{"id":1942356,"date":"2026-05-18T19:29:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T16:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1942356"},"modified":"2026-05-18T19:29:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T16:29:22","slug":"rolling-stones-tap-nathaniel-mary-quinn-for-foreign-tongues-album-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1942356","title":{"rendered":"Rolling Stones Tap Nathaniel Mary Quinn for\u00a0Foreign Tongues\u00a0Album Cover"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tNathaniel Mary Quinn still sounds a little stunned by the whole affair: Last fall, the painter was in the kitchen of his Brooklyn brownstone when he got on a three-way call with Mick Jagger and producer Andrew Watt. By the end of it, he had agreed to make the cover art for\u00a0Foreign Tongues<\/em>, the Rolling Stones\u2019 new album, due out July 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m standing in my kitchen talking to Mick Jagger,\u201d Quinn told me last week over the phone, \u201cIt was surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe resulting image, an unsettling but magnetic composite portrait that folds together the faces of Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood, now sits at the center of the Stones\u2019 global rollout for the record. Quinn also redesigned the band\u2019s famous tongue-and-lips logo for the campaign.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story started after Quinn\u2019s solo exhibition \u201cEchoes from Copeland\u201d at\u00a0Gagosian\u00a0in Chelsea last September. According to Quinn, Jagger visited the show twice. A few weeks later, Quinn\u2019s wife and studio manager, Donna Augustine Quinn, received a text from music executive Jimmy Iovine saying the Stones were looking for someone to make the new album cover. Soon after, producer Andrew Watt, who worked on both\u00a0Hackney Diamonds<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0the new album,\u00a0Foreign Tongues<\/em>, reached out as well. Then came the phone call with Jagger.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy first vision was to create an amalgamation of all of your faces into one flesh,\u201d Quinn said he told the singer. Jagger immediately replied: \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what I was thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe band played Quinn three unreleased tracks from the album during that first conversation to help inspire the work. \u201cThey felt that if I could hear some of the music, maybe it could generate ideas,\u201d Quinn said. \u201cAnd it did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the next nine months, Quinn stayed in regular contact with Jagger and Richards, speaking with them roughly every two weeks while developing the image. He studied photographs of the band members closely for the composite painting, pulling from Richards\u2019s trademark headband, Wood\u2019s hair and nose, and, naturally, Jagger\u2019s lips.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt one point, Richards invited Quinn to a private rehearsal session in Lower Manhattan. Quinn brought along a close friend, then spent the evening watching Richards jam with local musicians before sitting down with the guitarist between sets to hear stories about the Stones\u2019 early years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s just a lovely, down-to-earth human being,\u201d Quinn said of Richards. \u201cIt\u2019s all about the music with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA few weeks later, Quinn met Jagger for lunch at the Baccarat Hotel across from the Museum of Modern Art. Over coffee, the pair discussed family, London, race, and the Black American musicians who inspired the Stones.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll of our music is influenced by Black American music,\u201d Quinn recalled Jagger telling him. \u201cWe studied those musicians. We wanted to be like them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nathaniel Mary Quinn\u2019s Stones Tongue <\/em>(2026), his rendition of The Rolling Stones\u2019 famous logo. \u00a9 Nathaniel Mary Quinn. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tNot every part of the process was straightforward. Quinn said Jagger initially worried that the first painting looked \u201ca little scary\u201d and asked him to produce a second option which wound up featuring the three band members getting out of a vintage sports car. Quinn finished the second picture, but in the end the band unanimously chose the original composite portrait.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe artist still owns both paintings, and, more importantly, retains the copyright.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe whole arragement required months of negotiations between Quinn\u2019s representatives and the Stones\u2019 legal team over licensing and usage rights. Quinn credited his wife with making sure the artist retained ownership while allowing the band to use the image for the album campaign.<\/p>\n

\n\tThings escalated quickly once the rollout began. Elton John, who already owned Quinn\u2019s work, FaceTimed him after seeing the cover reveal. \u201cYou\u2019ve made album covers cool again!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen came the launch event in Williamsburg, where Conan O\u2019Brien interviewed Jagger, Richards, and Wood onstage beneath Quinn\u2019s artwork and redesigned tongue logo. Before the event started, Quinn said Leonardo DiCaprio walked up to him and jokingly claimed credit for the entire collaboration.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDon\u2019t believe anybody else,\u201d Quinn recalled the actor saying. \u201cI\u2019m the guy who told Mick Jagger you should do the cover.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the event, O\u2019Brien asked Quinn about the painting directly, prompting Jagger to publicly praise the artist from the stage. For Quinn, the moment still feels difficult to process. \u201cMan,\u201d he said, \u201cMick Jagger gave me a tribute in front of all those people. It was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1_60586f.jpg?w=1024″] Nathaniel Mary Quinn still sounds a little stunned by the whole affair: Last fall, the painter was in the kitchen of his Brooklyn brownstone when he got on a three-way call with Mick Jagger and producer Andrew Watt. By the end of it, he had agreed to make the cover art for\u00a0Foreign […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1942356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1942356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1942356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1942356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1942356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}