The Cure's Robert Smith says it took some convincing -- and some booze -- to get him to play on the new Rolling Stones album Foreign Tongues.
Smith plays guitar on "Divine Intervention" and synth and backing vocals on "Never Wanna Lose You" and it all started because he'd exchanged numbers with the Stones producer Andrew Watt.
Smith told Mojo that Watt said he was working on the Stones album and “when it got nearer to the end of the session, was I interested in coming up and finally grabbing that cold beer with him?"
“He said that they’d pretty much done all the tracking and Mick [Jagger] was just left to pick up some vocal stuff. He told me the day before, ‘Mick might still be around’, and I was like, You know, That’s OK.”
When Smith showed up "I walked into the control room and through the glass, there was Mick Jagger singing, which was not what I was expecting at all.”
Smith said after few drinks he was throwing out suggestions for what Watt and Jagger were working on and that “out of nowhere [Jagger] said, ‘Do you fancy doing something on the album?’ And I was like, Whoa, hang on! And he said, ‘Oh, play a bit of guitar…’ And I was like, Well… I wasn’t really prepared for it.
“And so I, much to everyone’s astonishment, I said, No, no thanks, I can’t do that. I went up there expecting just to get drunk, really. And I wasn’t expecting to play on the Rolling Stones album.”
Smith said that Jagger eventually went home. “And then time elapsed and I said to Andrew,' Oh, come on then. Let’s plug a guitar in and I’ll have a go at some of the songs.' So I just started playing and, yeah, one thing led to another."
Foreign Tongues is due out on Friday.