Sessions had come and gone; unfinished songs were stacking up. Charlie Watts, the band's lifelong drummer and rhythmic cornerstone, had died in 2021, but the band kept on touring without new material. No one was being the taskmaster, Jagger recalled... So the singer did just that.
Near the end of the sessions, they even completed writing one song 'Driving Me Too Hard' in a room together, as they had in their early years. We're a weird pair, man, Richards said via video from his manager's New York City office... I love him dearly, and he loves me dearly, and let's leave it at that.
Hackney Diamonds, due Oct. 20, is both a new blast and a summing up. It digs into the Stones' long-established style: sinewy guitar riffs, Jagger's proudly intemperate vocals, bluesy underpinnings and ever-improvisatory guitar interplay. You know, it goes like this but maybe it could go like that, Richards said. Without improvisation, it wouldn't be anything in the first place. I mean, there are no rules to rock 'n' roll. That's the reason it's there.
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