Due to a surplus of happiness in other areas of my life, I follow Manchester United to make sure I am always in touch with suffering. I am never more than 90 minutes away from dejection, misery, and pain. I appear happy, but blood is pooling in my shoe.
This week in their efforts to overcome a team recently beaten 8-0 by Newcastle, manager Eric Ten Hag’s inspirational speech was reduced to five words: “Find a way to win.” I suspect there was a sixth word, that rhymes with ‘ducking’, but five is the media-friendly version. Strangely, it worked.
I thought of Eric’s words while listening to the new Rolling Stones album this week. Forty-five years after their last “great” album, The Stones have somehow, once again, found a way to win.
Hackney Diamonds is the three points that nobody expected. I’d throw in “something they can build on” if the average age of the band wasn’t 110 but be clear: This is a joy of an album.
It is one of the greatest rock and roll bands in music history, one of the great writing partnerships, giants upon whose shoulders so many have been carried, having fun with being all of those things and doing so in signature style.
There is so much to love here: ‘Whole Wide World’, ‘Mess it Up’ and ‘Driving Me Too Hard’ are just beautifully memorable, vintage, Stones songs. There is pleasure in just hearing Keith play, even before Mick sings. His guitar is a defining sound of modern music.
And then there’s the really good stuff: ‘Sweet Sounds of Heaven’ is the best thing they’ve done in decades, suffused with shades of ‘Can’t Always Get What You Want’. Plus, when Keith sings ‘Tell Me Straight’, it confirms his place as the living, breathing, heart of the band.
Muddy Water’s ‘Rolling Stones Blues’ is an inspired inclusion. Famously, it is where the band got their name, and its lyrics read like the Rolling Stones’ Mission Statement, page one: “I wish I was a catfish, swimming in the deep blue sea, I’d have all those wicked women, swimming after me.”
At their peak, it seemed as if the Rolling Stones had actually become one of the Delta blues bands that had so inspired them. The departed Brian Jones was a huge part of what drove that blues fascination. So, with that song’s inclusion, and the presence on other tracks of Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, it is at times 1963 all over again.
But how did they “get the win”? How did they mend the bridges, rekindle the flame, and finish an album that have talked about recording for decades?
Mortality you suspect provided some of the impetus. Mick had his aorta replaced a few years back, and Charlie’s death hit them hard. But I suspect the real part of the puzzle that fell into place was their acceptance into their ranks of one Andrew Watt, 31.
It might surprise die-hard fans to hear that the opening three tracks are not simple Jagger/Richards compositions. No, those tracks, including the “come-back” single, ‘Angry’, are, wait for it, credited to Watt/Jagger/Richards.
So, who is Andrew Watt? Since producing Ozzy Osbourne’s 2020 album, Ordinary Man, for which Watt won a Best Producer Grammy, he has become the go-to producer for, ahem, acts of a certain vintage.
He has worked with Dua Lipa, but is most renowned for work with Eddie Vedder, Elton John, Iggy Pop and Paul McCartney. It was Paul recommended him to Mick.
Watt is the one who suggested they get Bill Wyman in to play on the tracks with Charlie Watts, “one for the fans”, as he said. Likewise, it was he who suggested Elton John and made the call to Stevie Wonder.
When he realised, in recording, that Keith never plays the same thing twice, he just let him, and he stuck to the Stones recording mantra, that Keith’s bits are finished before Mick sings and never the other way around. For that is how the Stones work: Mick fits in around Keith.
There is no click track, no computer edits, the record speeds up and slows down, it is played live. As Watt says, “it is made to the f**king heartbeat connection between Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Steve Jordan, and Charlie, when Charlie’s on it.”
