In 1997, Mick Jagger asked: ‘Our last tour?’ Keith’s answer nailed it

No one stops Manhattan traffic, especially during a typically frantic weekday. But apparently the rules are different for the Rolling Stones.

It’s late in the northern summer of 1997 and I’m standing under the Brooklyn Bridge, at the time the kind of place you’d only visit on a bet. (A losing bet, at that.) I’m among a smallish crowd of media – reporters from TV, print, radio and some new thing called the World Wide Web – all of us trying to work out exactly why we’ve been summoned to such a sketchy part of the city. No one had been told in advance what’s going on. All we knew was where to be and when.

The Rolling Stones, then mere 50-somethings, announce their “Bridges to Babylon” tour beneath the Brooklyn Bridge in 1997. From left: Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ron Wood. Credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Then, a large video screen flickers into life, as the whirring sound of a chopper can be heard in the distance. Projected on the screen is a cherry-red 1955 Cadillac, currently crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, a police escort leading the way. Seated in the car are Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood, all decked out in sartorial splendour (well, three of them are – I’ll get to that).

I then described them as “the four oldest teenagers on the planet”, but with Thursday’s news of the release of a new Stones album, Hackney Diamonds, the title doesn’t quite work any more. The surviving trio of Jagger, Richards and Wood are now 80, 79 and 76 respectively.

Back in Brooklyn, 1997, before you could air-guitar the riff to Satisfaction, the Stones are pulling up in front us and alighting from their Caddy. Now it’s all starting to make some sense. There’d been word for a while of yet another Stones album, this one known as Bridges to Babylon – hence the Brooklyn Bridge – which, as we quickly grasp, is also the name of their coming tour. It’s time to spread the gospel according to Mick, Keith and co.

Mick Jagger, then a sprightly 54, is in a typically chatty mood. Rather than wait for questions from the throng, he grabs the mic and plays interviewer while wandering through the crowd. “Before getting into music, I always fancied myself as a tough, original investigative reporter,” he announces in the curious mixture of posh and prole that is his speaking voice.

Jagger gets the jump on the rest of us when he asks the others in the band, “Is this your last tour, then?” Both of the band’s previous jaunts in the 1990s – the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle roadshow and the year-long Voodoo Lounge tour – had stirred up whispers that it was the end of the road. After all, they’d been together since 1962 and most of their peers were done and dusted by now.

Keith Richards is having none of it. Was this their last tour? “Yeah,” he mumbles, “this and the next five.”

Speaking of Keef, he’s always been the outlier in the band and today that’s unmistakable. While his bandmates Wood, Jagger and Watts are in smart Savile Row gear, looking sharp, Richards is dressed for the street in dark jeans, a leather jacket and a Bob Marley T-shirt, a lengthy black-and-white scarf wrapped around his wrist. A lit ciggie dangles from his lips. Richards’ look is equal parts pirate and rebellious 53-year-old rocker.

Jagger plays to the audience. When asked why they’d chosen to launch the tour in New York, he flashes his Cheshire-cat grin and says, “Because you’re the best press in the world.” Richards opts to be more reflective. When called on to describe the chemistry between drummer Watts and newish bassist Darryl Jones, Keith looks to the heavens and replies: “It’s a bit hydrogen, a bit oxygen.”

Traffic stoppers: the Rolling Stones on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1997, on their way to announce the start of their “Bridges to Babylon” world tour.Credit: AP, Kevin Mazur, HO

What about the skull ring he wears? What’s the meaning of that? “Beauty is skin-deep, baby. This is what we all really look like,” offers the man known as the Human Riff. And how about his songs, which he sometimes called his “babies” – how does he come to write them? “You don’t write them,” Richards explains, sort of. “They come to you. It’s a thing you gotta do. You receive. You transmit.”

Barely 15 minutes in and it’s all over. The Stones smile, wave, climb back into their Caddy and return to the road, where they now appear poised to return, some 26 years on, albeit without the late, great Charlie Watts.

Oh, and by the way, during the entire press conference, Charlie utters just one word: “Yeah.”

Jeff Apter’s latest book is Don’t Dream It’s Over: The Remarkable Life of Neil Finn.