Rolling Stones Tap Nathaniel Mary Quinn For Foreign Tongues Album Cover

Nathaniel Mary Quinn's latest commission began, improbably, in his Brooklyn kitchen. Last fall, the painter found himself on a three-way call with Mick Jagger and producer Andrew Watt, and by the end of the conversation he had agreed to create the cover art for Foreign Tongues, the Rolling Stones' new album, due out July 10.

The resulting image is not a conventional band portrait. Quinn built an unsettling, magnetic composite that fuses the faces of Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood into a single figure. He also redesigned the Rolling Stones' famous tongue-and-lips logo for the campaign, extending the project beyond the album sleeve itself.

The commission grew out of Quinn's solo exhibition“Echoes from Copeland” at Gagosian in Chelsea last September. According to Quinn, Jagger visited the show twice. A few weeks later, Quinn's wife and studio manager, Donna Augustine Quinn, received a text from music executive Jimmy Iovine saying the Stones were looking for an artist for the new album cover. Soon after, Watt, who worked on both Hackney Diamonds and Foreign Tongues, reached out as well.

Quinn said he told Jagger that his first idea was to merge all three musicians into one flesh. Jagger, he recalled, answered immediately:“That's exactly what I was thinking.” During that first call, the band played Quinn three unreleased tracks from the album, giving him an early sense of its mood.

Over the next nine months, Quinn stayed in regular contact with Jagger and Richards, speaking with them roughly every two weeks as he developed the painting. He studied photographs closely, drawing on Richards's headband, Wood's hair and nose, and Jagger's lips. At one point, Richards invited Quinn to a private rehearsal in Lower Manhattan, where the artist watched him jam with local musicians before hearing stories about the Stones' early years.

Quinn also met Jagger for lunch at the Baccarat Hotel across from the Museum of Modern Art, where the two discussed family, London, race, and the Black American musicians who shaped the band's sound. Quinn recalled Jagger saying,“All of our music is influenced by Black American music. We studied those musicians. We wanted to be like them.”

The process was not entirely smooth. Quinn said Jagger initially found the first painting“a little scary” and asked for a second option, which showed the three band members getting out of a vintage sports car. Quinn completed that work, but the band ultimately chose the original composite portrait. He still owns both paintings and, crucially, retains the copyright.

That ownership was the result of months of negotiations between Quinn's representatives and the Stones' legal team over licensing and usage rights. Quinn credited his wife with helping ensure that the artist kept control of the work while allowing the band to use it for the campaign.

The rollout has already gathered momentum. Elton John, who owns Quinn's work, FaceTimed the artist after seeing the cover reveal and told him,“You've made album covers cool again!” A launch event in Williamsburg followed, where Conan O'Brien interviewed Jagger, Richards, and Wood. For Quinn, the project marks a rare meeting point between contemporary painting and one of rock's most recognizable visual identities - and it arrives with the artist still holding the work that made it possible.

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