Month: September 2023

Here’s Sweet Sound Of Heaven for you

The first recension with a 5 star rating I have seen comes from The Telegraph : “The Rolling Stones, Sweet Sound of Heaven, review: Jagger and Gaga on astonishing, exultant form – Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder help push the Stones to heights they haven’t reached in decades for this soulful, gospel riposte to old age“

Rolling Stone writes: “Rousing gospel number comes off of upcoming Stones album, Hackney Diamonds“

This here is the lyric video with only 5:07 but let’s see …

Here’s the 7:22 version:

Here’s a 13:04 interview at Apple Music with Mick about SSOH:

From Twitter:

Here’s a short snippet of Sweet Sounds Of Heaven [SSOH]

It’s from Twitter/X and lasts only a few seconds (16).

But then, another short video snippet surfaced from Lady Gaga’s X and it’s slightly longer … 3 seconds longer… so all in all it’s 19 seconds, LOL.

But no reason to be dissappointed – tomorrow is release date for Sweet Sound Of Heaven in all it’s 7:20 glory, hehehe … 🙂

… Oh, and, did you read that article of the Wall Street Journal? That part where the question is raised if the Stones had plans to sell their catalog (post 1971 that is). Mick denied. But then you can read:

Maybe it’ll go to charity one day. “You maybe do some good in the world,” he says.

Woah! That really amazed me!! What do you think?

Just 2 more days until the next single!

The Stones will release “7 Minutes plus  20 Seconds in Sweet Sounds of Heaven – falling down to earth 5PM BST September 28th“.

BST is British Summer Time and corresponds to 6PM in central Europe, 12PM in New York and 9AM in LA.

Time is running fast! Can’t wait!

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has some recommendable read for us: “How Mick Jagger Has Kept the Rolling Stones in Business for Six Decades“

You can also read it without the paywall at archive.ph …

And another text worth reading is Keith’s interview with The Telegraph – ” ‘I gave up cigarettes in 2019, heroin in 1978, cocaine in 2006… but I still like a drink’ – Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards discusses emerging unscathed from decades of hard living – and why he loves to take the mick out of Jagger“

Mick moves like Jagger – he’s busy traveling, it seems.

Celebrities including Hugh Grant and Mick Jagger were among the list of app. 180 guests and joined King Charles III and Queen Camilla at a banquet at the Palace of Versailles on Wednesday 20 September today.

See for more on this telegraph.co.uk – “Windswept Mick Jagger among celebrities dining with the King and Macron at Versailles state dinner” or thesun.co.uk – “Jagger arrived on the red carpet with partner Melanie Hamrick and waved said ‘wow’ and ‘it’s so windy’ as his scarf blew in his face.” – or the dailymail.co.uk.

The Stones work on a new documentation about the making of Hackney Diamonds!

According to many reports – see for instance guitar.com, nme.com, retropopmagazine.com, blabbermouth.net or check out cbc.ca, where you can listen to an interview (39:21) with Mick:

“We don’t want it to sound like 40 years ago’: Mick Jagger on the Rolling Stones’ new album – The frontman discusses Hackney Diamonds, ‘staying abreast’ of the changing music industry and more“

Here’s a direct link to the podcast “Q with Tom Power” – recommended! 😉

And here’s a 27 minutes version on YT – enjoy!!!

I got that line from a very early back cover text of one the Rolling Stones EPs  (or was is a LP already?)

Anyways;  here is the deal: here are two very very much recommendes reads for you. The first one in technically no problem and just around the corner, so to speak… 

Check out rollingstone.com for the article “How the Rolling Stones Finally Got It Together and Made a Great New Album – Mick, Keith, Ronnie, and Stevie (Wonder, that is) break down the star-packed Hackney Diamonds, an album the Stones only could have made now“

And then, switch over to the NYTimes – (I just crushed the paywall by creating a free account in order to get my hands and eyes on this text – and it’s worth it!) – this article is a must read!!!

“The Rolling Stones on Starting Up Again – The band opens up about how its first album of new songs since 2005, and first since the death of Charlie Watts, recharges the partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.”

Wonderful times these days, folks! We have more good news to enjoy!

One of them is, that we now know, that after Hackney Diamonds, there will be another Stones album on it’s way!

According to noise11.com, who again point towards an interview the Stones gave after the PC, in this case with GB News (or GN News?), Paul McCartney played on more than two songs with them. One of the songs, Bite My Head Off, we already know about the collaboration. But there’s another song not included in the track list of Hackney Diamonds and that song will be published “on the next album“.

That’s not particularly the latest news as the band itself spoke about having recorded 23 songs and Hackney Diamonds features 12 songs. So there are at least 11 songs left for good and from these, the next album will tell us more! In a nutshell: Hackney Diamonds will not be the last Rolling Stones album!

Then, the other good news is that 2 more songs have leaked we can listen to.

One is Depending On You, a ballad – and a beautiful one. It starts with acoustic guitars and Mick singing soulfully about a lost love gone to someone else although he was so ‘depending on you’. After the first chorus, Ronnie adds some nice slide licks and the harmonies just flow about. Yes, the Stones can ballads. This song reminds me a little on Winter, Wild Horses and Moonlight Mile!

The other is Get Close – a rocker. Starting with the rhythm section it just straightforward jumps into your face. There’s a sax solo in the break which sounds like Bobby did this. This song could well come from Mick’s portfolio of ideas, IMHO.

[update] The Rolling Stones get Angry with Roto & AI on the Sunset Strip

 – rollingstone.com too has something to report about the making of Angry…

 – dailymail.co.uk as well looks behind the scenes – but with more emphasis on Sweeny and black leather…

It’s always nice to have a look behind the scenes and hear about all the stuff that went on before we digest the end product.

This time, I can recommend that article of which you have read the title already above. Posted by Mike Seymore, it tells us more about the production and several interesting technical stuff. Here’s a short snip of what VFX Supervisor George Brunt had to say:

“The end result had to look slick, and working with different resolution types is challenging. The devil really is in the detail with this type of work but slick it looks and we love it.”

Head over to fxguide.com and get all the devil’s details!

Some things must have been a bit slippery, because they slipped out and into the net… was it on purpose??? 🙂

… sooner or later it surfaces somewhere. In this case, we owe this to HackneyDiamonds on Insta. Apparently, the next single will be Sweet Sounds Of Heaven and that is, if you recall, that 7:22 piece from the album!

If you check out that picture a little bit more and mirror it, then you can see that this was taken in front of one car repair – Terry’s Ltd – MOT Testing Station in Tottenham… once again: I really did the way they do this campaign!

Thanks to R. who kindly shared the link, there’s an interesting article in Musicweek.

The article was written by Andre Pine and comes with the title “Jewel in the crown: How the Rolling Stones’ catalogue is set to be supercharged by their new album” and it tells us about “key developments on the streaming front for the Stones“.

So, if you please, go over to musicweek.com and have a good read!

Some of you might have noticed it already, especially, if you have seen the new video for Angry more that x times…

 At one point, if you look at the billboard, there is a sign telling us, that the 2, 3 shows it mentions are all “Sold out!” and the tour itself is the “Hackney Diamonds Tour“, the dates, so far visible, are July 4, 9 and 12 if I’m not mistaken. And the venues… well, one could be some “Bowl”, maybe Hollywood Bowl, but that wouldn’t quite fit into that place…

Although the focus these days is very clearly the single Angry and the new album, the band obviously couldn’t resist to play with some of these hints, strewn across the campaign. This somehow fits well into the style they started this in the first place with the ad in the Hackney Gazette… and I really like this!

It’s no big risk to expect tour plans by The Rolling Stones behind the new album. And if that will happen, it most likely will be a US tour!

Woah – that was a real delight to the three ‘boys’ again and they seemed fresh and fit. Wonderful!

By now, the single Angry is taking the iTunes charts by storm: it climed to no. 6 worldwide; in Germany they reached the no 1 spot.

As for the album, which you can pre-order at the usual places (amazon, Stones-Shop, etc.), so far we know of some different packages (ranging between $45 and $85 (see below) and vinyl editions (see below). One Japan edition is rumored to have one additional song, but that has still to be confirmed.

Here’s the tracklist of Hackney Diamonds, so far known:

1. Angry – 3:46
2. Get Close – 4:10
3. Depending On You – 4:03
4. Bite My Head Off – 3:31 (w. Paul McCartney)
5. Whole Wide World – 3:58
6. Dreamy Skies – 4:38
7. Mess It Up – 4:03 (w. Charlie)
8. Live By The Sword – 3:59 (w. Charlie + Bill)
9. Driving Me Too Hard – 3:16
10. Tell Me Straight – 2:56 (Keith song)
11. Sweet Sound Of Heaven – 7:22 (w. Stevie Wonder + Lady Gaga)
12. Rollin’ Stone Blues – 2:41

At the Stones store Carnaby No.9, there’s a red vinyl limited edition up for grabs for all the completists! 🙂 It’s £33.99…

The Stones-world is humming and excitement builds up!

At least, for us Stones fans this truly is a holiday! The Rolling Stones will present their new album Hackney Diamonds in the Hackney Empire in Hackney today!

The preparations for the PC are still going on with lots of media staff setting up their devices for interviews and reports…

The press is all over the place, like reuters.com / independent.co.uk / BBC.com

=> OK, the PC is over – now comes the video premiere of “Angry”

Mick just said that they are there for introducing their new single “Angry” and the corresponding video taken from the upcoming new album – that’s why they’re there …

Here’s the new single:

And here’s the complete The SUN showbiz stream of the event – 2:19:31 (start at 29:29 / red carpet at 1:13:15 / the intro at 1:33:50 / start PC at 1:39:05 / start new video ‘Angry’ at 2:02:58)

Here we have Mick and Ronnie talk to the press after the gig – and you can catch Ronnie telling about going on tour in the US next year!

First comments from the press:

The Guardian: ‘We were lazy!’ The Rolling Stones unveil new original album Hackney Diamonds after 18-year wait

The Telegraph: Angry is The Rolling Stones’ best single in 40 years

Rolling Stone: Rolling Stones Announce New Album of Original Music, First in 18 Years

The Times (via archive.ph): I’ve heard Hackney Diamonds. It’s the best Rolling Stones album since 1978 by Will Hodgkinson (chief rock and pop critic). Here’s a short citation:

Variously poignant, irreverent, anarchic and, in one gospel-tinged moment, quite spiritual, it touches on all the aspects we love about the band, glued together by the rambunctious energy they have made their own since the early Sixties.

Irish Radio station Nova will report live from there: “Our own Dee Woods will join American TV host Jimmy Fallon at the live stream event where Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood will talk through their first album of original material in 18 years — since 2005’s “A Bigger Bang.” You can check their page for updates.

Here’s another archive of the PC, at Facebook!

Then, SKY News is said to stream from the event at 2 PM, too. I don’t know whether access restrictions apply, so give it a try:

Now, this looks pretty cool:

Hi there folks! As Keith flies into the UK, Mick and Jimmy Fallon seem to enjoy their lecture in some bistro…

… It reads “Big news day in Hackney”. That would be the Ship’s Inn right by the Hackney Empire…  according to Beast/IORR, Mick had a Camden Pale, although he apparently didn’t drink it; so that public incident was more likely done for publicity reasons and to get a nice photo of it, which worked very well, I might say…

Keith seems to like it to take on disguise – using a mask plus sunglasses – maybe just to take a nap on the long flight…

=> Instagram

… According to recordsonvinyl.nl  the release date of the vinyl Hackney Diamonds is Oktober 13th…

And in the rest of the world …

The Hackney Empire prepares for the event tomorrow!

That’s a wonderful place for holding a press converence. One might think of the Stones giving a short live taste of the new album – who knows?

Nevertheless, apart from wishfull thinking, we’ll have an announcement by the Stones tomorrow, including Jimmy Fallon. And whatever the case, the question about when they will go on tour again behind Hackney Diamonds is, in my opinion, a must!

So let’s wait for another few hours and see what is awaiting us tomorrow. In any case, these will be definitely good stonesnews, folks! 🙂

[UPDATE] – This just came in: check out Faye Hackwell and her morning’s breakfast show at BBC Radio Kent around  7.20am tomorrow morning – they will have a feature about the new album and a chat with fan(s)!!

Below are some pictures from the venue and the preparations. I found them at X from at MarieFranceRemillard and she got
Photo 1-4 via  Beast/IORR. “The Rolling Stones will be holding a press conference from the Hackney Empire on Mare Street this Wednesday.“

Photo 5: Chelrald Oxley “Lights rigging inside the Hackney Empire on Mare Street, Hackney, for The Rolling Stones“,
5b: hackneyempire.co.uk

Rolling Stones will be LIVE in conversation with Jimmy Fallon

The Rolling Stones will be live on YouTube with Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday – don’t miss it!

They will be talking about the new album, new music and new era.

That will be streaming globally on YouTube from Hackney, London… (GMT), this Wednesday September 6th 2023!!!

Global times will be:
2.30PM BST
6.30AM PST
9.30AM EST
10.30AM BR
3.30PM CET
10.30PM JST
11.30PM AEST

Check out their trailer (hilarious!):

First taste of the first song!!!

The Stones ask us what we think about the first song: Don’t Get Angry With Me (DGAWM)!

I bet that on this site dontgetangrywithme.com is a LOT of traffic, because of the huge interest hiere – so if you receive a server error or something from that page, after loading (!), don’t get angry with them and just try again later! 😉

One thing, however is clear: it’s a rocker!