Hackney Diamonds

A new Rolling Stones record dropped last week. It’s called Hackney Diamonds. I’m giving it a listen today….and checking out the nearly all positive reviews declaring it their best album since Some Girls in 1978, which is what everybody always says about every album the Rolling Stones have released since….well….Some Girls in 1978.

Most of their post ‘78 output (or at least post ‘81) has been sub-par, of course. Can you name a single song on A Bigger Bang, for instance? I thought not. How about Bridges to Babylon? No? Don’t feel bad. I doubt Jagger can either. They’ve remained a solid live act, but these records seemed to serve no other purpose than to give names to their increasingly more mammoth and nostalgia-soaked world tours. Nobody really thought they had another good one in them.

And then Charlie Watts died.

Charlie was the engine under the hood. Charlie and Keith were the most locked in duo in rock and roll history. They worshipped and drove each other.

Charlie Watts was my bed. I could lay on there, and I know that not only would I have a good sleep, but I’d wake up and it’d still be rocking.

—Keith Richards

Keith is a one-off….

—Charlie Watts

This is the picture Keith dropped on social media when the word came down…

Bruce Springsteen compared losing his friend Clarence Clemons to “losing the rain”. I think the Stones felt the same way about losing Charlie Watts. But at the same time it fired them up. Charlie wasn’t there anymore, but he’d be listening to this one. Before he died he suggested Steve Jordan as his replacement, and Jordan, to his immense credit, finds the pocket and stays there. You know Charlie is gone, but at the same time it feels like he’s still in the room.

A month or so ago the Stones dropped a single (with an accompanying video) called Angry, which featured some dumb lyrics by Jagger, and the kind of recycled riff from Keith Richards that sounds like it might have fallen out of his broom closet. Based on this I wasn’t expecting much from the album itself. But I was thrilled to find that Angry is the weakest track on the record. Hackney Diamonds features a few bangers that are the best thing the Stones have done since….well….you know.

Get Close SHOULD have been the lead single. It slaps hard…..featuring a swinging sax solo that recalls the ghost of the great Bobby Keyes. As the song ends you can hear somebody in the room saying “yea!!…..” because this is the bar the band has been failing to reach since I was about 10 years old. Jagger sounds crazy energized…..”tell me that you’d rather die / than live without meeeee” he roars right before a breakdown that conjures up the great Can’t You Feel Me Knocking from Sticky Fingers. Great stuff. Great groove. Who says rock and roll is a kid’s game? It’s almost impossible to crack the Stones live setlist these days, but this one should be a contender.

Depending On You is just as good…a soaring ballad with a wonderful melody and some really pretty guitar flourishes from Keith and Ron Wood. This is the sort of thing I’m here for. This is vintage Stones. I could drop this song in a “best of” compilation and not feel like a poseur.

And then they get Paul McCartney in the studio to play bass, and all they can come up with is Bite My Head Off, a song every bit as bad as its title suggests. “You think I’m your bitch / I’m fucking with your brain” sings Mick, and I ain’t gonna argue with him. This is bargain-basement Stones, with lyrics that sound like they’re being read off the bathroom wall. Paul gave them I Wanna Be Your Man back in 1964, and this is how they repay him?

Thankfully this is an aberration. The rest of the record is well above average Stones. Tell Me Straight features a great Keith Richards lead vocal and a sweet harmony from Jagger, while Sweet Sounds of Heaven is a nice soul ballad marred only slightly by some hysterically overwrought vocals from a Lady Gaga desperately attempting to channel her inner Merry Clayton. There’s nothing groundbreaking here for sure, but maybe that’s because the Stones already broke all the ground 50+ years ago. So if they hardly kick up any dirt, the result is still a nice smooth ride.

And what a ride it’s been. They are all crashing 80 now. Older even than the bluesmen they so revered back in the day. Of all the white boys who sang and played the blues, the Stones always seemed the most authentic. Maybe the only ones who could look a Muddy Waters in the eye and hold his gaze.

So it makes sense that they close the record with Mick and Keith pulling up chairs and singing the song they named themselves after. Rollin’ Stone is a Muddy Waters blues, and here it seems almost a kiss-off. A gut-bucket goodbye. All the slickness of modern production is stripped away. It sounds like they’re recording in the hallway. Perfect.

They began with the blues, and they end with the blues.

Maybe this is it. If so, it’s a damn fine way to go out.

In a bit…

—tf