Rolling Stones, Hackney Diamonds sounds like the seventies: the review

THE Rolling Stones are back. And not why Hackney Diamonds it’s a good album. But because it’s the best thing the Stones have produced since the early ’80s. The rebellious “boys” of London rejected the role they had been assigned. They are not sixties rock legends who, after reaching their peak decades ago, are destined to live in the shadow of an unshakeable but distant artistic and cultural legacy. I’m a vital group, made up of musicians who can flirt with their eighties and still be creative. Six decades after their debut, they’ve released a bold and urgent album. Something we haven’t seen since Some Girls1978, o Tattoo You, 1981. Perhaps some had even stopped believing that the Rolling Stones could write another classic. The last time they produced an original work was 2005. That’s 18 years ago. The children who took their final exams last June were not yet born. Now they have become yet another generation to have lived during the Stones era.

Hackney Diamonds (Polydor/Universal) is not a contemporary record, it didn’t need to be. But it has a new sound compared to the last albums. It’s fresher and crisper, but still consistent with the essence of the Stones. Among the main architects of this result there is undoubtedly the producer of the work, Andrew Watts. Named Producer of the Year at the 2021 Grammy Awards, Watt has worked with both contemporary pop stars (such as Post Malone, Dua Lipa And Lana Del Rey) and with legends of the past, including Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop and Elton John. This ability to travel through time allowed the New York producer born in 1990 to be the right man at the right time. Watt is the break the band has been waiting for for years, above all Mick Jagger.

On the other hand, there had to be some changes. With the passing of Charlie Watts in 2021, the Stones have lost an important piece of their history. Although Jagger, Keith Richards And Ronnie Woodthe last three historical members, we have welcomed Steve Jordan as the new drummer, they didn’t want to totally give up Charlie’s presence. And so in two songs it is Watts’ sticks that play, thanks to the 2019 recordings: in Mess It Up and in Live By The Swordwhere with the bass presence of Bill Wyman we witness the last full reunion.

In the 12 tracks that make up the album there is space for all the souls of the Rolling Stones. The rock raw and hoarse (which sounds as good as the seventies), the romantic pieces (with the poetic peak reached in Depending on you), but also the blues of the origins and the gospel. The opening with Angry it’s explosive: it’s 1981, someone has just put on the turntable Tattoo You and the first piece started. The energy is the same, the difference is that now Jagger is no longer the 38 year old man who dances demonically in the music video for Start Me Up. She is an accomplished rock star eighty years to shout into the other side of the microphone: «Don’t get angry with me». The second sixties piece arrives in quick succession. Get Close explains to everyone why Steve Jordan now plays drums in one of the greatest rock bands in history. The track is also enriched by the presence of a guest: he is sitting at the piano Sir Elton Hercules John which will also return in the aforementioned one Live By The Sword. He’s not the only guest. Another Sir plays bass in Bite My Head Off: Paul McCartney. It is the Beatle who lays the foundations for the most punk piece on the album, urgent and vulgar as in his youth.

To go on stage the last guests still have to wait for the sound to be played Driving Me Too Hard. Once they hear the song with the best guitar riff in the opera, they can enter the stage Lady Gaga And Stevie WonderFor Sweet Sounds Of Heaven. Gaga’s melody is a perfectly dosed spice. She is the protagonist of the song, but she does not overwhelm Jagger’s great vocal performance nor the Stones’ corrosiveness. All seasoned with Wonder’s best notes. It is the seven and a half minute gospel that effectively closes Hackney Diamonds. Yes, because the last track, Rolling Stone Blues, it’s almost a bonus track. A sort of tribute that the London “kids” pay to themselves. It’s the piece of Muddy Waters from which they took inspiration for their name in 1962. Sixty-one years later, they decided to record it for the first time, to return to their roots. It all ends where it originated: from the blues that gave shape to the Rolling Stones.

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