\n<\/p>\n
Last Thursday, I had the absurd good fortune of going to Racket \u2014 a 650-capacity club in Manhattan that one recent Google review called an \u201cintimate venue, perfect vibe to see a small concert \u2014 to see a seven-song set by \u2026 the Rolling Stones<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I know. I know. <\/em>To quote the lead single from the band\u2019s new album \u201cHackney Diamonds,\u201d don\u2019t get angry with me.<\/a><\/p>\n The show was technically a release party for \u201cHackney Diamonds,\u201d the Stones\u2019 first album of original material in nearly two decades. (Jon Pareles spoke to them about it<\/a> last month.) And though rumor had it the band would be playing, I did not believe it until I was standing several people back from a stage onto which Mick Jagger \u2014 80 years old; unflagging; approximately a women\u2019s size 00 in both jeans and leather jacket \u2014 strutted and announced, \u201cWe\u2019re going to play old! We\u2019re going to play new!\u201d Even then, I did not quite believe it.<\/p>\n They greeted our fair city with \u201cShattered,\u201d that eternal anthem of New York squalor and survival. (I wish the song sounded more dated 45 years later, but alas there are still rats on the Westside and <\/em>bedbugs uptown.) Ronnie Wood shredded exuberantly; Keith Richards strummed coolly in purple silk; Jagger shadoobied<\/a> in fine form. They sounded \u2014 miraculously \u2014 just like the Rolling Stones.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Well, with one obvious absence: Charlie Watts, the band\u2019s longtime, quietly virtuosic drummer, who died in 2021<\/a>. Steve Jordan, who was Watts\u2019s personal pick to take over, meshed well with the group\u2019s live energy, though. (The bassist Darryl Jones, the keyboardist Matt Clifford and the backing singer Chanel Haynes \u2014 who had a particularly impressive turn on \u201cTumbling Dice,\u201d rounded out the lineup.)<\/p>\n The set, as Jagger implied, pulled from the fresh and the classic, which is appropriate for a show introducing \u201cHackney Diamonds\u201d to the world. There\u2019s a throwback spirit to the album, but it also sounds rooted in the present tense, thanks in part to the production of the 32-year-old Andrew Watt. \u201cHackney Diamonds\u201d at times also plays like an A-list rock \u2019n\u2019 roll revue, featuring contributions from Elton John<\/strong>, Stevie Wonder<\/strong>, Paul McCartney<\/strong> and Lady Gaga <\/strong>\u2014 who, at Racket, came out<\/a> for a transcendent encore of \u201cSweet Sounds of Heaven,\u201d clad in a glittery jumpsuit that matched the smoldering fireworks display of her vocals.<\/p>\n I\u2019m still reeling from this show (did<\/em> it actually happen?), so consider today\u2019s playlist a postscript to it. I wanted to place some of the highlights from \u201cHackney Diamonds\u201d in conversation with older Stones songs, to chart certain progressions and recurring sensibilities.<\/p>\n Also, my dad has had familial Stones bragging rights for my entire life for seeing the \u201cExile on Main St.\u201d tour in 1972. Please allow me my long-awaited hour of boasting.<\/p>\n Listen on Spotify as you read.<\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s an easy but irresistible simplicity to the leadoff track from \u201cTattoo You,\u201d a bare-bones Stones classic: two verse chords, that chunky little riff, steady but shuffling percussion. The brilliantly low-concept music video<\/a> \u2014 an early MTV staple \u2014 is also a master class in rock star charisma. (The cutaways to a smiling Watts are the best.) (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Similarly, the Stones don\u2019t overcomplicate things on \u201cAngry,\u201d the first single and opening track on \u201cHackney Diamonds.\u201d I like the negative space in this song, which puts all of its elements \u2014 grumbling guitars, fleet-footed beat, Jagger sass \u2014 in stark relief, really making them pop. (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n A musical highlight of the Brian Jones era (some crucial marimba playing here) marred by some of the more controversial lyrics in the Stones\u2019 catalog, \u201cUnder My Thumb\u201d tells the spiteful story of a sexual power struggle \u2014 well, one side of it, anyway. (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n \u201cI invented the game but I lost like a fool,\u201d a heartbroken Jagger sings on this mid-tempo ballad, sounding uncharacteristically regretful and even repentant. The change has come: He\u2019s under her thumb. (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n Though some found the lyrics incendiary when it was first released in the tumultuous year of 1968, \u201cStreet Fighting Man\u201d sounds less like a call to revolution than a cheeky, somewhat self-deprecating show of support from the sidelines: \u201cWhat can a poor boy do \u2019cept to sing for a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll band?\u201d Jagger sings atop Richards\u2019s spikily textured rhythm guitar. \u201c\u2019Cause in sleepy London Town there\u2019s just no place for a street fighting man.\u201d (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n The Stones revisit those London streets on this menacing rocker, though they don\u2019t sound quite so sleepy this time around: \u201cThe streets I used to walk on are full of broken glass,\u201d Jagger sings, referencing the image from which the new album gets its name<\/a>. (\u201cHackney diamonds\u201d are the shards of debris left over after a robbery.) The members of the Rolling Stones are obviously a long way from the shadier streets of Hackney now, but on this song they sound nostalgic (at least in theory) for a more hardscrabble past. (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n An ominous, era-defining anthem that Jagger once called \u201ckind of an end-of-the-world song,\u201d \u201cGimme Shelter\u201d is all about Richards\u2019s serpentine riffs and the explosive guest vocals of Merry Clayton, the only female singer to be prominently featured on a Stones album for 54 years. At least until \u2026 (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2026 this gospel-tinged \u201cHackney Diamonds\u201d highlight, which finds Lady Gaga and Jagger pushing each other ever higher into the stratosphere. (As if that weren\u2019t enough star power, Stevie Wonder also plays keys on the track.) As the album\u2019s producer Andrew Watt said<\/a>, \u201cShe joined the band<\/em> on that song. She\u2019s almost embodying Merry Clayton.\u201d (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n The influence of blues artists \u2014 especially Black American blues artists \u2014 looms large over the Stones\u2019 entire discography. That\u2019s explicitly apparent on the ambitious double-album \u201cExile on Main St.,\u201d particularly on this grimy rework of a 1937 Robert Johnson song<\/a>. (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n The finale of \u201cHackney Diamonds\u201d is this back-to-basics take on the Muddy Waters song that inspired the band\u2019s name all those years ago. As Pareles put it in his profile<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s just Jagger\u2019s voice and harmonica and Richards\u2019s guitar, unadorned in real time, circling back to the love of the blues that brought them together as teenagers. It could be a career postscript or a reaffirmation.\u201d (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n Look at me, I\u2019m in tatters,<\/p>\n Lindsay<\/p>\n Listen on Spotify.<\/em><\/a> We update this playlist with each new newsletter.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Rolling Stones, Past and Present\u201d track list<\/strong> Over the weekend I saw Martin Scorsese<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cKillers of the Flower Moon\u201d<\/a> \u2014 a great, challenging, heartbreakingly gorgeous American epic that I cannot recommend highly enough. I was especially moved by Robbie Robertson<\/strong>\u2019s score (completed before his death earlier this year), which fuses blues and folk with the music he heard growing up on Canada\u2019s Six Nations Reserve. It\u2019s a fitting coda to a singular career, and luckily much of it appears on the soundtrack released last week. Give it a listen.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Also, I avoided reading much about the movie before seeing it, so I had no idea that singer-songwriter Jason Isbell<\/a><\/strong> was in it<\/a> (?!), let alone that he played such a prominent role. He was great! And he\u2019s hilarious in one particular scene with Leonardo DiCaprio \u2014 if you\u2019ve seen it, you know the one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n1. \u201cStart Me Up\u201d (1981)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
2. \u201cAngry\u201d (2023)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
3. \u201cUnder My Thumb\u201d (1966)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
4. \u201cDepending on You\u201d (2023)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
5. \u201cStreet Fighting Man\u201d (1968)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
6. \u201cWhole Wide World\u201d (2023)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
7. \u201cGimme Shelter\u201d (1969)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
8. \u201cSweet Sounds of Heaven\u201d (featuring Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder) (2023)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
9. \u201cStop Breaking Down\u201d (1972)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
10. \u201cRolling Stones Blues\u201d (2023)<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
\nThe Amplifier Playlist<\/h2>\n
Track 1: \u201cStart Me Up\u201d
Track 2: \u201cAngry\u201d
Track 3: \u201cUnder My Thumb\u201d
Track 4: \u201cDepending on You\u201d
Track 5: \u201cStreet Fighting Man\u201d
Track 6: \u201cWhole Wide World\u201d
Track 7: \u201cGimme Shelter\u201d
Track 8: \u201cSweet Sounds of Heaven” (featuring Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder)
Track 9: \u201cStop Breaking Down\u201d
Track 10: \u201cRolling Stone Blues\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nBonus Tracks<\/h2>\n