The Rolling Stones Release Foreign Tongues, and the Open-Tuning Interplay Behind Richards and Wood's Guitars

The Rolling Stones released their 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, today via Polydor Records in the UK and Capitol Records in the US (Wikipedia). Produced by Andrew Watt, who also helmed 2023's Hackney Diamonds, the 14-track record runs just over an hour and arrives with guest spots from Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, the Cure's Robert Smith, and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith (Rolling Stone).

NME's review, published the day before release and updated for launch, called it "a fresh and fluent follow-up to Hackney Diamonds" and awarded it 3.5 out of 5 (NME). Rolling Stone's review, filed weeks ahead of release, called the record "more guitar-centric and holistically Stones-y" than its predecessor, singling out Richards's own "Some of Us" and a closing cover of Chuck Berry's "Beautiful Delilah" that reunites Jagger and Richards with the song that first brought them together as kids at Dartford train station.

The album's most poignant credit belongs to a drummer who never heard the finished record. Foreign Tongues carries a recording with Charlie Watts, cut in Los Angeles in 2021 shortly before his death that August, on the track "Hit Me in the Head," which Rolling Stone described as a "Hang Fire"-style death wish built around his playing (Rolling Stone). It's the same session that fed several tracks on Hackney Diamonds, and it means Watts, who anchored the band for 58 years on a small Gretsch jazz kit, appears on Rolling Stones records released years after his passing.

Steve Jordan, who stepped in when Watts withdrew from the band's 2021 tour and has drummed on both albums made with Andrew Watt since, plays the rest of the record. NME notes this is the band's "second venture with both Grammy-winning producer Andrew Watt and replacement sticksman Steve Jordan," a sign the post-Watts lineup has settled in (NME).

At the album's May 5, 2026 launch, a listening party and Q&A hosted by Conan O'Brien at Brooklyn's Weylin, host and guitarists got into the mechanics of the band's guitar sound. Asked how his own tuning preference clicks with his six-string partner's, Ronnie Wood laid out the tuning math behind six decades of interlocking Stones riffs: "In my Faces days I always played open E, and Keith always played in open G. Somewhere in the middle, there's this sort of mesh that we call the ancient form of weaving. Sometimes we cross accidentally" (Guitar World).

The two tunings are close relatives. Open E (E-B-E-G#-B-E) and open G (D-G-D-G-B-D on a full six-string set) both ring a major chord on the open strings, a whole step apart. Keith Richards's version goes a step further: he removes the low E string from his Telecasters entirely and tunes the remaining five G-D-G-B-D, the setup behind "Brown Sugar," "Honky Tonk Women," and "Start Me Up." Richards, for his part, told O'Brien the two guitarists don't need to discuss it: "We know where and when to play without thinking about it or talking about it" (Guitar World).

Richards's five-string rig is a long-documented Ernie Ball setup: a custom five-string set in roughly the .011 to .042 range with a wound third string, not a stock Regular Slinky pack, since there's no low E to string up. Full sourcing on his tuning, his Micawber Telecaster, and his string gauges lives on his CYS profile and in our breakdown of his five-string open-G setup.