Event release: The Rolling Stones release this Friday “Hackney Diamonds”, their most coherent album in 45 years, with a star cast – Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Stevie Wonder – among good surprises and advertising journalists.
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When was this legendary group’s last honest album released 61 years ago? We have to go back to 1978 and “Some Girls” with the classic “Beast Of Burden”. “Since + Some Girls +, the Stones have released records somewhat quickly,” agrees AFP Philippe Manoeuvre, French rock critic and great expert on the English group.
“Hackney Diamonds” (“Breaking Glass” in English slang), 24th studio album, the first with original songs in 18 years, but does not reach the heights of “Beggars Banquet” (1968), “Let it Bleed” (1969) or ” Exile On Main St.” (1972).
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But the record is better than their first released single, “Angry,” a concentration of Stones gimmicks that an artificial intelligence could have invented.
And a small event: Paul McCartney, pillar of the Beatles, plays bass with the Stones for the first time on “Bite My Head Off”. “Macca” characterizes this piece, which Mick Jagger somewhat quickly presents as “punk” on the French TV news channel France 2, with rough chords.
“Second Circle”
The so-called Stones-Beatles rivalry – a nice marketing gimmick – never really existed. Paul McCartney and John Lennon provided backing vocals on the Stones’ 1967 song “We Love You.” “Paul and I have always been friends,” says 80-year-old Jagger on France 2.
“Hey, if you can have one of the Beatles in your song, you have to do it,” admits Keith Richards, 79, to British newspaper The Telegraph. And added: “We have always been good friends.”
McCartney’s contribution can be heard as well as Lady Gaga’s vocals on the gospel-inspired “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven”. Although we shouldn’t indulge in hasty comparisons with soul singer Merry Clayton, who illuminated the 1969 gem “Gimme Shelter.”
But the presence of Stevie Wonder on keyboards on “Sweet Sounds Of Heaven” leaves one wondering, as does Elton John on piano on “Get Close” (we hear more from saxophonist James King, a lesser-known musician). Sir Elton’s signature can be heard most clearly on “Live By The Sword”.
Why did superstars like Jagger and Richards, frontmen of the Stones, invite other celebrities? For Philippe Maneuver, it’s a way to reconnect with that “circle of musicians featured on the great Stones albums, which we called the second circle, like Gram Parsons of the Byrds on “Exile On Main St.” “.
“Portrait of Charlie”
We also recognize the signature of producer Andrew Watt (Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa, etc.), who called on big names like Duff McKagan (Guns N’ Roses) and Chad for Iggy Pop’s latest album (“Every Loser”). Smith (red hot chili peppers).
Played alone by Jagger and Richards, “Rolling Stone Blues,” which closes the album, a cover of Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ Stone” (1950), is more compelling. Like a return to origins, as these budding musicians composed together in the kitchen of their first run-down London apartment at 102 Edith Grove.
A heartbreak for the fans: On “Mess It Up” and “Live By The Sword”, the tracks written in 2019, Charlie Watts, the historic drummer of the Stones, who died in 2021 at the age of 80, sits behind the drums. For the other drum parts, it’s Steve Jordan who replaces the phlegmatic dandy on tour.
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“When I come out of my room, the first thing I see is a portrait of Charlie in my stairwell, I always greet him on the way,” Richards revealed on the US “The Howard Stern Show”.
Whatever the reception of this album, the Stones’ longevity has cemented them in history. “Since I was little, I have lived in a world where there is the sun, the moon and stones,” concludes Philippe Manoeuvre.