Pine joins Jagger as the Stones return to the studio

The session came only weeks after Foreign Tongues hit number one — with no confirmation yet of a follow-up, and the live picture still pointed at 2027.

Saxophonist Courtney Pine has revealed he recorded with Mick Jagger for The Rolling Stones only a couple of weeks ago.

Pine had previously played saxophone on Jagger’s 1993 solo album Wandering Spirit. The session follows the July 2026 release of the Stones’ 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, which became their fifteenth UK number one. There is no official confirmation that the new recordings are for a follow-up album. On record, the facts are narrower: Pine was in with Jagger, the work was for the Rolling Stones, and it happened during a stretch when the singer had already said he was writing again.

That writing remark from Jagger came in June 2026, before Foreign Tongues reached the shops. It left the door open to further studio time once the new record was out. Pine’s account now gives a concrete recent date to that possibility without settling what the tapes are for.

Weeks after a chart-topper

For a band still adding to a catalogue this deep, a return to the studio within weeks of a UK number one is a clear signal of intent even while paperwork remains quiet. Foreign Tongues gave the Stones another chart-topping studio set and a fifteenth UK number one to stand beside the rest of the run. Whether the session with Pine feeds a twenty-sixth studio album, a one-off, or material that simply remains unreleased is not yet public. The absence of a band or label statement on that point is part of the story: the only firm claim is Pine’s.

His history with Jagger runs back more than three decades to Wandering Spirit, so the collaboration is not new. It does place a named player in the frame at a moment when the next studio chapter had been spoken of only in general terms. The gap between a finished album campaign and new recording dates is often long; here it has been short, and that brevity is what makes the disclosure land.

The road still waiting

Live work remains a separate question. The Rolling Stones scrapped UK and European stadium tour plans for 2026 after Keith Richards could not commit. Jagger has expressed hope for shows in 2027 and for another Glastonbury appearance. Ronnie Wood, speaking earlier in October, said he would be ready when the others say go.

That was the touring picture before Pine’s comments and remains so. A studio session does not unlock a stadium run on its own. It does show that, while Richards’s availability continues to shape what can be booked, Jagger has kept the musical side moving — writing through the summer and cutting with Pine only weeks after Foreign Tongues landed.

Readers who followed Wood’s remarks at the start of October will recognise the same unresolved tension: drive on one side of the band, caution on the other, and no firm 2027 routing yet published. The Pine session adds a recent date to the studio side of that ledger without closing the live one. Appetite for the road and activity in the studio are running on related but distinct clocks.

What comes next is still unannounced. No release schedule has been attached to the new recordings, and no tour poster has replaced the abandoned 2026 stadium plan. For now the facts are those Pine has put on the record: he was in with Jagger for the Stones a couple of weeks ago, the tapes exist, and the rest — album or not, road or not — waits on the band.