Hackney Diamonds, the first Rolling Stones album with new material in 18 years, gets its name from old slang used in the East London borough Hackney.
It means broken pieces of glass. What I found more interesting, though, is the backstory to this.
Explaining it recently on The Howard Stern Show, Keith Richards told the American celebrity broadcaster that the phrase referred to an explosive culmination of a boozy Saturday night binge where someone picks up a brick and slams it through the glass window of a store, maybe in an attempt to steal something or, more likely, on just a reckless whim.
The shattered glass pieces that would be strewn in front of the window were known as “hackney diamonds”.
The Stones have been an astonishingly long-lived band. Formed in 1962, they have been playing non-stop for 61 years.
The average age of the current band members (Mick Jagger on vocals, Richards on guitar and Ronnie Wood on bass) is 78. Drummer Charlie Watts, who was with the band from the start, died at 80 in 2021.
