In a strange advertising insert published at the end of August on page 3 of the Hackney Gazette, a local newspaper in this outlying area of ​​London, a window repair company, “Hackney Diamonds”, announces the opening of a new shop in September 2023… ” Our friendly team promises you “satisfaction”. When you say ‘give me shelter’, we’ll fix your ‘shattered’ windows.” This cryptic message quotes three famous songs, the logo of a language appears embedded in the iconography, a link refers to a site of the company, whose rights are attributed to the Polydor record company, the Stones’ label. A long click can hear the beginnings of a song, “Angry”.

This is the first album with unreleased tracks since “A Bigger Bang” in 2005, “Blue

Some information leaks nicely, shelled out sparingly. Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood, the last original members or almost, the little young Ron Wood, 76, who joined the Stones in 1975, will be present. And it’s comedian and American talk show host Jimmy Fallon, former “Saturday Night Live”, who will host the mysterious meeting. He and Jagger have long been fond of each other, with the rocker having starred in Fallon sketches.

Journalists in England and the rest of the world will receive the information only a few hours before the start of the festivities, livestreamed, since it is no longer 1963. Nor in New York in 1975, when Mick and company jumped on the back of a truck driving down 5th Avenue to perform hits and announce their upcoming tour. The timing will probably be wiser. And more fluctuating, since the absence of Charlie Watts, the elegant tempo maker, eternal fan of jazz who somewhat despised this binary world of rock, will certainly be mentioned. He was replaced by Steve Jordan, drummer less light, less swing, old accomplice of Richards.

All songs are signed, as usual, Jagger-Richards. However, three are co-signed with the thirty-something American Andrew Watt, producer-singer who has already cracked down on Justin Bieber, Miley Cirus, Pearl Jam or Iggy Pop recently. It is therefore him accompanied by Don Was who produce this 24th studio album of the Rolling Stones.

Jagger, enemy of the past, killer of nostalgia, unable to write his memoirs because he refuses the exercise of memory, loves nothing better than adapting to the contemporary era and sticking to the sounds of the moment. He always pulled the band out of the early blues lands, often for better, and sometimes for worse. Is Andrew Watt the seed of the fabulous Jimmy Miller, the magician behind Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, or the seed of the flatter-arranged Don Was who has guided the Stones in the studio for the past twenty-five years?

This album was recorded and mixed between New York, Los Angeles and Nassau in the Bahamas. Why did you choose “Hackney Diamonds” as the title? Neither he nor Keith Richards are from Hackney, that formerly infamous corner of London’s East End. Both grew up in Dartford, a charmless town in Kent. Why Diamonds? By reference to the one embedded in Mick Jagger’s tooth for nearly 40 years? How do you assess the current degree of complicity between Mick and Keith? These two have known each other for… 75 years, but haven’t lived in the same latitudes for almost as many years.

Mick Jagger roams between Paris, London, Touraine where he owns the Château de la Fourchette, where he lived in confinement, and Mosquito Island in winter. Keith Richards resides in Connecticut, he regularly flies away with his family to the Turks and Caicos Islands in his villa at the edge of the turquoise water. Last I heard, he still smokes.

Their bond, ultimately, remains the love of music, acting, performing in public. It will be exceptional, no doubt, to see them together again, discuss their compositions, their desires, treat with an aristocratic haughtiness the journalistic plebs, they generally offer a T-shirt to whoever dares to ask if he is their last record, their last tour, their last word… The Stones sang in 1964 this cover of Irma Thomas, “Time Is On My Side”. Who to contradict them?