The Stones return, more than 60 years after their arrival, with an irresistible slice of vintage rock’n’roll.

I first saw and heard The Rolling Stones singing Brown Sugar on Top of the Pops back in 1971 and I loved them.

They had been making hit records for the best part of a decade by then. And if you’d asked me – or them – whether they would still be at it 55 years later, we would all probably have laughed at the very idea.

And yet…

Here they are, in their eighties, still rocking and rolling like the self-styled greatest rock and roll band in the world they always claimed to be. And here I am, still loving it.

Their new single, Rough And Twisted, is archetypal and quintessential Stones, kicking off with Richards and Wood’s duelling guitars. You instantly know it’s them.

First comes one of those effortlessly simple guitar riffs coming out of one speaker, quickly joined by the FILTHY blast of another guitar from the other.

Then they faill into a bluesy sort of embrace before Jagger – and you know immediately that it’s Jagger – yells “Yeaaah… Whydontcha driiiiive meh… dahn that roughantwisted roooad.”

You can almost see him pouting and strutting, one hand on his hip, the other throwing away some imaginary object.

It’s classic Stones, in other words. The kind of classic Stones you’d get if you had input their entire life’s work into AI and told it to come up with a classic Stones single.

Maybe they did; I hope not.

I know it’s fashionable to knock the Stones for their old-fashioned approach to the almost redundant art form of “rock’n’roll” but there’s always been a place for it and there always will be.

And thank goodness for that.

I’ve seen them at least half a dozen times, in places ranging from giant American stadiums to the tiny 100 Club in London, and I’ve got all their albums.

And whatever you may think of them, you’ve got to hand it to a band that still makes headlines on the TV news simply for announcing a new album or tour – a tribute to their enduring legend (and the enduring PR skills of Bernard Doherty).

This comes from what will be the band’s 25th studio recording, Foreign Tongues, and like its predecessor Hackney Diamonds, which also kicked off with a classic single – Angry – I shall probably play it at least once or twice.

I’ll love the single (I did as soon as it was put out as a limited-edition promo by ‘The Cockroaches’), I’ll think the album is really good in some parts, and I’ll really cringe in other parts (did we need a Jagger-Gaga duet?), and then I’ll probably forget all about it.

But this tune will keep me going. Until the next one.