Richards apologizes to Jagger.
It’s all over now. For now. Keith Richards has apologized to longtime bandmate Mick Jagger for saying the 74-year- old Rolling Stones frontman needed a vasectomy. Richards made the apology public through social media. “I deeply regret the comments I made about Mick in the ( Wall Street Journal) which were completely out of line. I have of course apologized to him in person,” tweeted the Rolling Stones guitarist.
In the WSJ article published Wednesday, Richards jokingly said Jagger needed to go under the knife after fathering his eighth child. Jagger was 73 when girlfriend Melanie Hamrick gave birth to their son, Deveraux, in December 2016.
“Mick’s a randy old bastard,” Richards said in the article. “It’s time for the snip —you can’t be a father at that age. Those poor kids!” Jagger’s first child, daughter Karis, was born in 1970.
He is also a grandfather to five, and a greatgrandfather to one.
The Rolling Stones have endured Jagger and Richards’ love-hate relationship for more than five decades, and things got most rocky in the 1980s when tensions between the two kept the band off the road for eight years. Things have thawed since then, and the band recently announced additional dates to its “No Filter” tour through Europe.
Lost in the vasectomy brouhaha was Richards’ latest slight at Taylor Swift. “Good luck girl — wish her well while it lasts,” Richards said. It wasn’t the first time Richards, 74, questioned 28-year- old pop star’s longevity. In 2015, he called Swift and Justin Bieber the “flavor of the month.”
“I’ve just been around too long to be picking the bones out of kids,” Richards told WSJ. “It wouldn’t be fair of me and I’ve always been an opinionated bastard anyway. And I never did really like pop music — even when I became pop music, I was listening to the blues and jazz and not interested in the hits.”
Swift performed with the Rolling Stones in 2013, and dueted with Jagger on “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in 2015. She has referred to the band as a big influence in her music, according to the Huffington Post.