The Rolling Stones Calling It Quits? Reports Of Farewell Tour

Sure as the sun will rise and fall, as the tides will come and go, so shall The Rolling Stones gather no moss.

If it’s not a proverb, it should be. Rock’s foremost institution are currently winding through their fiftieth year together as a band, but rumours are beginning to circulate that there’s only one more tour left in them before they retire from the live arena permanently.

NME has encouraged speculation from tabloid reports that the Stones will be using a tipped headline slot at next year’s Glastonbury Festival to bow out from touring. The British rockers have never headlined the summer music event, and if rumours turn out to be true, it could be their first and last time.

UK’s Sunday Mirror also indicated that a “source close to the band” has indicated that the Glastonbury appearance will be the last in a “handful of shows of shows in Britain and America in 2013.” A tour that will mark the band’s 50th anniversary, currently being commemorated with a free photo exhibition at London’s Somerset House.

The exhibition will showcase rare and previously unseen images across a display of live photography and studio documentation. A book collecting the images, simply entitled The Rolling Stones: 50 will be released to coincide with the exhibition.

Meanwhile, the ‘source’ also disclosed that, “all four members have agreed that next year is the right time to have one final hurrah and put on the gig of their lives. It’s a case of now or never, and obviously Glastonbury is the most important festival on the circuit. Everybody’s incredibly excited… it’s a final bow.”

If The Stones are indeed planning another tour, it will mark their first extended trip since the massive “A Bigger Bang” tour that stretched for two years between August 2005 – August 2007 across 30 countries. It eventually became the second highest grossing tour of all-time, earning over $US 550 million, second only to U2′s “360″ tour.

Though none of the band or its representatives have yet commented on the rumours, it seems possible that the Stones would hang up their touring duties considering they’re all creeping into their seventies. Then again, they’re proud with their status as rock’s oldest functioning dinosaurs…

Could a Glastonbury appearance from Jagger, Richards, Watts, Wood and co. really be the last time? Well, in the words of their own 1965 hit “Maybe the last time/I don’t know.”