How 'Steel Wheels' Brought the Rolling Stones Back from the Brink in 1989

By 1988, the Rolling Stones were effectively over. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards hadn’t spoken in months, each releasing solo albums that tanked compared to their past. Jagger’s Primitive Cool flopped; Richards’ Talk Is Cheap got better reviews but didn’t sell. The band’s 1986 album Dirty Work had been a miserable, drug-hazed slog, and the two frontmen openly despised each other.

Then Richards called Jagger, they patched things up over a beer in Barbados, and the result was Steel Wheels—the album that saved the Stones. Recorded in Montserrat and London in 1989, it leans hard into straight-ahead rock and blues, no disco or synth experiments. Songs like “Mixed Emotions” and “Rock and a Hard Place” are basically Keith and Mick yelling at each other through riffs. The album hit No. 3 in the U.S. and went double platinum, proving the public still wanted a united Stones.

The supporting tour was the massive Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour, which kicked off in August 1989 and ran through 1990. It was the first time the band had played stadiums in North America in nearly a decade, and it set the template for every mega-tour that followed: multiple stages, a giant inflatable tongue, and a setlist that balanced old hits with new material. The tour grossed over $140 million and was the highest-grossing tour of 1989. More importantly, it reminded everyone that the Rolling Stones were still a live beast, not just a nostalgia act.