NEW YORK • A Rolling Stone gathers no... babies.
But Keith Richards has now back-tracked from that sentiment, apologising to bandmate Mick Jagger on Wednesday after the guitarist suggested that the singer needed a vasectomy.
Richards had told The Wall Street Journal Magazine that Jagger is a randy old man.
"It's time for the snip - you can't be a father at that age. Those poor kids," he said.
Richards, 74, later tweeted that "I deeply regret the comments I made about Mick in the WSJ which were completely out of line", adding that he had also said sorry to Jagger in person.
The singer in December 2016 became a father for the eighth time, when he was 73.
His son, Deveraux Jagger, was born to his girlfriend Melanie Hamrick, a ballerina in New York who is four decades his junior.
The Stones have endured despite decades of hard-living and internal tumult. In 2010, Richards published a memoir, Life, in which he derided Jagger as a needy prima donna and said the other bandmates mocked him as "Her Majesty".
The latest incident comes just after the Stones announced a new tour of Europe to begin on May 17 in Dublin.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
