The arrival of a new Rolling Stones album is a momentous occasion. Yesterday afternoon (September 6), at an exclusive event at east London’s Hackney Empire, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood confirmed that the 24th Rolling Stones album ‘Hackney Diamonds’ will arrive next month on October 20. It brought to an end weeks of speculation following a cryptic newspaper advert published a couple of weeks ago that had led an excited friend to text me: “I’m hoping this ‘Hackney Diamonds’ bollocks is what I want it to be!”
You see, new Rolling Stones albums are things worth getting worked up about. For a start there hasn’t been one for 18 years, which is so long ago that back then I had to go to Woolworths the day it came out to buy it on CD, like we used to in the old days. For most bands that would be a lifetime ago, for the Stones it’s a long weekend. After all, they’ve been putting out albums for almost six decades.
The Collected Works of Kevin EG Perry 