to a wider discussion about the Foreign Tongues sessions which prompts Ronnie to chip in with: “We’re much more civilised than we used to be.”
Mick picks up the thread: “I’m always the last to arrive. I’m not sure how that happens.
“We usually start about half past three and finish at about ten, having agreed the night before what we’re going to do.”
Ronnie salutes producer Andrew Watt, the live-wire American producer who helmed Hackney Diamonds and Paul McCartney’s recent album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane. “We need someone to boss us around, and Andrew did that.”
Mick interjects: “Otherwise, it would all fall to bits! So we’re very pleased that Andrew herds us into doing it.”
Ronnie comes back in with a very telling comment: “Mick never lets anything fall to bits because the Rolling Stones is his baby — and he won’t let anything destroy that.”
The Stones’ approach these days clearly has something to do with the fact they’re all sober.
Yet Foreign Tongues has drawn comparisons to 1978’s Some Girls, Ronnie’s first album as a full-time member — recorded when things were far less civilised.
For instance, the disco-inflected Jealous Lover, with Mick still able to produce his best falsetto, is reminiscent of Miss You. Elsewhere, the band summons the raw energy of Respectable or Shattered.
The frontman sifts through the mists of time to the sessions at Pathé Marconi in Paris: “In the late Seventies, I’d have to dig Ronnie and Keith out of a late-night pizza place. I’d go in there at 1am and say, ‘It’s time for the studio, lads!’
“And poor Bill Wyman [bassist] had been in the studio since six o’clock waiting for us.
“We’d get there at 2am and we’d leave at eight. We’d run into the factory workers getting their morning coffees.”
Ronnie laughs: “We played for so long back in those days that Bill would have a sleep, come back and we’d still be playing.”
With the album out tomorrow, Mick is asked about his hopes for a good reception for Foreign Tongues. It prompts a comparison with an album many regard as the Stones’ finest, released in 1972.
With 14 new songs about to be unleashed, he accepts that it’s “a lot of music” and says: “It’s longer than Exile On Main St. When that came out, reviewers generally said things like, “It’s kind of rambling and all over the place.”
“It was too much for people to take in all at once. But, from the reviews I’ve seen, we are getting very good ones [for Foreign Tongues].
The album is notable for guest appearances — Steve Winwood, The Cure’s Robert Smith and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith.
One song, the “punky” Hit Me In The Head features the late effortlessly cool Stones drummer Charlie Watts. Mick explains: “People would say, ‘Charlie’s such a subtle drummer, he loves jazz — you can hear that soft touch.
“Well, not on this one. This one sounds banging, banging, banging — very punk. We recorded it in 2021.”
In my chat with Ronnie, he talks about Paul McCartney’s bass playing on Covered In You, reprising his role on Hackney Diamonds track Bite My Head Off.
He says: “Oh Paul was so lovely. He said playing with the Stones was one of his biggest ambitions. He loved it, like a kid in a toy shop.”
He remembers how in The Beatles and Stones’ early days, he was a bystander in a band called The Birds,” but told himself that one day he would join Mick, Keith and co.
Why the Stones? “Because I’m more of a jazzer and a bluesman,” he replies. “I respected The Beatles’ music, their adventurousness, but I liked the funk and the women around the Stones.
“I thought, ‘That looks like a good job.’ Then, like a jigsaw, all the pieces fell into place.”
Finally, I beg the question: Is there’s more in the tank from the world’s greatest rock and roll band?
“There is, but what we’ve got to do is survive!” says Ronnie.
ROLLING STONES
Foreign Tongues
★★★★★
AS Mick Jagger says, this is “a lot of music.”
But over 14 tracks, the Stones have a blast.
There’s the ragged majesty of Rough And Twisted, the dance floor-primed Jealous Lover, the politically charged Mr Charm, the country twang of Ringing Hollow, the three-minute punk mayhem of Hit Me In The Head, a yearning Keith Richards lead vocal on Some Of Us and the raw delta blues of Chuck Berry’s Beautiful Delilah.
At times, it needs to be a little rougher around the edges, but this high-energy album is nothing short of a miracle from rock and roll’s great survivors.