Keith Richards says The Rolling Stones would ‘break’ Mick Jagger when putting setlist together

Veteran guitarist and long-serving member of The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, has explained how the band would “break” Mick Jagger with setlist changes.

Richards made it no secret that he and Jagger disagree often on which songs feature in The Rolling Stones’ shows, with a “natural conservatism” from the long-serving frontman often winning out over deep cuts from the band. Speaking in the According to The Rolling Stones book, Richards would detail how songs are chosen from show to show. Ronnie Wood also weighed in on the situation, citing the Forty Licks tour as an example of how the band would bring out the best in one another by performing a different setlist night to night when celebrating their anniversary compilation album.

Wood said: “On the Forty Licks tour, we changed the set list every night, throwing in songs and often going back to the drawing board; Keith would say, ‘Oh shit, get my five-string in here, we’re going to revise this one.’ We all got off on the challenge of a new surprise every day.

“The variety and the choice of the songs helped contribute to keeping the liveliness of the band alight, plus the fact that we were still doing a soundcheck before every new show. Wherever we are in the world, Chuck Leavell is able to look at his notes and tell us which songs we played in that city the previous time and the times before that.”

Richards added: “In general I let Mick decide the set lists because he’s the one who has to sing the songs, and his decision depends on how he feels on any particular day, but sometimes if I thought he was flaking me, I would push him. I’d have to make a decision between Mick’s natural conservatism and the fact that the band would get bored if there wasn’t enough variety.

“The band would always play the setlist as well as they could, but we didn’t rehearse 145 songs in Toronto in order to play only thirty of them mon the road. It was a matter of working out how to break Mick out of his shell.

“For instance, Mick would want to open the shows with Start Me Up because he’d say it was totally obvious, and I would say, ‘Yeah, that’s what’s wrong with it, it is totally obvious!’ that is the difference between our brains. That’s Mick and me.”

Wood, Richards, and Jagger will return with their latest studio album, Foreign Tongues, in July. The band has currently not announced a tour to promote the album, with rumours over a scrapped 2025 tour lingering. Whether The Rolling Stones head out on tour again is yet to be seen.