This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Rolling Stones have been rocking together for a half century but the legendary tensions between Keith Richards and Mick Jagger look to be very much alive.



Richards has apologised to his bandmate after the guitarist suggested that the fecund frontman needed a vasectomy.

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“Mick’s a randy old bastard,” Richards told the Wall Street Journal Magazine.

“It’s time for the snip – you can’t be a father at that age. Those poor kids!”

Jagger in December 2016 became a father for the eighth time at the age of 73. His son, Deveraux Jagger, was born to his girlfriend Melanie Hamrick, a ballerina in New York who is four decades his junior.

“I deeply regret the comments I made about Mick in the WSJ which were completely out of line,” Richards wrote on Twitter, saying he also apologised to Jagger in person.

The Stones have endured despite decades of hard living and internal tumult.

In 2010 Richards published a memoir, Life, in which he openly derided Jagger as a needy prima donna and said the other bandmates mocked Mick as “Her Majesty”. Richards even cast doubt on Jagger’s private parts, saying the swaggering singer had a “tiny todger”.

The latest incident comes just after the Stones – some of the highest-earning musicians on the live circuit – announced a new tour leg of Europe to begin on 17 May in Dublin.