Definitely a new Rolling Stones album. Fifty-nine years and six months after the first. That is an achievement in itself. At 21 they sang Time Is On My Side, they were right, time has never stopped being on their side. Six decades later it is still the case.
Published at 2:02 am. Updated at 6:00 am.
It would be easy to make fun of these little old guys. I call them the rolling chairs. To find them outdated. To ask them to retreat. It would be easy and a bit stupid. Because not only are they still there, they are still good. They have never stopped being what they are: the Rolling Stones. The best garage band in history.
Before we continue, let’s put our cards on the table. My religion is the Beatles. The Beatles are the greatest, most beautiful, strongest, sweetest, most important and most innovative thing to happen in music history since Stravinsky. The Stones are something different for me. The stones are the stones. Pure and die-hard rockers. Well done riffs and rhymes. They are kings in their field. There is no need to compare them with the four Liverpuldians, we have already done that.
Beatles, Rolling Stones, there’s good pop, bad pop. Good boys and bad boys. The band that quickly went into the studio, the band that never left the road. One sings Let It Be, the other sings Let It Bleed. Everything separates them, everything connects them. Brits who appropriated the America of Chuck Berry and his gang to take rock elsewhere. To bring him home. In their green and gray land. The Beatles cut the stone into a diamond. The Stones kept it raw. Messy. Lively. Then listen to the desired group. I hear both.
What The Beatles will always envy The Rolling Stones for is the fact that they never broke up. They decided on each other in 1962. Mick and Keith, for life. Brian Jones, for death. Charlie Watts kept the rhythm for almost 60 years before taking his solo to heaven.
Bill Wyman rode with them on his hump during a long ruck. And Ron Wood has been there for 50 years. You have to do it in order not to undo it. Leaders Jagger and Richards realize that they will never be more wonderful than when they are two, three, four years old and with Watts.
It takes great wisdom and humility to realize that no matter how great you are, you are better when someone else is by your side. Most groups disband because each member’s ego, inflated by success, falls through the cracks. The Stones knew how to reduce their ego or open the door. It depends on.
Still, it’s nice to see Mick, Keith and Ronnie are still together. And still very much alive. After all this time, after all this sex, all this drugs, all this rock ‘n’ roll, it gives you hope to get back on your feet. Beyond their music, their mere presence is a hymn to joy. While we stubbornly know whether it’s better for our health to drink four glasses of wine a week or one a day or no wine at all, Mick Jagger and his two friends who have abused everything we can do to overdo it, three-hour shows, aged 80.
What keeps you healthy is having fun.
It means doing what you love.
And the new album? Successful ! Along with Miss You, It’s Only Rock’n’Roll, Start Me Up and Under My Thumb, Hackney Diamonds has songs that you don’t have to be ashamed of. No immortals like Sympathy for the Devil, You Can’t Always Get What You Want or Satisfaction, but that’s asking a lot. We may not have everything we wanted, but we have everything we need. Stones quality three A. Even four, since Watts was still there during the recording.
While the first excerpt, “Angry,” had already convinced us of the group’s astonishing vitality, the rest of the album confirms that the guys still have some energy left in them.
“Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” sung in a duet with Lady Gaga, is a future classic that Lady Tina must be humming from heaven. Several titles that can hold their own in concert alongside their must-haves: Get Close, Dreamy Skies, Bite My Head Off, Depending on You… No filler. Twelve titles reached maturity.
During the unlikely virtual concert that brought together the world’s biggest stars and took place during lockdown in April 2020, the best part was seeing the Stones sing together – not together – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” , each of his house. Their complicity, despite the distance, was so great that it was obvious that nothing in the world could separate them. Except for the death that cost Charlie.
There’s a lot of that when you listen to Hackney Diamonds, the calming feeling, the great happiness of still being together after all this time, of still being alive.
Long live the Rolling Stones!
Long live the stones that are still rolling!