Ah, cool. Now I want to listen toooooo...see if I agree...

And some reviews have raved about both Whole Wide World and Driving me too hard. LIES imho was low point on Some Girls and yet still really liked it a lot. It’s opinions and the general critical consensus is that it’s good.

It’s 2023 and the Rolling Stones Have Made a Record You’ll Want to Play More Than Once. Seriously.

They haven't sounded this on top of their game in about half a century.

By David Browne
October 9, 2023


Mark Seliger

Not counting their blues covers record from 2016, the last time the Rolling Stones bequeathed us with an album of fresh material was during George W. Bush’s presidency. That record, 2006’s A Bigger Bang, was feisty but not especially memorable, and in the nearly two decades since, maybe even they started to wonder if we needed another record by them. If the Stones were going to drag themselves (and us) through the process again, and after such a long gap, they also must have known they’d have to make it worth everyone’s while. Shockingly, they have. A collection of bangers (old-school division) that nobody in their right mind had a right to expect in 2023, Hackney Diamonds isn’t just another new Stones album but a vibrant and cohesive record–the first Stones album in ages you’ll want to crank more than once before filing away.

Whether it’s a first-time Stones producer (Andrew Wyatt), bits of technological wizardry, or simply a desire to remind us why we cared about them in the first place, they haven’t sound this brisk and focused in what feels like a half century. Keith Richards’ and Ron Wood’s guitars are crisp and uncluttered, with most of the slovenly strumming of the past banished. Depending on the song, Mick Jagger sounds snappish, peeved, needy or insouciant, with lyrics and a more pronounced British accent to match: In the sputtery single “Angry,” he spits out, “It hasn’t rained in a month, the river’s run dry/We haven’t made love and I wanna know why.” Not exactly rock poetry, true, but he also hasn’t sounded this engaged with the songs since the heyday of the cassette. “Depending on You” could have been one of those draggy ballads that have made their way onto later Stones albums, but Jaggers wails as if he wants the whole world to hear him.

When all those elements come together, a fountain of musical youth miraculously emerges. Toward the end of “Live By the Sword,” one of two tracks they made with drummer Charlie Watts before his passing in 2021, Jagger snarls as the guitars tear it up around him, and you’d hardly think it was the 21st century. With Wyatt burnishing their sound just enough, songs that could have easily been rote feel revitalized. “Mess It Up” finds Jagger awkwardly trying to connect with anyone under 30 who’s barely heard of the Stones: “You share my photos with all your friends/You put them out there, it don’t make no sense,” he grouses, then complains about his lover stealing his “codes.” (Dude, we think the term is “passwords,” unless you have access to a nuclear arsenal and you’re not telling us.) But the combination of his swooping delivery and Watts’ percussive swing elevates the song, which has a slippery dance-music kick to it. It’s also representative of the way that some of these songs balance Jagger’s popism and Richards’ rockism in a more seamless way than on records like Bridges to Babylon.

Steve Jordan, the longtime X-Pensive Winos member who’s taken Watts’ place on the road, plays on the majority of the record. Jordan hits his kit harder than Watts ever did, but his contributions aren’t as jarring as they could have been. The album’s most ambitious track, “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” throws everything against the wall: a gradually swelling honky-tonk-gospel arrangement, Jagger ruminating on people going hungry and satisfying his own material thirst, Stevie Wonder rolling along on piano, and Lady Gaga whopping it up for added fervor. Even Richards rouses himself. Ever since his Some Girls highlight “Before They Make Me Run,” his requisite solo cut on every Stones album has felt increasingly slight. But “Tell Me Straight,” which builds on a shadowy, skeletal riff that wouldn’t have been out of place on a Nineties grunge record, is as taut as the rest of the album, and he too sounds invested in every word, avoiding the slurry delivery of the past.

What you won’t find much of here is the late-in-life introspection heard in recent records by some of the Stones’ peers. We’ve arrived at a fascinating period in rock history, when aging boomer rockers aren’t just dragging themselves onstage but continuing to write songs — uncharted territory for them and us. In a first for that generation, we get to hear what‘s on the minds of Bob Dylan, Neil Young Paul McCartney, Paul Simon or Judy Collins as they approach or enter their eighties — in songs that confront mortality, look back over tumultuous lives or recent history, and occasionally rant about the state of the planet or politics.

Here and there on Hackney Diamonds, Jagger indulges in contemplative moments of his own. “The streets I used to walk on are full of broken glass/And everywhere I’m looking, there’s memories of the past,” he sings in “Whole Wide World,” which welds zig-zagging guitar parts with lyrics meant to buck us up during troubled times. Looking to get away from it all in the country shuffle “Dreamy Skies,” he longs for an old AM radio and a Hank Williams record.

Those expressions are about as deep as it gets. Jagger is still partial to songs with choruses like “I wanna get close to you” or “You’ll think I’ll mess it up for you.” It feels like a bit of a lost opportunity: Don’t you want to know what’s going on in Jagger’s head? Instead, in “Bite Your Head Off,” which feels like a grumpier-old-men update of “Get Off My Cloud,” he rages, “Ain’t on a leash/Well, I ain’t on a chain/You think I’m your bitch/I’m @#$%& with your brain.” (He seems more natural singing, “If you wanna get rich, better sit on the board,” in “Live By the Sword.”)

But with a relatively unobtrusive Paul McCartney contributing bass, “Bite Your Head off” winds up a kicky musical spitball, and the Richards and Wood raveup at the end is the best sort of sonic rollercoaster ride. The album’s closer—Jagger and Richards alone, playing Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ Stone,” here called “Rolling Stone Blues”—has a palpable and obvious full-circle feel to it. But maybe they’re right. Whether this is their last album or not, maybe songs like “Bite Your Head Off” are the way we want to remember them, and rock itself.

[www.rollingstone.com]

Oh yes, so according to ROLLING STONE review, it is best for a half century, so I guess "since EXILE". But the writer uses about the half of the review complaining that one cannot find there much "the late-in-the life introspection" as one does from from the albums of some of their peers. A disappointed baby boomer?

Something in the world never changes: ROLLING STONE continues the series of their awful Stones albums reviews... But even in their own criteria, that was a very weak effort...

- Doxa



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2023-10-09 20:04 by Doxa.

Boy is Rolling Stone a joke now.
The critic liked the record a lot but his insight into this bands career and catalogue is as limited as a reviewer from PEOPLE magazine. Anyone remember when Dave Marsh called Some Girls a good album but bashed it by saying it shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same sentence as Exile? It kind of tells you something about age. At 16 I thought Dave Marsh was wrong all the way. Some Girls was much better than Exile. In hindsight Marsh was right. Lol.

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Doxa
Oh yes, so according to ROLLING STONE review, it is best for a half century, so I guess "since EXILE". But the writer uses about the half of the review complaining that one cannot find there much "the late-in-the life introspection" as one does from from the albums of some of their peers. A disappointed baby boomer?

Something in the world never changes: ROLLING STONE continues the series of their awful Stones albums reviews... But even in their own criteria, that was a very weak effort...

- Doxa

[www.rollingstone.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-10-09 21:11 by HardRiffin.

The Rolling Stones review, Hackney Diamonds: Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood rip through riffs like guitarists half their ages

4/5 stars

Appearances from their creakier contemporaries like Elton John and Paul McCartney give the album a sense of career closure

Mark Beaumont
9 October 2023



“Let the old still believe that they’re young,” Mick Jagger cries in a definitive Rolling Stones ethos that is delivered towards the end of Hackney Diamonds, the rock’n’roll legends’ first album of new material since the back-to-basics A Bigger Bang 18 years ago. And with that attitude, there’s no reason to believe it’ll be their last. The band reportedly have three-quarters of a follow-up album left over from the sessions, and with AI advancements promising drive-thru nanobot blood changes and Keith Richards clearly mainlining the elixir of life these days, in another couple of decades the Stones might still be too busy rocking to download their celebratory centenarian Moonpig from the king.

Yet there’s a certain scent of career closure to Hackney Diamonds. They round off this 24th UK release with a faithfully grainy cover of Muddy Waters’ “Rolling Stone Blues”, the 1950 track from which they took their name and a cut from one of the albums that Jagger had under his arm when he and old schoolmate Richards ran into one other at Dartford Station in 1961 and decided to chance their arms at becoming one of the greatest and most successful acts in rock history.

They also fill the record with a glittering array of their creakier contemporaries, as you might for a great celebratory send-off. Elton John, fresh from his purported final ever tour, adds piano to modernist roadhouse rockers “Get Close” and “Live by the Sword”. Paul McCartney, who recently concluded his McCartney trilogy as if tying up loose ends, brings grungey bass to the febrile “Bite My Head Off”. One-time Stones bassist Bill Wyman makes an Easter egg cameo on “Live by the Sword”, reunited after 30 years with late drummer Charlie Watts, who recorded two tracks on the record before his death in 2021. And Stevie Wonder, seen only sporadically since a kidney transplant in 2019, gets a virtuoso, classic soul keyboard solo at the climax of the astutely titled “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”. Roger Daltrey might have good reason to check his missed calls.

If this all sounds as though Hackney Diamonds was probably recorded, for tax purposes, in the basement of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, in truth, the median age of its roll call belies the sheer vitality of the thing. Richards and Ronnie Wood rip through gritty glam and blues rock riffs like guitarists half of half their ages, and rather than mutter reflective wisdom gleaned from a rock’n’roll life mid-winddown – a la Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan – Jagger bawls and yowls about blurry nights, media intrusion and relationship ructions like an eternal A-list twentysomething.

“Get Close” catches him crawling the night, sleepless and lascivious, “the press strapped to my back”. And anthemic drivetime rocker “Whole Wide World” appears to be an illuminating exposé on the loneliness at the heart of the band’s early tabloid infamy. Wandering old London haunts, Jagger throws back to their bed-hopping mid-Sixties days as rock’n’roll reprobates drenched in “the smell of sex and gas” at “the filthy flat in Fulham”, garnering the unwanted attention of the authorities and feeling ostracised from true friends and lovers. Finally, the butterfly’s testimony from being broken on a wheel.

Back home, things are tougher still. “We haven’t made love and I wanna know why, why you angry with me?” Jagger wails like a Viagra brand ambassador amid the infectious, Queen-like groove of an opener “Angry”, reflecting the fact that a fair proportion of Hackney Diamonds emanates from the doghouse. The gorgeous “Driving Me Too Hard” – essentially Springsteen’s “Glory Days” after 12 more bar-room Buds, and loading the jukebox with Traveling Wilburys tunes – details the pressures of a sanity-testing relationship. The punk-ish “Bite My Head Off” ricochets in from the height of the row: “The whole f***ing ship is sinking,” Jagger roars, “I’m looking for a quick way out”.

With producer Andrew Watt giving the whole thing a gleaming contemporary sheen and most tracks building to bombastic rock climaxes, Hackney Diamonds bristles with such sonic and emotional turbulence. It’s no wonder the Stones crave occasional respite. “I love the laughter, the women and wine, I’ve just got to break free from it all,” Jagger croons over the slide guitar campfire folk of “Dreamy Skies”, ditching his phone and fleeing to a country bolt-hole “where there ain’t no other human for a hundred miles” to chop some wood, listen to Hank Williams and get “some peace from the storms”. For his part, Richards holes up at the mic for the plaintive “Tell Me Straight”, a lament of life and love as both pass him by, awash with intimate alt-rock atmospheres akin to Band of Horses or Sun Kil Moon.

A late-career Exile on Main Street? Their best since the Seventies? Arguably, but such hyperbole undeniably rests on the broad shoulders of the seven-minute “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”, the album’s spectacular spiritual crescendo. As Lady Gaga spills out gospel trills and gymnastics over a slow-burning Pentecostal groove, Jagger delivers a sermon both defiantly personal (“I’m not going down in some dusty motel”) and universally stirring (“Let the music play loud…let us all stand up proud”). It’s a statement song worthy of rounding off a career this monumental, but also one that revives the gritty passions of 1969’s “Gimme Shelter”. It’s enough to convince you the old are still young.

‘Hackney Diamonds’ will be released on 20 October via Polydor

[www.independent.co.uk]

The Rolling Stones: Hackney Diamonds review — a joy from beginning to end

Will Hodgkinson
October 09 2023


DAVID M. BENETT/ALAN CHAPMAN/DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES

5/5 stars

Back in 2021, Paul McCartney claimed the Beatles were better than the Rolling Stones because the Stones were essentially a “blues cover band”. He paid the Stones a massive compliment without realising it. They did indeed start by covering the blues, and got massive because they did it better than all the other callow white kids from provincial Britain. Then Mick Jagger and Keith Richards took the blues and applied it to their own songwriting, leading to the swagger, looseness and depth of feeling that makes Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Gimme Shelter and countless others such high points of late 20th-century music. The Stones have retained the essence of a bluesy bar band ever since, and therein lies their charm. They have never taken themselves too seriously. They have never tried to save the world. They’re simply here to show us a good time.

McCartney pops up on Hackney Diamonds, and the album is something of a miracle in offering vibrant, anarchic, poignant, reflective rock’n’roll from a band who still sound like their lives depend on it, after 60 years in the game. “If I was a dog, you would kick me down,” Jagger claims on the punky, frenetic Bite My Head Off, before McCartney blasts off with some extremely distorted bass guitar. The Beatles and the Stones, coming together in a moment of punk unity? It is a surprise to say the least.

Hackney Diamonds is a joy from beginning to end because it reminds us of the things we love about the Stones while still sounding like it belongs to the modern age. Driving Me Too Hard opens with Keith Richards playing the same riff as Tumbling Dice but the production, courtesy of 32-year-old Andrew Watt, is crisp and contemporary. Dreamy Skies is a country soul strum, with a world-weary quality reminiscent of quieter moments from the late 1960s/early 1970s golden age like Let It Bleed and Exile on Main St. Yet the words, about Jagger dreaming of cutting himself off from the ubiquitous spectre of digital communication, belong to the 21st century. While Mess It Up harks back to disco, the problem it deals with is a current one: doxxing. “You nicked my phone!” Jagger complains, before revealing that the miscreant has gone on to share his photos with the world. He didn’t have to deal with this back when Street Fighting Man was causing panic among the British establishment.

There are plenty of moments of pure Stonesyness too. Angry is a fun remodelling of Start Me Up while Whole Wide World is a garage rock-style memory of living with Richards and Brian Jones in a flat of legendary squalor in early 1960s Fulham, with its smell of “sex and gas”. Sweet Sounds of Heaven is simply beautiful, a gospel soul epic with a positive message to the world (“let no woman or child go hungry tonight”) featuring Lady Gaga on backing vocals and Stevie Wonder on Fender Rhodes. Like You Can’t Always Get What You Want and Shine a Light, it finds the Stones getting spiritual without going anywhere near a church.

Although Jagger is steering the ship here, Keith Richards leaves his mark throughout, not least on the guitar-weaving with Ronnie Wood in which rhythm and lead intermingle. Tell Me Straight is one of Richards’s saddest songs, a slow-moving lament on which he asks, “Is the future all in the past?” Finally comes Rolling Stone Blues, with Jagger and Richards going back to where it all began with a rough, raw version of Muddy Waters’ Rollin’ Stone featuring nothing more than Jagger blasting away on harmonica and Richards knocking the hell out of an acoustic guitar. So it turns out Paul McCartney was right. The Rolling Stones were a blues cover band all along. The fact that they have never forgotten that, even after writing some of the greatest songs of the rock era, is what makes them — and this album — still so exciting, even after all these years.

[www.thetimes.co.uk]

Both very good reviews.

Am I the only one on here who hasn't read any of the reviews? Still haven't listened to SSOH because I don't want to detract from my enjoyment of the album in its entirety as a listening experience. I don't want to read lyrics or others' opinions and be swayed - pun intended.

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VoodooLounge13
Am I the only one on here who hasn't read any of the reviews? Still haven't listened to SSOH because I don't want to detract from my enjoyment of the album in its entirety as a listening experience. I don't want to read lyrics or others' opinions and be swayed - pun intended.

It's a little like Christmas, isn't it? Some of us want to open a gift or two on Christmas Eve while saving the bulk of the gifts for Christmas Day. Others want to wait for Christmas Day to open everything. Still others will open all their gifts on Christmas Eve. What to do: instant versus delayed gratification? But to each is own.

Ride like the wind at double speed.....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-10-10 01:08 by sf37.

[www.theglobeandmail.com]

A Bigger Bang is criminally underrated. I'm sure it will get a revival the next 30 years. As a younger fan who was 8 years old when it came out, I listened to it like a madman growing up and love almost every song.

If Hackney Diamonds comes anywhere close I will be very happy.

See, that's my point. I think us younger fans have a bigger appreciation for their latter-day stuff than the older fans. We are the ones who tend to love the more recent releases. There are exceptions on here, but most prefer the older and/or golden periods.

I love the version of the band that I grew up with, and have a deep respect and awe for what the band wrote and produced way back when...before I was born even!!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2023-10-10 15:09 by VoodooLounge13.

I love the last three posts. From “newer” fans. I’m a fan from 1965. The later Stones albums ARE, to ME, patchy affairs, but they all have nuggets in them that I love and hold in the same esteem as their earlier works. And I can understand those, coming to the Stones late, digging those latter records. From any other “younger” band than The Stones, they would be acclaimed and enduring pieces of work.

Rod

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VoodooLounge13
See, that's my point. I think us younger fans have a bigger appreciation for their latter-day stuff than the older fans. We are the ones who tend to love the more recent releases. There are exceptions on here, but most prefer the older and/or golden periods.

as a younger fan i'm in total agreement with you

I like that TIMES piece. They take Macca's claim that the Stones are "just a blues cover band", but unlike seeing it as a pejorative ir belittlening one, as it probably was intended for and much interpreted like, they see that there is a wisdom and a truth there, and something that sets the Stones apart from not just the Beatles or from anyone else. The blues is always there, and no one is ever made better blues-based and inspired music. The real thing. No bullshitting. That's why they are the greatest rock and roll band in the world. That someone can play polka or waltz, do not make one better rock band.

- Doxa



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2023-10-10 10:08 by Doxa.

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VoodooLounge13
Am I the only one on here who hasn't read any of the reviews? Still haven't listened to SSOH because I don't want to detract from my enjoyment of the album in its entirety as a listening experience. I don't want to read lyrics or others' opinions and be swayed - pun intended.

I'm with you on the reviews. The only review I read so far was the Globe and Mail one. The others I have ignored.

As far as the songs, I have listened to all four (the two singles and the two "leaks"), but not that actively. The last time I heard Angry and SSOH were on the radio; it's been a while since I've actively played either one.

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ProfessorWolf

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VoodooLounge13
See, that's my point. I think us younger fans have a bigger appreciation for their latter-day stuff than the older fans. We are the ones who tend to love the more recent releases. There are exceptions on here, but most prefer the older and/or golden periods.

as a younger fan i'm in total agreement with you

I do agree on that. Songs like Almost hear you sigh, Love is strong, Slipping Away, Thru and Thru, Out of Control, Saint of me, Stealing my heart, Don't Stop etc. are absolute gems.

But to be fair, I was 18 when ABB was released. Loved it back then. But no song really sticks to me anymore. I still listen to VL, B2B etc. But I tried a while back to listen to ABB a few times... it's not modern, it's not old... it's almost nothing. So sry to say it from a younger fan but ABB for me have travelled from a strong album to one of their weakest.

Keith Richards: Arthritis changed my guitar-playing

By Mark Savage
BBC Music Correspondent

[www.bbc.com]

If there's one constant in the story of the Rolling Stones, it's Keith Richards' love affair with the guitar.

He owns more than a thousand of them - although he only plays a select few on stage - and, even as he approaches 80, the star is still bewitched by the instrument.

"The fascinating thing is that the more you play it, the less you know it," he says. "It provides you with endless questions. You can never know the whole thing. It's impossible."

He's back on fiery form on the Rolling Stones' new album, Hackney Diamonds. There are hard-rocking riffs (Angry, Depending On You), sinewy country blues (Dreamy Skies) and semi-improvised gospel stomps (Sweet Sounds Of Heaven).

But while the Stones sound ageless as ever, Richards' hands are gnarled with arthritis. Has it affected his playing?

"Funnily enough, I've no doubt it has, but I don't have any pain, it's a sort of benign version," he says. "I think if I've slowed down a little bit it's probably due more to age.

"And also, I found that interesting, when I'm like, 'I can't quite do that any more,' the guitar will show me there's another way of doing it. Some finger will go one space different and a whole new door opens.

"And so you're always learning. You never finish school, man."

Hackney Diamonds is the Rolling Stones' first album of new material in 18 years. Not that they'd been resting on their laurels. Sessions had come and gone, tours had been staged, a covers album released. But, for whatever reason, the band weren't happy with the material.

"There's a lot of stuff in the can which is pretty damn good," says Keith, "but it's not an album. It's just a lot of tracks."

The turning point came at the end of the band's 60th anniversary tour last year. Rather than retreat to their individual bunkers, Mick Jagger wanted to go straight to the studio.

"He hit me in the right spot," says Richards. "I've always wanted to record the band as soon after we get off of the road, because the band is lubricated."

Where previous sessions had been exploratory and unfocused, these recordings came with a deadline: Jagger wanted the basic tracks finished by the end of the year.

He was helped by producer Andrew Watt, a 32-year-old who has made pop hits for Post Malone and Miley Cyrus, and overseen grizzled rock rebirths for Iggy Pop and Ozzy Osbourne.

A massive Rolling Stones fan (he wore a different band t-shirt every day), he was nonetheless determined not to defer to his heroes.

"We had a referee, which is something we lacked since the Jimmy Miller days," says Ronnie Wood, referring to the producer of 1970s classics like Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street (both of which pre-date his time in the band).

"We needed someone tightening up and kicking us. He disciplined us and said, 'Come on, you're not going to do that tomorrow, you're going to do it today'."

"I can understand Ronnie seeing it that way but the real referees are Mick and me," argues Richards.

"Andrew just had the right amount of energy and the right amount of know-how to pull it off."

Fortuitous meeting
Jagger and Richards have always been the lifeblood of the Rolling Stones. Or, more accurately, its Id and its Ego. Jagger is watchful, analytical, strategic. Richards runs on instinct.

They first met at primary school in Kent in the 1950s, then bumped into each other years later on a railway platform. Jagger was carrying a bundle of records, Richards was holding his guitar, and the two struck up a conversation about rock and blues on the train.

Within a year they'd joined a band with guitarist Brian Jones, and Richards wrote excitedly to his aunt: "Mick is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic and I don't mean maybe."

In their original incarnation, the Rolling Stones were a cover band, scoring hits with scuffed-up versions of Buddy Holly's Not Fade Away and Howlin' Wolf's Little Red Rooster.

But their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, realised everyone would make more money if they wrote their own songs, so he locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen and told them not to come out until they'd got a hit.

The result was As Tears Go By, which was taken into the charts by Marianne Faithfull.

"Before that, I thought of songwriting as a totally separate job - like there's the blacksmith, and there's the stonemason," Richards later recalled.

"It was a shock, this fresh world of writing our own material, this discovery that I had a gift that I had no idea existed. It was Blake-like, a revelation, an epiphany."

Jagger disputes the kitchen story but, either way, one of rock's greatest songwriting partnerships had been born.

By the end of the decade, the duo had written dozens of classics, including Paint It Black, Sympathy For The Devil and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, the riff for which came to Richards in his sleep.

"It was a lucky find, I must admit," he told me the last time we spoke.

The sessions for Hackney Diamonds captured the hit-and-run sessions of the 1960s. The band cut two or three songs a day, often playing next to each other as they do on stage.

The whole process was finished in two months - eight times longer than they spent on their 1964 debut, but still phenomenally fast by modern standards.

The album's title is London slang (Hackney Diamonds are the beads of shattered glass strewn across the street after a smash-and-grab) and while it doesn't appear in the lyrics, the phrase pinpoints the album's untamed ferocity.

"If I was a dog, I'd spend all night howling round your house," growls Jagger over the saw-tooth riff of Bite My Head Off.

Even the song titles suggest a deep well of antagonism and resentment: Angry, Driving Me Too Hard, Live By The Sword.

Richards can't or won't explain the inspiration, arguing that "Mick writes the lyrics".

"But he's got some angst in him and I said, 'Well, let's use it'," he adds.

"From my point of view, the essential thing about making a record is that the singer has to want to sing the material.

"Mick, given a song that he's not interested in, can really make it bad. And that's maybe one of the reasons it took 18 years, because Mick's waves of enthusiasm come and go."

If that's a dig at his bandmate, its meant jovially.

The bitterness that characterised their relationship in the 80s has evaporated. For this album, they even went back to basics, writing Driving Me Too Hard together in the same room.

Jagger says they still disagree occasionally, but have "a good understanding" of what the Stones' represent. For Richards, it's all a state of mind.

"We're very real guys, so when we start playing we all know, 'Yep, that's it', or 'No, that isn't it'.

"And if it feels phoney, then we have to watch ourselves."

That's why he resisted Jagger's attempts to steer the band towards punk and disco in the 1970s; and presumably why they've steered clear of more reflective material on this album.

But the record did present an unwelcome challenge: Recording for the first time without Charlie Watts, their stoic and dependable drummer, who died in 2021.

His playing features on just two Hackney Diamonds tracks, Mess It Up and Live By The Sword, initially recorded in 2019. For the rest, the rhythm section is provided by Steve Jordan, who Watts had anointed as his successor.

"I was with Charlie before he passed and he said, 'Make sure Steve Jordan covers for me. He has my blessing'," says Wood. "So that was a real comforting thing."

"Feeling like I'm carrying on Charlie's wishes makes it a little bit easier," agrees Richards.

"I will always miss the man dearly, but I know that if he was here today, he would be very happy to know that the band was continuing."

Elsewhere, the album has a glut of superstar guests, including Paul McCartney, Elton John and erstwhile Stones bassist Bill Wyman.

But the star attraction is Lady Gaga, who trades vocal hooks with Jagger on the soaring blues-gospel of Sweet Sounds Of Heaven.

"Lady Gaga is a piece of work," says Richards. "I love working with her because she has a great attitude and a great voice, and I always wanted to see her play off against Mick."

"Stevie Wonder is on there as well, which is sort of thing only happens when you record in LA," he laughs, noting that the song was "very ad-libbed... it even finishes and starts up again".

That was their approach throughout. The whole album is deliberately hand-crafted, recorded in real-time and non-computerised.

"I like real," says Richards."We actually cut this record primarily for vinyl. It's by far the best sound, if you want to listen to a record properly.

"Digital is toy town. It's synthesizers. And now you have AI, which is even even more superficial and artificial. Vinyl gives you what's real and I prefer to hear it that way."

The last track is the perfect example - just Mick and Keith standing around a microphone, riffing on the Muddy Waters' song that gave the band its name, Rolling Stone Blues.

It could be the closing of a book, an epilogue to a 60-year career, but Richards is having none of it.

"It's a fitting statement, but it's not a coda," he protests. "It's more a tip of the hat to Muddy Waters, Chicago and all the blues men we learned our stuff from."

In fact, rather than waving goodbye, the band are plotting to take their new music on the road next year, "if everybody is still standing".

"We're all in good fettle," says Richards. "We're not looking at each other and saying, 'time's up'.

Is that a phrase he could ever imagine uttering?

"My answer is I'm not Nostradamus," he chuckles. "Of course it's going to end some time, but there's no particular rush.

"We're having great fun doing this."

Only 10 days until the DAY guys!
Counting down started...Can't wait to collect my copy and hear out all these awesome songs!

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VoodooLounge13
Am I the only one on here who hasn't read any of the reviews? Still haven't listened to SSOH because I don't want to detract from my enjoyment of the album in its entirety as a listening experience. I don't want to read lyrics or others' opinions and be swayed - pun intended.

e
Haha, I am way too curious to have such a stoic attitude. No patience here. I read and listen everything I have an access to.

But at the same time it is an interesting experiment we are going through now. To have all those reviews way beforehand the album. Of the songs I have not heard yet I start to have a pretty good grasp what sort of songs they are like. I don't care how the reviewers evaluate the songs (that's my job), but taking the 'formal' descriptive hints of them plus all that experience of listening this band so long. You know, a country song, a dance song, Keith's song, etc. So it will be interesting to compare the actual song to the picture I already have of it.

At the moment the only song I have no really idea what is supposed to be like is "The Sword" tune. I have different ideas of it.

- Doxa

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yeababyyea
A Bigger Bang is criminally underrated. I'm sure it will get a revival the next 30 years. As a younger fan who was 8 years old when it came out, I listened to it like a madman growing up and love almost every song.

If Hackney Diamonds comes anywhere close I will be very happy.

I feel the same way. Even if the quality is almost as good as the material on ‘A Bigger Bang’, I’ll be extremely pleased.

The Rolling Stones' stellar new album proves you CAN always get what you want: ADRIAN THRILLS reviews Hackney Diamonds

By Adrian Thrills
Published: 9 October 2023

Hackney Diamonds - The Rolling Stones

Rating: 5/5 stars

Verdict: Cut above the rest



With the first album of new Rolling Stones songs in 18 years now just ten days away, the long wait to see whether the self-styled 'greatest rock'n'roll band in the world' can still cut it is nearly over.

And having had a sneak preview of Hackney Diamonds, I can report that the Stones are coming back with a bang.

They are joined by a supporting cast that includes Elton John, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Lady Gaga. They certainly still have the pulling power, but even their stellar guests can't quite steal the thunder of singer Mick Jagger, 80, plus guitarists Keith Richards, 79, and Ronnie Wood, 76: they haven't sounded this dynamic in years.

The band made the 12-track album with a new producer in New Yorker Andrew Watt.

One of Watt's strengths is his ability to emphasise enduring strengths while adding contemporary touches, and he does that again here, helping the band to deliver a late-career masterpiece.

Some songs have a live-in-the-studio feel. Others have a modern sense of clarity and separation between the vocals, guitars and drums. Recent single, and opening track, Angry, is actually one of the weakest songs here. Based around what Richards calls a 'damn funky riff', it has a Stones-by-numbers feel, in spite of intertwining Richards and Wood guitars, and a groove that replicates the staccato strut of 1981's Start Me Up.

Things take a more interesting turn from there. With Elton on piano, though not particularly high in the mix, Get Close is a raunchy, soul-style number that wouldn't have sounded out of place on 1972's Exile On Main Street. 'I walk this way a million times, with a blindfold on my eyes,' sings Jagger in his finest 'mockney' accent.

The mood becomes calmer on country-ish ballad Depending On You, with Jagger alternating between pining for a lost lover and playfully contemplating his own mortality. 'Come on Paul, let's hear some bass,' roars Mick on the next track, Bite My Head Off, and former Beatle McCartney obliges with a heavily distorted bass solo on a rousing, punky number.

Jagger employs a series of corny canine metaphors ('I'd be spending the night howling round your house') to chastise a woman that he feels has done him wrong.

The punky mood continues on Whole Wide World, another rocker that finds Jagger looking back on his life before concluding that the party, despite a litany of hardships, has only just begun.

The pace slows again on Dreamy Skies, another country-style tune about getting away from 'the city, the suburbs and sprawl'. With Hackney Diamonds the first Stones album since the death of drummer Charlie Watts in 2021, most of the drums here are played by Steve Jordan, although Charlie does feature twice.

His jazzy, laid-back approach adds a more traditional bounce to Mess It Up, and he appears again on Live By The Sword. The latter, with Elton John this time more prominent on honky-tonk piano, also features another former Stone, Bill Wyman, on bass.

Keith Richards, too, comes to the fore as the album progresses, adding piano on the ballad Driving Me Too Hard and supplying lead vocals on Tell Me Straight.

The star-studded penultimate track, Sweet Sounds Of Heaven, is a powerful duet between Jagger and Gaga, with Stevie Wonder on keyboards. Opening like a blues ballad in the tradition of 1973's Angie, it develops into a more hymn-like piece in the fashion of 1969's You Can't Always Get What You Want.

The band finish with a nod to their roots in the blues by covering Muddy Waters' Rolling Stone Blues. When Jagger and Richards first met as teenagers at Dartford railway station in 1961, Mick had a prized Muddy Waters LP in his hands, bonding with Keith over their shared musical tastes.

Sixty-two years on, this affectionate cover brings the pair full circle, cementing a studio comeback that rolls back the years with astonishing aplomb.

Hackney Diamonds is released on October 20.

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

[ultimateclassicrock.com]

The reviews for the most part are just safe, lazy...and dare I say it...hackneyed drivel.

The music press changes like the wind...but has evidently decided that it's quite cool to like the Stones just at the moment.

But thankfully , we quite like what we've heard so far too

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DandelionPowderman
Keith Richards: Arthritis changed my guitar-playing

By Mark Savage
BBC Music Correspondent

[www.bbc.com]

Thanks for posting, DP.

Audio of the interview - [www.bbc.co.uk]

Starts at around 1 hour 43 minutes.

"Solos just came and go, Riffs last forever"

Keithfucius

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VoodooLounge13
I love the version of the band that I grew up with, and have a deep respect and awe for what the band way back when...before I was born even!!

Well, I think that holds on quite well in general. Usually it is a certain age (teenager?) one discovers the Stones and if the stimulus is the current version of the band it is naturally compared to the rest of contemporary music - and of which usually a kid has a pretty good understanding of. How, say, the latest Stones album stands out from the contemporary scene, not how it compares against their old stuff. And that sort of leaves a special attachment to it, be the album, say, OUT OF OUR HEADS, BETWEEN THE BUTTONS, GOATS HEAD SOUP, EMOTIONAL RESCUE, VOODOO LOUNGE or A BIGGER BANG, no matter if one some day realizes that 'yeah, LET IT BLEED is a better album'.

For me that album was TATTOO YOU, and in general I think I have a more emphatic attitude towards their 80's output, including Jagger's albums, than the fans discovering this band before or after the 80's. Usually it is the 80's production ideals that seem to put people off if one was not grown up in the middle of that (of course, at some point I also started to hate those, but nowadays I have a pretty nostalgic feel about them). Especially UNDERCOVER seems to be an album people have very mixed feelings about.

- Doxa