Hackney Diamonds (2023)
The Rolling Stones
A very young Mick Jagger, just starting out on his musical career, once told an interviewer that he couldn’t see himself doing “this” (a pop music career) after the age of 30. In mid-2024, with Jagger and Keith Richards both way past 30 and the only surviving founder members of the band (Ronnie Wood is the only other official Stone but he’s been in the band only for about 48 or 49 years), the Stones are touring behind their latest studio record, Hackney Diamonds, the first such release since the blues standards album Blue & Lonesome in 2016 and the first with original songs since A Bigger Bang (2005.)
The band has regularly toured over the past 19 years but the creative impulse to write songs and the motivation and drive to record and release them must be sorely lacking. Younger musicians have a fire and a drive to pursue their career, and often contractual obligations, but by the time they turn, say, 40, the fount of basic raw, inspired creativity is replaced by professional ability and craft. As Neil Young once explained, he writes songs only when he’s obliged to release a record. This might be a simplification of the process but one can imagine, by the time Young said this, his life was so full of matters other than only his career in music, that he wouldn’t have had the time or luxury to sit around all day writing songs. When he does buckle down to it, he, and many other musicians, may well come up with far more material than the upcoming release may require. The artist records many demos and even does proper recordings of many more tunes than will make it to the track listing of the official release.
Bob Dylan has a whole Bootleg series of such previously unreleased songs, and so does Neil Young.
With the Rolling Stones there was the odds ‘n sods release Metamorphosis and Tattoo You (1981) was famously cobbled together for old outtakes or half-finished tracks. Their BBC recordings are available now and there have been many bootlegs over the years too, mostly liver recordings but also some studio outtakes. Lately I’ve been seeing advertisements for several box sets of multiple records and CDs relating to albums like Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and even (why, I don’t get) Emotional Rescue. Of course, these records were released 40 years or longer ago and at the time Jagger and Richards may still have been quite prolific songwriters and the band willing to spend more time in the studio.
Obviously, the Rolling Stones are no longer bound by a recording contract that compels them to release an album a year, such as still seems to be the case with Neil Young, unless he just wants to record and release as often and as much as possible (and it’s odd that the older some artists get, the more they want to clue us in on what they did in their younger lives and refused to let us hear then), and so there’s no pressure on Jagger or Richards to write songs or to book studio time.
I don’t know whether the Stones have recorded enough material since, say 1989, to be able to release more records than they have or whether there just isn’t that much and the stuff that’s seen official release, is the by far the best of the bunch. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens after the official demise of the Stones.
This brings one to the question: why did the Stones feel that they needed or wanted to release a new studio record? Was it a contractual obligation? Was there a sudden flare up of creativity and the energy to make something of it? Were these songs written over a period of years until the momentum to record them became irresistible? Is it simply one last studio blast before it’s really too late?
Now, I’m not the kind of music fan who follows an act for their entire career or buys every release for the sake of completion or because I think everyone is a work of genius because I love the artist.
For example: I don’t care for David Bowie’s music after Diamond Dogs, for Aerosmith’s after Night in the Ruts, Dr Feelgood’s after A Case of the Shakes, Blue Oyster Cult’s after Fire of Unknown Origin, Iggy Pop’s after the Stooges and so son.
Regarding the Rolling Stones, leaving Blue & Lonesome out of it, my appreciation of their records ends with Some Girls (1978) and I don’t even much like earlier albums like Goats Head Soup (1973) and Black and Blue(1976.) The canon comprises of the early records, mostly the singles though, and the run from Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) to Exile on Main Street (1972), plus It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (1974) and Some Girls. I bought some of the later records and have listened to all of them and not one has had anything remotely close to the appeal of the earlier stuff.
It's down to the songwriting, recording and production of the records. It feels as if Jagger and Richards were more inspired and interesting as lyricists and tunesmiths; the lyrics are engaging. The loose, funky and rocking, blues-based rock ‘n roll style of playing is more to my taste too and the ‘60s and ‘70s production style suits my ears. Everything sounds organic and relatively simple with the emphasis on good songs, musical proficiency without being precious about it and non-intrusive production.
I generally dislike the typical, fashionable, over-polished ‘80s production style that so badly dates many records from that era, and especially on the records of ‘60’s and ‘70s acts trying to update their sound to stay current and commercial.
This is exactly what happened to the Stones albums after Tattoo You. The production values are high, the records are busy and loud yet the playing sounds like highly proficient studio musicians who just can’t reproduced the loose, funky swing of, say, Exile on Main Street. Granted, the Stones probably no longer wanted to sound like that but what they achieved was just extremely well produced, tedious music that has the Stones trademark licks but not anything of the original visceral excitement. Even worse, Jager and Richards now sound like professional songwriters who craft lyrics like mathematicians instead of inspired poets. Lastly, Jagger’s mannered singing style, which gained traction in the early ‘70s and became steadily more entrenched, just sounds fake and irritating. The artless, relaxed, naturalism of Blue & Lonesome echoes what Jagger used to sound like in his glory days. Now, he and the band, absolutely sound like the showbiz Rolling Stones. They’re no longer simply a band playing massive gigs but a core trio with MOR backing musicians performing vaudeville renditions of their well-worn hits, with the same core set list show after show. Most of those songs are from that purple period hey day I prefer and if that doesn’t convince you of the value of the rest of the catalogue, nothing will.
Okay, so 18 years after A Bigger Bang, we’ve been blessed, so to speak, with Hackney Diamonds.
The following are selected extracts from the Apple Music hype piece about the record:
“Hackney Diamonds is the band’s most energetic, effortless, and tightest record since 1981’s Tattoo You. Just play “Bite My Head Off”, a rowdy kiss-off where Mick Jagger tells off a bitter lover, complete with a fuzz-bass breakdown by... Paul McCartney. “At the end of it, I just said, ‘Well, that's just like the old days,’” Richards tells Apple Music of that recording session.
Hackney Diamonds was indeed made like the old days—live, with no click tracks or glossy production tricks—yet still manages to sound fresh.
After years of stalled sessions, and the death of their legendary drummer Charlie Watts in
2021, Jagger and Richards decided on a fresh start, travelling to Jamaica for a series of writing sessions. Based on a recommendation from McCartney, Jagger hired producer Andrew Watt, who’d also worked with Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Ozzy Osbourne, Post Malone and more, to help them finish the tracks.
“He kicked us up the ass,” Jagger tells Apple Music.
With Steve Jordan on drums, Watt kept it simple, bringing in vintage microphones and highlighting the interwoven guitars of Richards and Ronnie Wood. “The whole point is the band being very close, eyeball to eyeball, and looking at each other and feeding off of each other,” says Richards. In the spirit of 1978’s genre-spanning Some Girls, the album comprises sweeping riff-heavy anthems (“Angry”, “Driving Me Too Hard”), tortured relationship ballads (“Depending on You”), country-tinged stompers (“Dreamy Skies”) and even dance-floor grooves (“Mess it Up”, featuring a classic Jagger falsetto).
The capstone of the album is “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”, a stirring seven-minute gospel epic featuring Lady Gaga. Halfway through, the song goes quiet, Gaga laughs and Stevie Wonder starts playing the Rhodes keyboard, and then Gaga and Jagger start improvising vocals together; it’s a spontaneous moment that’s perfectly imperfect, reminiscent of the loose Exile on Main St. sessions. “Playing with Stevie is always mind-blowing, and I thought that Lady Gaga did an incredible job, man,” says Richards. “She snaked her way in there and took it over and gave as good as she got with Mick, and it was great fun.”
Richards didn’t expect to make an album this good as he approaches his 80th birthday. But he’s using it as a moment to take stock of his career with the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world. “The fact that our music has managed to become part of the fabric of life everywhere, I feel pretty proud about that, more than any one particular thing or one particular song,” he says. “It is nice to be accepted into this legendary piece of bullshit.”
First off, Charlie Watts’ drumming is sorely missed. Technically gifted as Steve Jordan may be, he doesn’t have the lightness of touch, the nous and the simple groove that Watts brought to the Stones’ music.
Secondly, referencing Some Girls as somehow informing the production, sound and tunes of Hackney Diamonds is absolutely misguided. Never mind that contemporary production techniques and values are vastly different; Some Girls sounds fresh and innovative compared to the albums it followed, and preceded, where Hackney Diamonds is of a piece with the Stones’ ‘90s output where loud, hard music is supposed to create an energetic momentum yet leaves one unfulfilled. You can’t fault the band for effort but they just don’t deliver memorable music. Just about the only factor that links the music to the classic Stones, sound is Jagger’s voice. The music is just mainstream rock with very little, if any, spark of magic and the musicians don’t sound particularly invested beyond just the professional pride of still being able to do it after all these years.
I guess no rock writer in the mainstream, “legacy” media would be so bold as to say anything negative about this record, a kind of monument to, if nothing else, longevity and the power of professionalism of musicians who’ve been plying their trade for such a very long time. The thing is, like Bob Dylan’s recent studio release Rough & Rowdy Ways, Hackney Diamonds is a testament to professional craft and not to creative inspiration. Jagger and Richards know how to write songs and are pretty proficient at utilising whatever the latest studio technology is but none of it, and this has been the case for more than 40 years, comes across as anything but hard graft and journeymen’s craft. Hackney Diamonds has high production values and probably sounds awesome when you push the volume button to 11 but the songs aren’t any thing other than perfunctory exercises in tunesmithing; they aren’t inspired or inspiring and I can’t see any of them ever making the list of “Stones classics.”
Lots of people waxed lyrical about this album when it was first released and apparently had it on almost endless repeat. I bet there will be a considerable amount of reconsideration in due course and Hackney Diamonds will be recognised as the novelty it really is and I can foresee that those people who obsess about rating albums will place it firmly in the lower half of the pyramid of Stones albums, a companion to Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon.
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