by Garth Meyer
The release date arrived October 21st. I’d been listening to rock radio in the car to see if I might hear the single. No luck. I was about to buy an album on the day it came out for the first time since as far back as I could remember.
I believe the last time was 2005, for “A Bigger Bang.” I walked into a Tower Records in New York and bought it. This time, I went to Soundsations by the L.A. Airport, stepped to the display of new CDs front and center, but saw no red cover.
I went to the counter, “Where might I find ‘Hackney Diamonds’?”
“Right over there,” the man said.
He pointed to a vinyl section.
“I mean on CD.”
He apologized. He didn’t have any yet. It turns out the distributor they use in Kentucky received shipments from Polydor — with boxes of “Hackney Diamonds” on CD — but the pallets had no barcode, which workers scan to tell them what’s inside.
So all they could do to find out was start opening boxes.
Once they unwrapped a pallet, they had to stock it, so that took time.
“Try back tomorrow, we might have it,” said the counter man. “They said they’ll overnight them to us as soon as they find them.”
Alright. Two days later, I stopped by. No luck.
I gave up, I’ll get it at Target. Just down the street and across a parking lot. I walked in and realized this Target is too small to have music. Later, I checked the one in Torrance.
“Hackney Diamonds” on CD? A blank look on the kid as he looked on his phone.
“It says we have three records.”
I called the Manhattan Beach Target. Nothing. They only ever had it on record.
I called Amoeba in L.A. No luck, they were under the same distributor as the guy by the airport.
News reports earlier in the year said that vinyl sales had eclipsed CDs for the first time since 1987. The pendulum had swung all the way back, while in the interim digital music decimated both formats. The full-size album covers and jackets (and USB drives on the new record players) had secured second place.
But I don’t have a record player, and I’d still rather have a tangible expression of an album than a thin-air computer file. Or the idea of owning every album ever released for $8.99 per month.
It was all too easy, too value-less. A purist? Maybe, but if an album is good, it should exist in the real world.
Was “Hackney Diamonds” good? I didn’t know, I still hadn’t gotten it.
All I was trying to do is buy the new Rolling Stones on compact disc and see whether they could do it again; come up with one more worthy album, in their first attempt in 18 years, down to three members, with an average age of 79.
This purchase was going to be a task.
Do I really need to order it online? I’d rather get it byway of physical activity, for one last new, physical album.
If I was somewhere else, where would I go? What about Music Millennium in Portland?
I called them. They had it, but the guy on the phone missed the detail that I was asking for a CD. They still had it.
He could send it for $20, shipping included.
A week later it was in my mailbox. A couple days later, walking to my car, I pulled open the envelope, seeing the shiny cellophane, wrapped in cellophane, I forgot about that part. I started to open it, the anticipation. It was exciting. Inside the car, pulling the plastic away as it revealed the album cover – markedly not as good as when Charlie Watts was still alive, a graphic designer by profession before he was a Rolling Stone.
And then, opening the plastic case, and lifting the disc. Inserting it into the CD player of my ‘07 Nissan.
“Hackney Diamonds” had arrived.
“Angry,” the single, pretty good. The next song, Jagger singing the chorus, “I want to be close to you.” Didn’t Maxi Priest say that in 1990? The next song, a ballad, “Depending On You.” This was something, on first listen. Then the next song and the next… hmmm… to the layman, the distinctiveness of the music seemed less, the original guitar sound missing, the rumbling chug of “Mixed Emotions,” for example, or the ping of “Start Me Up.” My mind wandered. Would Richards sing a song on this album? His have often been gems before (“This Place is Empty” 18 years ago). Here he was, “Tell Me Straight.” This was promising.
The car ride ended. I would listen more in the following days, only in the car, starting at the beginning.
A feeling of anticipation built for the next time in the car. One of the key missing elements of the modern era, when everything is instant and ultra-portable.
Could the Rolling Stones have done it again?
The last time, they enmeshed a good 8-song album in a 16-song album. This time, 12 songs was the total. I was skeptical. Too many albums have dropped from great to good by staying too long, or the more precipitous drop from good to pretty good. “Voodoo Lounge” had 15 songs on it. Why? It was a very good nine-song album.
“Exile on Main Street,” though, is one of the few double-albums in rock history to justify its length (Calling Guns N’Roses “Use Your Illusion I & II,” how great of an 8-song album is in there?)
All you need is eight. Or if you’re Dire Straits, seven.
Back to “Hackney Diamonds”; “Close to You” was an easy call to cut. Down to 11 songs.
“Angry”, ”Depending On You” and “Tell Me Straight” were getting better with every listen. I still hadn’t been in the car long enough to hear the whole album.
One thing was sure, it had two firsts, that I know of, in the 60-year history of the Rolling Stones: lyrics that veer to cliches and a weak album cover. Both were unthinkable for them. Jagger has always had much to say, in evocative ways that capture the imagination. Same for Richards.
Aren’t Rolling Stones lyrics one of the key reasons their 40 and 50-plus year-old songs seem so timeless? Similarly, their album covers were always substantive and distinct.
The apparent too-many songs problem (a ‘90s scourge still in effect) brought more concern. Encroaching thoughts of “what could have been” for “Hackney Diamonds.”
How do you misfire on the easy things, by the way?
For lyrics, if they aren’t up to standard, just keep working on them a little longer. All they have to be is not a distraction. If worse comes to worst, articulate gibberish always beats cliched platitudes (see half of R.E.M.’s career). It is simply a bit jarring on some of these songs to hear Jagger sing words this unremarkable.
It demonstrates, somewhat surprisingly, just how significant lyrics can be.
Back in the car, I made it to the end of the album, and the vaunted “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” the second single, with Lady Gaga.
Hmmm… Here she is singing to the rafters, but to no avail. The song isn’t there. Melody or lyrics. Another song to cut was “Whole Wide World” — overproduced and the verses sound like Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran So Far Away.” “Bite My Head Off” was another unnecessary song. Minimal melody, nothing to say, and bringing in Paul McCartney to play bass seemed little more than a gimmick.
The album closes with a cover of Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ Stone Blues,” which is fine, but not as interesting as the band’s previous blues studies.
So, “Hackney Diamonds” appeared to be a strong five-song EP enmeshed in a 12-song album.
What to do? What should they have done?
Shades of what George Michael once said to Prince’s manager; “You know what his problem is? He doesn’t know how to self-edit.”
Another time or two in the car and things shift.
What is this, a couple songs in the middle of the album getting better? “Live By the Sword” starts to come alive. The one that features all five Rolling Stones — Charlie Watts on drums before he died, and Bill Wyman, who left in 1993 back on bass. The sound popped as the Rolling Stones. Huge energy in the verses, but then the chorus downshifts and abruptly shorts the promise. Oh so close.
Could a song just leave out the chorus?
Nonetheless, now that five song total was up to six, and “Mess It Up” was getting better. It’s too bouncy and the lyrics are thin, but it’s pretty good. That’s seven.
And a highlight was now firmly established, “Dreamy Skies” – the title making the point about placeholder words. But the song, a contemplative country number about Jagger busting out of the “city and suburbs and sprawl” to hear the “bark of a fox and the hoot of an owl” is undeniable. The chorus underwhelms in its lyrics but the melody and the notions are all there.
So that added up to four impressive songs, worthy of inclusion on any of the Rolling Stones’ albums: “Angry,” “Depending On You,” “Tell Me Straight,” and “Dreamy Skies,” with an honorable mention for “Live By the Sword.”
“Driving Me Too Hard” is good enough to stay on this album, a song that might have been twice as good if left as an instrumental.
Overall, “Hackney Diamonds,” again peculiarly, is light on the signature feel of the Rolling Stones. Much of it seems overproduced. Strange for this band, which deftly navigated, and incorporated elements of, so many trends through the decades, while they still innovated and changed but remained the Rolling Stones.
As for the album cover, it just needed to not be a liability. Since very few people care about a new Rolling Stones album in 2023, why give them another reason, in a glance, to believe you’ve got nothing worth their time?
By contrast, the title “Hackney Diamonds” is another intriguing, original name from The Rolling Stones. Richards half-joked in the lead-up press that it took longer to decide on a title than to finish the album.
Another session in the car and “Close To You” was back into consideration. It’s light, swinging verses pull you in, but the chorus flattens into oblivion.
It’s a nice idea for which you wonder what it might have been with some re-working.
In the end, it almost feels like “Hackney Diamonds” got released when it did by accident, a day before cooler heads might have prevailed.
It’s as if somebody at the studio was yelling into a phone: what do you mean you sent the pallets to Kentucky?
What the cooler heads might have said: why are we pushing an overdone pop-production on “Mess It Up,” for the first time ever when our average age is 78.5? Why are we hiring Elton John to play piano on the very last song the five-man Rolling Stones will ever record? It’s a distraction. Why did we bring in Lady Gaga for a non-song? Why would we possibly release that as a single? It shouldn’t even be on the album. What about reconsidering “Angry” as the first single? Why not try an elder-statesman “Depending on You” or “Dreamy Skies” then “Angry” as the solid, upbeat second single?
Who is going to tell Mick to go back to the notebooks for an afternoon or two and fix these lyrics?
At one point Richards sings, “Questions… I’ve got one or two.” Indeed, what could have been, what could have been? Even so, the Rolling Stones in 2023 have enmeshed a legitimate eight-song album in a 12-song album. Keeping the Muddy Waters remake rounded it out.
In short, they did it.
The what could-have-beens are more daunting on this album than ever, but the fact that Jagger/Richards can still deliver valid, commendable new songs this late in the game is something to behold.
It is extraordinary, especially considering that so many of the Rolling Stones’ contemporaries are only nostalgia acts – including those 20 and 30 years their junior – and have been for decades.
The Rolling Stones, with “Hackney Diamonds,” re-establish once more that they well surpass that description. ER
