Rock of ages: Rolling Stones to record new album next year, says Keith Richards

The Rolling Stones plan to record a new album next year, the band’s 30th studio set and its first in more than a decade, lead guitarist Keith Richards says.

In a live radio interview on Tuesday night to promote the upcoming release of his own solo album, “Crosseyed Heart”, the 71-year-old rock icon said he and his bandmates - Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood - were ready to return to the studio.

“I was in London last week, and the boys and I got together, and yeah, there are now definitely plans to record,” Richards said during the iHeartRadio broadcast. The studio session would follow the Stones’ planned South American tour early next year.

The resulting album would mark the longest interval - at least 11 years - between new studio sets by the Stones, whose last album of freshly recorded material was the 2005 release “A Bigger Bang”.

Richards, who was touring North America with the band until mid-July, is due to release “Crosseyed Heart”, his first solo album in more than 20 years, today.