Rolling Stones Heading to Studio to ‘Get the Feel Again’

With the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Rolling Stones fast approaching, speculation about what the band might or might not do to commemorate the date continues. The guitarist Ronnie Wood offered some tantalizing hints on Monday, saying that the group would go into a recording studio later this month “to just bat some ideas around” and “get the feel again.”

Mr. Wood, who joined the Stones in 1975 after the departure of Mick Taylor, spoke to reporters at a news conference in New York at the opening of an exhibition of his paintings, “Faces, Time and Places.” Mr. Wood is the junior member of the band, and his opinions carry less weight than those of Mick Jagger or Keith Richards, who have traditionally supplied the group’s material and direction, but in the context of the Stones’ complicated internal politics Mr. Wood is close to Mr. Richards and often shares his views.

Whether or not the 50th anniversary might be accompanied by a recording of new studio material, which would be the first since “A Bigger Bang” in 2005, was not clear from Mr. Wood’s remarks. But he suggested that a tour might be in the offing, its date yet to be determined.

“It’s like working out for the Olympics or something,” he said of preparations for going on the road, according to The Associated Press. “You’ve got to go into training. So we’re going to go into training.”

Exactly when the 50th anniversary actually occurs is a matter of some debate. The band first played together as the Rollin’ Stones on July 12, 1962, according to two books written by its former bass player Bill Wyman. But that configuration featured only three members of the ensemble that would record the first single, Chuck Berry’s “Come On,” backed by Willie Dixon’s “I Want to Be Loved,” in May 1963: Mr. Wyman joined the band in December 1962, and the drummer Charlie Watts signed on a month later.

Theoretically then, the Stones could, if they so desired, milk any 50th-anniversary commemoration well into 2013; sometime this fall, a documentary tracing the band’s history is scheduled to be released. But in separate interviews with Rolling Stone published last month, Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards suggested that a tour this year was unlikely because the band is rusty; 2013 would be “more realistic,” Mr. Richards said.

That article also noted that the Stones gathered in a studio in London in December to play together for the first time since August 2007. Among those taking part was Mr. Wyman, who left the band in 1992 with an acrimonious blast at Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards that was amplified in his autobiography, “Stone Alone.”

Both Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards, who suffered a head injury while on vacation in Fiji in 2006, have performed in public recently, as if whetting their appetite for more live shows. Mr. Jagger sang at the White House in February alongside B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Jeff Beck at a celebration of the blues, and Mr. Richards, who has also been working on a solo record, joined Eric Clapton at the Apollo Theater that month in a memorial concert for the influential blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin.

So something appears to be up. As definitive proof there’s a message the Stones posted on their Web site on March 29, titled “The Rolling Stones need your help”: “Dear Rolling Stones fans, We’re gearing up to celebrate our 50th anniversary with a lot of exciting plans, and we’d appreciate your help with some of them. Have you got any interesting photos, videos or audio of the band or band members?” The post ended by saying that “it’s been a wild ride, and there’s plenty more to come.”