Mick Jagger explains what The Rolling Stones do if they ‘dread’ playing a song

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With a backlog as big as The Rolling Stones‘, there’s every chance an all-time great can slip out of the setlist for good.

But there are songs that even the band aren’t all that keen on returning to, and while there was no specific track mentioned by frontman Mick Jagger, he did once share what they do if they’re not feeling it. While the band has consistently performed the likes of Let It Bleed, Start Me Up, and You Can’t Always Get What You Want live, their last tour in 2024 had the band swap out a handful of songs. Some were offered to fans as special choices for just one or two shows, while others remained in the setlist for the whole tour. The band has a somewhat democratic view for their setlist, with the “natural conservatism” often winning out when it comes to the hits-filled setlist.

Jagger has gone on record as saying that if the band aren’t wanting to perform a song, they simply drop it from their set. Asked in 1999 what the band do if they “dread” playing songs like Miss You, Jagger said: “Nah, if I really dread them then we drop them basically.” It’s as simple as that for The Rolling Stones, who last toured in 2024 and are seemingly unlikely to get back on the road again.

Fellow band members Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards have since explained how the full setlist comes together, with hundreds of songs to choose from and not enough time to perform them all. 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 on 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.”