There was nothing in my fairly impressive curriculum to suggest that I would cross the Channel in my old age to attend a press conference that lasts less than half an hour, and that no questions should be asked, as that would spoil the atmosphere. But for The Stones, a person like me has a lot to spare.
Mark CoenenSeptember 6, 2023, 8:05 PM
In 6 hours and 42 minutes it’s time, but I’m still on the train. The YouTube channel that will stream the event already has 3,067 people in the queue.
It’s been eighteen years since the Rolling Stones released another record of original material: A Bigger Bang. If they wait another eighteen years, Mick Jagger will be 98 years old. It is possible, of course, but the chance that they will all reach that age seems small.
Bass guitarist Ronnie Wood had successful surgery on his left lung in 2019 to remove a malicious tumor and recovered just as miraculously and prosperously from a second cancer in 2021. Three times is undoubtedly a charm, but I wouldn’t count on it too hard.
That Keith Richards is the first person to live to be 135 years old is a certainty. Surprisingly enough, a life full of mind-altering spirits had little effect on the man’s physical condition. This was undoubtedly also because he only took the best synthetic coke, which he obtained directly from the Merck company.
Only a fall from a tree in 2006, when he was on holiday in Fiji, threatened to throw a spanner in the works. Six weeks later, Richards was back on stage undisturbed after doctors removed a blood clot from his brain. trifle.
Of the three, Jagger is in the best condition, although he did need a new heart valve in 2019. His father was a gymnastics teacher and lived to the age of 93. Zoonmans leaves nothing to chance to live at least that age. Six days a week fitness training, yoga, ballet, cycling and jogging, healthy eating and hardly any alcohol and, above all, going to bed on time. And from buttock, which gave him an eighth child via his last flame Melanie Hamrick at the age of 73.
But let’s reasonably assume that this is the last straw of a group with a truly incredible career and repertoire: all songs that sound alike and yet not.
As a sworn fan – first concert: Sportpaleis 1974 – I do not like to point out that the last really fantastic record that the group made dates back to 1978. Some Girls, with that great cover by Andy Warhol, on which the group is depicted as a gang of drag queens painted by someone with heavy cataracts. An album containing ‘Miss you’, ‘Far Away Eyes’, ‘Beast of Burden’, ‘Shattered’ and ‘Respectable’ and of course the title track. Some Girls is a greatest hits album in itself.
After that they fell a bit, with another resurrection on Tattoo You (‘Start Me Up’! ‘Waiting on a Friend’!). The band almost fell apart because ‘The Glimmer Twins’, as the duo Jagger-Richards is sometimes called, no longer shined but always argued. Until peace returned in 1989: since then they have played gigantic world tours at regular intervals, which brought them to the King Baudouin Stadium last year.
It was the first tour without the phlegmatic Charlie Watts, who died in August 2021 after a short illness. Jagger, Richards and Wood did not attend their former drummer’s funeral due to the corona measures and rehearsals for the new tour. Steve Jordan took over the drumstick.
Each concert began with a montage of Watts’ affable smile: he who lived the healthiest life of all the Stones – not to mention a minor heroin addiction in the 1970s – left, ironically, first of the four.
Tease like the best
The rumors about a new record have been circulating for so long that few people believe it, but it is ready and will be released to the world in dribs and drabs from now on.
A month ago I signed a somewhat menacing prohibition against disclosing info re. press conference in which I had to promise, hand on my heart, not to say a word about the imminent release (“the product”) of The Rolling Stones (“the artist”) and certainly not about the press conference (“the press conference”) . They didn’t have to tell me that twice! If I can pretend to be more important than I am, I won’t resist.
The smart teaser campaign had been going on for a while by then. Puzzling promos appeared in the local Hackney Gazette containing cryptic references to the group. Anyone who wanted could register on the website hackneydiamonds.com, where the record was teased. And this week, if you were quick because the site was constantly crashing – which was the intention – you could even listen to a piece of new single ‘Don’t Get Angry with Me’.
They may be very old, but from marketing you have to Jagger and co. learn nothing, no doubt inspired by Taylor Swift, the unthreatened and nigh-genius queen of pop marketing.
On Tuesday they announced via a video that The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon, almost the Otto-Jan Ham of America, would interview them. He was flown in because he has been twiddling his fingers at home for a few months: due to the major Hollywood strike of TV writers and screenwriters, the recording of the show has come to a halt. It is a trick that U2 also recently used when they had the film about their latest album, A Sort of Homecoming, presented by David Letterman.
Twenty minutes of fun
3:30 pm. The press conference for the entire world press – I counted them, they were really all there – takes place in the Hackney Empire, in a suburb of London: a room like a kind of bonbonnière, like the Bourla in Antwerp but more exuberant. It is slowly filling up with sweaty press people and eccentrically dressed young people: influencers with purple hair and postmodern glam rockers.
“You feel the wardrobe,” says Michèle Cuvelier, who is also here and knows more about it than I do. And damn, she’s absolutely right. All those beautiful people are strategically positioned to possibly come into the picture. There are eleven cameras that professionally record the case, because the press conference is also streamed on YouTube.
How different from the first press conference they gave in 1962. “That was in a pub here on Denmark Street,” Jagger said later. “There were two journalists. We gave them a beer and the album. No photos were even taken.”
Suddenly the stage is full of boys: the hyperkinetic Fallon and three jerks dressed in tight black, of a certain age, but you’d swear they’re younger, slapping each other on the shoulders. Guys in the shape of their lives, it seems, eager and eager to catch each other’s flies. The atmosphere is that of a cheerful reunion of a high school class.
“The record is called Hackney Diamonds because we’re a London band,” says Richards. The title refers to what you get when the windshield of your car breaks on a Saturday night: the diamonds in question are shards. Apparently he’s forgotten that there’s a much bigger connection between band and title: his own grandfather, Theodore Dupree, was born in Hackney.
The fact that they spent eighteen years working on the new record is a bit of the running gag of the afternoon: we’ve been really lazy, says Jagger. Obviously a joke, because the band didn’t sit still all this time and kept on touring. At the end of last year they really worked on it and the album was recorded in no time. They finally set a deadline and it worked: the record was ready in February of this year. Also thanks to the producer, Andy Watt, who kept them on their toes.
The death of Charlie Watts, of course, also passes. “We miss him terribly every day,” says Richards. “He was our number four, but luckily he himself indicated that Steve Jordan was his ideal replacement.” Watts still plays on two of the twelve tracks, which were recorded in 2019. These are ‘Mess It Up’ and ‘Live by the Sword’, which also features Bill Wyman – the original rhythm section was reunited after so many years.
Holy Grail
Fallon suddenly elaborates on the last time he saw the group in Hyde Park, where the concert is over before dark. Jagger replies, “Yeah, I just thought it was so and so. We’re not really a daytime band.” But this record can of course be played at any time of the day, the wrinkled one says handy.
“Making records,” adds Richards, “is the holy grail of pop music. And what do you do if the singer wants to make a record? Record him, of course, because before you know it the moment is over.”
They go over the songs on the new record. That is of no use to anyone in the room, because no one has heard them yet. When Jagger says ‘Sweet Sound of Heaven’ is gospel, Richards laughs at him. “A gospel? You haven’t been to a church in your whole life!” Yes, we laugh quite a bit.
Then Fallon asks some more questions from the fans in the YouTube chat. Fortunately, he skips the nasty quote “Fortunately you have a new drummer, who didn’t like much”. “Would you ever marry a girl from the audience”, asks the Argentinian Maria. Richards’ answer: “I would marry all of you. I’m a Mormon.” Then follows a laugh from the deepest depths of his dark throat.
“We are happy with this album, even though it took eighteen years to make,” Jagger finally concludes. After exactly 21 minutes, the gentlemen leave the stage to loud cheers, after which the first clip of the album is shown. It shows Sidney Sweeney, an actress who also played in White Lotus and Euphoria, who drapes herself languidly over a car for 3 minutes. Those images are cleverly mixed with great mash-up of old concert footage. One cannot be angry about that.
After half an hour we are standing on the warm paving stones again, blinking our eyes. “Solos come and go, riffs last forever”, Richards once said. He could also have talked about his band.
Hackney Diamonds is out October 20 at Universal.
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2023-09-06 18:05:47
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