Mick Jagger is basking in the acclaim for the Rolling Stones’ new album ‘Hackney Diamonds’, the band’s first album of new material since 2005’s ‘A Bigger Bang’.
Reviewing the album for Variety, Jem Aswad said it “sounds classic without feeling dated”, adding that “if there’s a better way to end the Rolling Stones’ 60-plus year recording career, it’s hard to imagine what it could be”.
“I’m getting really good reactions from people that seem genuine,” Jagger told The Guardian. In a freewheeling interview with the British newspaper, Jagger, 80, touched on mortality, missing drummer Charlie Watts and contemporary US politics.
For ‘Hackney Diamonds’, the Stones presented producer Andrew Watt with around 80 songs written in the 18-year gap between original albums – 2016’s ‘Blue & Lonesome’ was an album of blues covers – and asked him to pick what he liked. “Some were demos, some weren’t developed. And there was a lot of material with Charlie that we needed to listen to,” Watt told The Guardian. There are 12 tracks on ‘Hackney Diamonds’, 11 of which are original and the 12th a Muddy Waters cover. “Some other tracks we’ve done with Charlie that will probably come out,” Jagger said. “So he’s sort of still there – and I hope he likes the rest of the record.”
Jagger continued: “It’s been a couple of years now and I still think about Charlie a lot. I think about him when I’m playing and what he would have played; would he have liked this song, because I’d always bounce things off him. I’d play him the silly pop songs of the moment and he’d love all of that”.
“But I hate to say this: when you get older, a lot of your friends die,” Jagger added. “It doesn’t get any easier. There’s a lot of people your age who are dying all the time. I don’t have any friends older than me, just one. Apart from the band, all my friends are much younger… You’re aware of your own mortality from an early age – it’s not something you think about when you’re in your 70s,” Jagger said.
Jagger also had a typically trenchant take on US politics. “America is worrying because when we get extreme governments in America, we get into too many fights. People don’t really understand what they’re talking about half the time, to be honest. I’m sorry, they just don’t. And they have very strong views.
“Hackney Diamonds” is out now on Polydor.
