Unlike Paul McCartney, Blur and other U.K. bands, the Rolling Stones won't be playing the London Olympics this year. "I didn't think, to be honest, we were quite stage ready," says Mick Jagger in a new interview with ITN to mark the band's 50th anniversary of their first gig. "We haven't played in a long time and we weren't really stage-ready, and it's a very big gig and it's very risk-taking. I didn't think the band themselves felt they were really ready to do it at this point."
Jagger did note that the Stones aim to return to the stage soon to celebrate their anniversary. "We hope we're going to do some gigs this year," said Jagger. "We haven't actually finalized them, but we hope we're going to do some gigs. We've done rehearsing, hanging out together and all that discussing so you know we've been seeing eachother quite a lot."
Meanwhile, guitarist Keith Richards spoke with the BBC about the milestone, which the Stones will celebrate today with a photo exhibition at Somerset House in London to preview their new book, ROLLING STONES: 50. "Nobody ever expected anything like this," Richards said of the band's remarkable half-century run. "Especially in those days, a band was likely to live two or three years. you hoped for a good time and that was that."
For more Stones anniversary viewing material, here's a Sky News segment featuring conversations with both Mick and Keith, as the two talk separately about their working relationship and early antics.
