Aged like sparkling wine – the Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds

Let’s get over the whining. Let’s forget the persistent grumbling. Let’s just quietly ignore the fact that the Rolling Stones are long past their raw original reinterpretation of the blues and the blatant cultural appropriation that fuelled their emergence, together with the sexually-charged mischief that set them apart from That Other Band. Instead, let’s revel in Hackney Diamonds, their first collection of original new songs for 18 years.

Because, for the first part, it defies logic: it doesn’t sound like a band led by an 80-year-old lead singer, with a near-80-year-old pirate-guitarist and his 76-year-old ‘younger brother’ combining to produce the sort of energy emitted by outfits a quarter of their history. Even if you view the Stones today as barely bothering to masquerade their self-parody, they’re still capable of doing something that no one else is capable of: being the Rolling Stones. 

That point hit me someway through their set in June last year at their historically significant Hyde Park Calling gig. On what was my fifth time seeing the Stones live, and with Charlie Watts 10 months gone (his absence still raw within the band), they lived up to their moniker - The Greatest Rock And Roll Band In The World™. Because in the course of those two hours they didn’t put a step out of place to in any way diminish the Rolling Stones brand. And, yet, I couldn’t get out of my head the fact that this was an outfit then celebrating 61 years since former schoolboy friends Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reunited on a platform at Dartford Railway Station, forging a musical partnership that, even with frequent schisms in their own relationship, endures to this day. 

Not that they need the work. Their last, Covid-interrupted tour had barely ended before there was news of a new album, their 24th (or 26th if you’re counting US releases), although Jagger has maintained that none of them were in any “urgency” to record new material. And, yet, here we are, with Hackney Diamonds - 12 new songs, including final appearances from Charlie Watts (on the tracks Mess It Up and Live By The Sword, which also features Bill Wyman), involvement from Sir Paul McCartney and Lady Gaga.

“Everyone seemed happy to do a tour every few years and nothing for the rest of the time,” Jagger recently told The Times, adding that the business has flipped. “In the old days, the tour used to be a promotion for the record and the record was the thing. These days you make loads of money on the road and you don’t make much money on the record, which means you’re still selling tickets even when you don’t have a new album to promote.”

Picture: Facebook/Rolling Stones

He suggests that it reduces the incentive to make something new: “You end up thinking ‘They just want to hear Paint It Black [on tour]. They don’t want to hear anything else. They’re quite happy. Who cares about our new record?’”

Jagger clearly did, and corralled Richards, Ron Wood and drummer Steve Jordan, Watts’ anointed understudy, into the studio this time last year, setting the target of releasing it now, a deadline they met, reflecting the consummate efficiency with which Rolling Stones Inc. operates. 

In the end it took them just three weeks in a Los Angeles studio to complete, making use of chums who were around at the time, like Lady Gaga, who sings on the luscious, gospel-influenced Sweet Sounds Of Heaven, which also includes keyboard work from Stevie Wonder. Sir Elton John turns up playing keys on Get Close and Piano, while McCartney adds bass on the punky Bite My Head Off.

Viewed through the prism of the kind of commentary I opened this post with, it’s very easy to see Hackney Diamonds as The Stones By Numbers. As is the customary gag, they even let Keith sing on one (Tell Me Straight). But that ignores the fact that the Stones’ very essence runs through the album from start to finish (which, incidentally, ends with a cover of the song that birthed the band - Muddy Waters’ Rolling Stone Blues).

It is a very good Rolling Stones album indeed, and by a country mile an improvement on the somewhat pointless Blue & Lonesome. Some have suggested that it’s their best album since Some Girls, the album that signalled the end of their prime (Tattoo You, which followed in 1982, was cast in the same period and can be seen as largely a collection of ’70s outtakes). 

Here’s where they’re clever: from the outset, Angry, to the conclusion, you will think you’ve heard it all before, except you haven’t. No one ever bought a Stones record for Beatles or Bowie-like progression, so there’s not likely to be any disappointment with Hackney Diamonds. It’s a Rolling Stones record. It’s what they do. It’s what they do that no one else does. And it is brilliant.

Park life: Rolling Stones & Eagles at British Summer Time

© Simon Poulter 2022

If there’s one thing about the Rolling Stones that remains unfathomable, it’s not that they’re still going after 60 years - there are plenty of “legacy” acts doing that - or that the loss of three original members hasn’t prevented them continuing. No, it’s that, simply, they can still put on a rock and roll show like nobody else. Literally, no one else.

That might sound hyperbolic (Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine in 1995 that he found the “greatest rock and roll band in the world” epithet “stupid”). But the unassailable truth is that, simply, they still are. In Hyde Park on Saturday - two weeks shy of the 60th anniversary of their debut gig and almost exactly 53 years since they played the same park for free in front of half a million hippies) - the evidence was compelling, from start to flamboyantly pyrotechnic finish.

Picture: Twitter/Rolling Stones

Opening with Street Fighting Man, it was clear that Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood - with a combined age of 231 - were still in the fight (despite the loss last year of drummer Charlie Watts, the band’s sheet anchor). This show, their first of two headline appearances at this year’s British Summer Time events, wasn’t going to be a gentle stroll through wistful recollections of their formative years, but a rollicking, two-hour romp through what the Stones do so well. 

For all their reputation as the ’70s’ louchest band, there was plenty of the intricate beat pop that evolved them from being a purely British blues boom outfit, with sprightly renditions of 19th Nervous Breakdown and She’s A Rainbow, Tumbling Dice and You Can’t Always Get What You Want harking back to their industrious origins, plying the music clubs of London, including that famous first gig at the Marquee on 12 July 1962 (an anniversary Jagger happily reminded Hyde Park of).

With an 80-year-old Paul McCartney headlining on the same evening down at Worthy Farm, Saturday provided a valiant night for the oldies. Twitter, inevitably and depressingly, erupted into a minor culture war, with the knuckleheads calling for a compulsory retirement age for rock stars, and those - like me - simply revelling in the joy of seeing proper legends like Macca and the Stones still able to give electrifying performances, the very thing that founded their existence to begin with.

There was no pretentious, sidelining to focus on obscure album tracks. This was the Rolling Stones everyone assembled wanted: a breathless Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?, Honky Tonk Women, Miss You and Midnight Rambler - one slammer after another. Even the 2020 lockdown single Living In A Ghost Town demonstrated that the Glimmer Twins still have a catchy bit of contemporary rock up their sleeves. But that song, and 1981’s Start Me Up aside, you could easily think that this was the Rolling Stones of 50 years ago, in their Nellcôte swagger, the Stones of Exile On Main Street and Let It Bleed, not a group with three elder gentlemen at their core (and the delightfully, bonkers cackling Richards having turned merrily into rock music’s own Rowley Birkin QC). 

And here is the remarkable thing: plenty of the negative comments about McCartney’s Glastonbury set reflected on his voice struggling a little (give the guy a break - he’s 80!), but Jagger, in particular, parades elastically about the stage no differently now at 78 than he did at 28. Nor has the voice suffered. In fact, musically, this Stones show was technically brilliant, the sound booming out crystal clear over Hyde Park. 

As they reached for the finale, with the obligatory Jumping Jack Flash, a mesmeric Sympathy For The Devil, and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction to end with, you were reminded - for the fifth time in my life - that you had just witnessed something that, as I stated in the opening of this post, literally no-one else can do.

To the following evening, then, and back to Hyde Park for a continuation of the heritage trail with a billing of Robert Plant (with Alison Krauss) opening for the Eagles. Plant has settled nicely into his groove as custodian of a form of Americana that is neither country or ‘world music’, but which evokes an Appalachian vibe log cabins in smokey remote valleys. Well, that’s at least what wafted across the vast open expanse of Hyde Park as Plant appropriately performed on the Great Oak Stage. 

In fact, the Midlander was the only Brit on stage, with a band exclusively drawn from the four corners of the US provinces, providing the early evening crowd with extracts from the Plant/Krauss albums Raising Sand and Raise The Roof (including the Plant/Jimmy Page composition Please Read The Letter and a couple of Everly Brothers covers), as well as richly devoured reinterpretations of Led Zeppelin’s Rock And Roll, When The Levee Breaks and The Battle Of Evermore.

In Plant was another reminder of an undisputed ’70s behemoth still making epic statements, though clearly without the gargantuan bombast of his once former band. His approach with Krauss these days is somewhat understated, that Valhalla scream of his lowered by an octave or two. But it’s worthy music, and in Hyde Park, providing an unspoken bridge to the main draw.

Picture: Twitter/British Summer Time

When they emerged from the LA canyon scene in the early 1970s, the Eagles were part of that city’s  wider collage as rock central. Down on the Sunset Strip, where Zeppelin’s John Bonham rode motorbikes up and down corridors of the ‘Riot House’ hotel (the Hyatt), you had the Troubadour, where future Eagles Glenn Frey, Don Henley and their friend Jackson Brown hung out with The Byrds and Linda Ronstadt, and worked their way into a scene that was, to quote Donny Osmond, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. But it was London where it all came together: Frey had wanted their debut album to be recorded by Glyn Johns, who’d produced albums for the Rolling Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin, so in the freezing cold of February 1972, the perennial West Coasters set up shop at Olympic Studios in Barnes. It wasn’t, by all accounts, a happy experience, with Johns having one view of the band’s direction, and Frey and Henley having another. And, as Henley will recount to the Hyde Park crowd, Britain was in the midst of a coal strike, so the power to the studio would frequently cut out.

51 years later and the Eagles have been through countless changes of personnel, and have broken up and reformed. Six years ago they lost Frey, leaving the idea of any sort of continuation a little bit moot (rock’s legacy circus is now full of bands missing their original members, to such extent that some resemble Trigger’s Broom). Smartly, though, the Eagles brought in American country legend Vince Gill, who on last night’s evidence, has slotted perfectly into the vocal space vacated by Frey’s tragic death at the age of 67. The core line-up continues to be staffed by Henley, bassist Timothy B. Schmitt and the livewire guitarist Joe Walsh, along with a phalanx of supporting musicians, who last night blew through a 23-song set of their five decades, spanning the countryfied, harmonised vocals of that first album, through to the edgier, bluesy rock hinged on Walsh’s slide guitar.

I saw the Eagles a few years ago at Madison Square Garden in what was a clear attempt to tell the story of their career through each song. There was even a little gentle engagement with the audience. But not here. Instead, it was businesslike, with brief pauses between songs only occasionally broken by one of Henley, Schmitt or Walsh (in his slightly incomprehensible drawl) making proclamations to the crowd. “So, this is British Summer Time,” Henley said at one point. “In case we don’t pass this way again, I want to thank you all for embracing these songs, taking them into your hearts and your homes – we appreciate it,”. Woah - “in case we don’t pass this way again”…?

Picture: Twitter/British Summer Time

If this was, then, to be the last time a British audience experienced this most storied of American megabands, then it certainly got its money’s worth. One Of These Nights, New Kid In Town, Witchy Woman, Take It To The Limit, Lyin’ Eyes, Tequila Sunrise, Best Of My Love, Peaceful Easy Feeling, Take It Easy - they kept on coming. As did the solo hits - Henley’s Boys Of Summer and Walsh’s autobiographical and highly ironic Life’s Been Good. There were more Eagles live highlights - the James Gang cover Funk #49, Heartache Tonight, Life In The Fast Lane, Walsh’s Rocky Mountain Way and Desperado. And, of course, the song probably 90% of the crowd had come for, Hotel California.

Just like the Rolling Stones the night before, it was all technically pristine. Sometimes when you write that about a live performance you make it sound sterile, but while personality-wise the Eagles come across as a little cold, the music was anything but. They can rock out, but it’s with a sense of arch control. Perhaps the one wild card of the night came at the end, with a performance of Already Gone, at which they were joined on stage - bizarrely, now I think of it - by one John McEnroe. Obviously in town for Wimbledon (and to visit his mate Boris Becker in pokey), it was hard to tell what contribution the once Superbrat of tennis made to proceedings, other than to render the audience slightly agog at the somewhat random sight of him mingling with one of rock’s most carefully considered supergroups.

This had been the weekend that sparked the perennial debate over ‘how old is too old’?. As someone nearing his 56th year, I’m of the “age is just a number” fraternity. Yes, it’s sad to see your musical heroes getting old (my review of Phil Collins’ last hurrah with Genesis back in February will serve testament to that), but I can genuinely say that between the Rolling Stones (and Macca at Glasto) on Saturday night, and Robert Plant and the Eagles last night, the law of diminishing returns was proven wrong. My motivation for buying the Stones tickets to begin with was that no one can tell how long they’ll go on for (age and diminishing health didn’t defeat the blues greats like BB King and John Lee Hooker towards their ends). And as Don Henley appeared to confirm, there was every chance that this would be the last time the Eagles would play the very city where their recorded career began. Take It To The Limit (one last time) may have been the most fitting sentiment of the entire weekend.

Stone unturned

Drummers, for reasons I’ve never fully fathomed, have historically borne the brunt of rock humour. In Spinal Tap’s back story, they worked their way through 18 tub thumpers, including John “Stumpy” Pepys, who died in a bizarre gardening accident, Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs, who choked on vomit “of unknown origin”,  Peter “James” Bond and Mick Shrimpton, who both expired in bizarre on-stage explosions, and Chris “Poppa” Cadeau, who was eaten by his own pet python, Cleopatra. 

Rock drummers are otherwise portrayed as the madcap members of the band, epitomised by Keith Moon “The Loon” and the Muppet he inspired, Animal, and invariably hidden behind a wall of tom-toms and a sea of cymbals of every diameter. Traditionally they are indulged by their bandmates by being provided with time in a live set in which to flail at their skins alone while everyone else disappears to do whatever rock musicians disappear off stage to take care of.

Charlie Watts wasn’t anything like that. He was, by any rock drummer's standards, a modest timekeeper. Resplendent off-stage in Savile Row threads, in contrast to Keith Richards’ ageing pirate look and Mick Jagger’s skinny-jeaned effete, Watts sat behind a simple kit - a single tom-tom, snare, hi-hat, bass and just enough cymbals to punctuate the rhythm only when necessary. Even his drumming style appeared conservative, by comparison to the more expressive likes of Moon, Bonham or Collins. Herein, though, lies the seat of what has allowed the Stones to endure for almost 60 years. Amid the partying, womanising, divorces, dysfunction of every kind (not to mention the Glimmer Twins’ occasional schisms), Watts provided more than just the backbeat. He was the quiet rock of stability, musically, of course, but I suspect also in the more colourful aspects of the outfit that can still justifiably call themselves the “the greatest rock and roll band in the world”.

He was also so much more than - so the somewhat apocryphal tale recounted in Richards’s biography, Life recounts - just “Jagger’s drummer”, too. Part of Watts’ magic was what he brought to the Stones’ music, and part was what he brought to the Stones’ personality. Musically, he was at heart a jazz drummer, but had been drawn into London’s R’n’B scene in the early 1960s, which had its epicentre in the west and south-west London suburbs of Ealing and Richmond. Watts had also worked with the Godfather of British Blues, Alexis Korner. A meeting with Jagger, Richards and Brian Jones in one of those R’n’B clubs led him to joining the fledgling Rolling Stones in 1963, an association that only ended 58 years later with his death, announced earlier this week. 

Amazingly, Watts became the first Stone to pass away in old age – at 80 – (with the previous departure only being Jones at the age of 27 through his own misadventure). No one knows quite what has kept Richards going, given the onslaught his constitution has been put under by years of chemical abuse, although the more popular theory is that he has consumed such a sustained cocktail of substances that they have somehow metabolised inside the human laboratory that he surely has become. Watts, by stark contrast – even to the macrobiotic, still-teenage waste-sized Jagger – has always projected a more sober image. Even when he surprisingly succumbed to heroin addiction, it was a brief flirtation rather than a fully-blown descent, and it was ended by Richards’ intervention. Even that dabbling with the darker side of the rock’n’roll lifestyle was conducted with modest privacy. It was, however, a surprising revelation from a musician who, by comparison to the other surviving Stones, had led a decidedly normal life. Watts had been married to the same woman, Shirley, since 1964, and away from the band lived privately on a Devon farm, raising horses, children and grandchildren. Little is known beyond that, as he had always shied away from the attention that the others courted, happy to let his drumming do the talking.

The statement, issued after his death by publicist Bernard Doherty, included the understated phrase “one of the greatest drummers of his generation.” That is the respectful custom on these occasions, but in Watts’ case, thoroughly justified. He applied his jazz chops to the Stones’ blues-infused rock with an intricacy that at times belied the more straightforward rhythmic form of the band in front of him. This stems from his early exposure to Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker records as a teenager before his parents bought him his first drum kit in 1955. This led to regular gigs at the age of 16 in London’s jazz clubs before joining Korner’s Blues Incorporated. In turn, that brought about the fateful encounter with his future Rolling Stones bandmates, though their initial approach to join them was rebuffed as Watts wanted to concentrate on his stable day job at an advertising agency. In fact, even after making his first appearances with the band, he continued to work in a Soho office, up until the point that Decca Records’ Dick Rowe signed the Stones in May 1963 after he’d seen them at the Crawdaddy Club, the legendary crucible of British blues hosted by the old Station Hotel in Richmond-upon-Thames.

Nick Mason, the Pink Floyd drummer, described Watts as “probably the most underrated of all the rock’n’roll drummers”, adding that his natural feel for the music was “just exactly right” and that “no masterclasses or tutorial books, no solos or fancy gymnastics” could ever embellish it. You could say, then, that a drummer knows a drummer. Mick Jagger may have been the Stones’ focal point for most of their 58 years as a performing unit, and Keith Richards the band’s soul, (and, it shouldn’t be forgotten the contributions Brian Jones, Mick Taylor and latterly Ronnie Wood have made to that elixir with their so-called guitar “weaving”), but Watts contributed probably more than most people will appreciate. 

So the story goes, Satisfaction was more of a traditional blues drawl before Watts upped its tempo, his crisp snare beat giving the band’s signature song a danceability that ultimately propelled it - which Watts had strongly advocated should be a single against Jagger and Richards’ initial reservation - instantly to No.1 in the UK charts, but more significantly, to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, where it remained for four weeks, cementing the foundations of the band’s global dominance for the next five decades. Think, too, of Paint It Black, which opens with an Indian-influenced guitar riff before Watts snapping snare, again, drives the verse. You could argue that this is simply what a drummer is in a rock band for, but the more you analyse Stones songs like these - as well as later hits like Start Me Up or Love Is Strong - and you realise how Watts wasn’t just the Rolling Stones’ drummer but a core component of what made the greatest rock and roll band in the world exactly that and pretty much unassailable in that status.

Watts, of course, would be typically self-effacing about his role. He stoically accepted that the Stones’ colour was provided by the more flamboyant band members, and that just suited him fine. He once famously described being in the band as “five years playing, twenty years hanging around”, but despite the truncation of their current No Filter tour (which began in September 2017 in Hamburg) due to the pandemic, they have remained more active than most other surviving acts of a similar vintage. 

The Rolling Stones will continue to roll on. Despite the others’ own advancing ages – Jagger turned 78 last month, Richards will do the same in December, and ‘junior’ Ronnie Wood is 74 – they remain committed to touring and even recording. It remains to be seen how Watts’ death will impact their appetite to continue, though given that they also hold the accolade for remaining one of popular music’s most lucrative operations, the health of the others not withstanding, it would be reasonable to expect that retirement is not in the plan. Bruce Springsteen endured the death of his wingman Clarence Clemons, but Led Zeppelin called an immediate halt after John Bonham’s untimely demise. The Who, it could be argued, were never the same after Keith Moon died before he got old.

It would be gloriously romantic to view the Rolling Stones continued longevity as the result of being inspired by their itinerant blues heroes who played until they dropped, but beyond mercenary need, there is a sense that they will carry on until forces of nature stop them. They will, however, not be the same without their quiet drummer, who kept time but also, passively, kept the order, too.

You can always get what you want - merchandising the Rolling Stones brand

© Simon Poulter 2021

As someone lucky enough to have seen the Rolling Stones more times than any other band, and on a beautiful, sunlit morning in November 2016, was amongst the first punters through the door of New York's Industria to see their Exhibitionism showcase, you could say I’m a fan. A trawl of my T-shirt drawer reveals a disproportionate number of garments bearing the famous tongue motif, easily the most famous piece of iconography in rock’n’roll history. While it will never compete with a clothing logo like, say, Ralph Lauren's Polo, the Stones preside over a brand that, it would appear, has limitless application. 

This week they've added it to confectionary, with the launch of Rolling Stones-branded chocolate bars, available for £5.95 a pop (plus £3.95 for COVID-friendly home delivery) from the band's substantial online store. Should you be so inclined, you can purchase a bar of Brown Sugar (milk chocolate) or - wait for it - Cherry Red (dark chocolate infused with cherries). There is, now, literally nothing that tongue logo won’t appear on, a trade I have willingly engaged in, given my aforementioned T-shirt collection, the socks, the limited edition Moleskine notebook and, naturally, the super deluxe edition box set reissues, like last year’s Goats Head Soup. 

Undoubtedly, I am the Stones’ target market, and partly who they had in mind last September when they opened their own “flagship” store at No.9 Carnaby Street in London. Effectively an extension of the merchandising stands you’ll see at their live shows, ‘RS No.9 Carnaby’ is an Aladdin’s Cave of Stones stuff, all bearing that tongue, and fitted out in ‘Stones Red’, now a registered Pantone colour matched to that logo. Given that Carnaby Street would normally be one of London’s biggest tourist attractions (smart marketing in the early 2000s transformed it from the somewhat shabby cove of novelty tat shops it was when I used to visit the Smash Hits offices at 52-55 in the mid-1980s), you could say that even this outlet is further evidence of the Stones’ business smarts.

Along with the limitless racks of Stones-branded clothing, ‘RS No.9 Carnaby’ will sell you tongue-branded Baccarat Crystal wine glasses (£245) and matching decanter (£535), chiffon scarves (£350), a water bottle (£30) and even an umbrella (£25). Actually, the Carnaby Street store was a tad limited when we visited last October, but then this is where retail wonks like to get into the world of “brand experiences”, whereby consumers “engage” with a brand, as opposed to just shop. Think of Apple Stores where everything from the layout to the staff is designed to the Nth degree to exude the company's considerable brand values as much as flog you things.

However, retailing is only one tip of the Rolling Stones business iceberg, which includes the band’s recording, publishing, touring and sponsorship entities. They are, in essence, every bit a corporate brand, and the lips-and-tongue is as powerful an emblem as the logos of Apple, Nike, McDonalds, Mercedes, Coca-Cola or Volkswagen. But, then, the Stones have long been rock’s most successful corporate bands. Such is their endurance on the world stage that, beyond chocolate and branded umbrellas, they remain one of music’s most profitable touring forces. Their No Filter tour, which commenced in 2017 but was postponed last year due to the coronavirus, has so far booked over $415 million at the box office; their 2005 A Bigger Bang Tour remains the fourth highest grossing concert series of all time, trousering $688 million. By the time No Filter resumes, the Stones will have a combined age of 306 (drummer Charlie Watts reaches his 80th birthday in June). Mick Jagger is said to have amassed a net worth of $360 million, with Keith Richards a little way behind on $340 million. Most of this wealth has been generated by business acumen. 

The common thought is that Jagger’s uncompleted course in accounting at the London School of Economics in the early 1960s made him the fiscal brains of the operation, but it probably owes more to Prince Rupert Loewenstein, the Bavarian count who was their business manager for almost 40 years. His legacy (he died in 2014) is that the Stones are one of the most smartly-managed companies in music - even to the extent that they exist as a Dutch “BV” (besloten vennootschap or private limited company - said to be a tax-friendly arrangement), and hold annual company meetings every year in Amsterdam, a ready source of chuckles, given the city's notorious recreational delights.

Central to all of this has been that logo. What has become one of the most lucrative emblems of all time was the result of a £50 commission from Jagger to art student Jon Pasche in 1970 to produce a poster for their European tour that year. After rejecting the first couple of designs, Jagger suggested that Pasche produced something witty that combined the simplicity of the Shell oil logo with the Hindu deity Kali for further inspiration (which actually provided the emphasis on a mouth and tongue - not, as was assumed, a conscious effort to replicate Jagger’s own prominent lippage).

The tongue made its eventual debut on the back cover of the Stones’ Sticky Fingers album in 1971, and has been part of the band’s visual language ever since. According to one intellectual property lawyer it has earned “hundreds of millions of pounds”. Pasche, on the other hand, says he probably only earned a few thousand pounds from his design, eventually selling the copyright in 1982 for just £26,000. Still, though, it has become emblematic of a form of brand marketing that students of such dark arts should and will be examining for years. Merchandising has always been a core part of rock bands' money-making, but few have taken it to the industrial levels of brand exploitation as the Rolling Stones. And they've done it with one of the most controversial and irreverent pieces of corporate imagery ever created.

Band logos have always held a fascination for me. As a schoolboy, it was fashionable to emboss the names of rock bands on the canvas, army-surplus shoulder bags that everyone carted around when I was 13. Bands like Genesis, Steely Dan, Yes and Rush generated a weird form of fan loyalty via their logos, which would be painstakingly scrawled in biro on such bags. No one, though, has ever come close to monetising a graphic identity quite like the Stones. Any band can produce T-shirts, mugs and even sleepwear, but only one band can get away with a £500 decanter or, now, a six quid bar of chocolate. It seems you can always get what you want, for the right price, that is.

Autumn's here - get yourself some Goat's Head Soup

If your wallet has just about recovered from the retail gorging that was last weekend’s Record Store Day ‘drop’, and you’ve got some cash left that doesn’t need to go on food, heating and electricity for the remainder of this first official month of autumn, then the Rolling Stones, perennial masters of a shrewd bit of business, have come up with another diversion for your discretionary funds. 1973’s Goat’s Head Soup has arrived, again, in a number of formats including a beautifully boxed ‘super deluxe edition’ that might actually be worth the awkward letter from your bank manager. These box sets have, of course, become a lucrative money spinner for so-called heritage acts, but there is a market for them, namely people like me who are genuinely keen on adding to their record collections with newly remastered, high-quality vinyl recordings and extras like rarities and, with some bands, multichannel remixes.

The Stones have been no slouches in this department. Their deluxe reissue of the legendary Exile On Main Street ten years ago went to No.1 in the album charts. That appeared again two years ago in the gargantuan Studio Albums 1971-2016 box set containing spruced-up vinyl editions of their releases over that 45-year period, including the imperious run that began with Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile, progressed through the punk era in defiance with Some Girls and ends up with their last studio album to date, Blue & Lonesome. This year the band has commenced another run of reissues, with ten of their albums progressively released as half-speed mastered vinyl pressings (and for the definitive guide to this, check out Paul Sinclair’s excellent post on his Super Deluxe Edition site). While this might remain something of a niche audiophile preserve, as with most legends’ reissues, there is plenty of merit to the revisions, if only to either hear again or, in my case, to hear for the very first time, and with new sonics to enjoy at the same time.

You see, the thing with the Stones is that most people think they know them. Like their contemporaries, the you-know-whos from Liverpool, the ubiquity of Satisfaction, Jumping Jack Flash and the entire litany of hits over their 55-year career as a recording band, the compilations tend to write themselves. Indeed, as the only real megaband from the 60s to still be touring (well, they would be if it wasn’t for COVID-19…), even their set lists require little deviation. But this misses the point. With 30 studio albums to their name, the Stones’ back catalogue is deep. And even when things went off the rails, as drink, drugs, the 80s and personnel disputes got in the way, as they frequently did, that depth throws up plenty of pleasant surprises, even today.

Which brings me to Goats Head Soup, finally. Well, eventually. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from shelling out on some of these bands’ box sets, it’s that you take a chance. Roxy Music’s debut album came out a while ago as a luxury package but, apart from a glossy coffee table book no one needed, lest of all me, it was an expensive waste of money. The Led Zeppelin and Bowie box sets have been genuine treats, largely down to the level of curation, especially in the former, which is almost obsessively overseen by Jimmy Page (more of whom in a moment). But back, you’ll be relieved to read, to Goats Head Soup.

It was the Rolling Stones album that followed Exile, still regarded as their best moment on record (the result of capturing the loose, frequently debauched process to record it at Nellcôte, Keith Richards’ now-infamous rented house on the Côte d'Azur). Life in the Stones had, by 1972, become dysfunctional, what with the drug busts and whatnot. The band were largely living in exile, but even that started to become an issue as Richards, in particular, found doors increasingly closed by countries that would rather not play host to rock music’s most notorious dabbler in chemical recreation.

It was to Jamaica that the band eventually found a safe harbour, forming a lifelong bond with Richards in particular, mostly for its lifestyle, but also for the practicality that it was one of the few places that would let him in. “By that time about the only country that I was allowed to exist in was Switzerland, which was damn boring for me, at least for the first year, because I didn't like to ski... Nine countries kicked me out, thank you very much, so it was a matter of how to keep this thing together,” he revealed in the bands’ own autobiography, According To The Rolling Stones.

Goat’s Head Soup brought about a new working relationship between Richards and Mick Jagger, but also between the entire band and its coterie of side musicians who reassembled at Kingston’s Dynamic Sound studios. “By the time we got to cut Goats Head Soup, Mick and I — well, all of the band — had separated over the world for a while,” Richards told The Sunday Times’ Paul Sexton recently. “So we had to figure out how to write songs not being in each other’s pocket. Mick and I finally agreed, ‘We’d better get together,’ I don’t even remember where, and said, ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’ So it really came out of that way of working a bit more separately and then putting it together.”

Richards’ frequent brushes with the law had also partly become his muse, supplying the Goats Head sessions with a rich array of moments to develop. Focus, though, was the other key ingredient, contrasting with the prolonged process that produced its predecessor: “Most of [Goats Head Soup] was recorded in Jamaica, but not all of it, and it’s obviously very different from Exile," Jagger told Sexton in the same Sunday Times interview. “Exile was this sprawling thing. It was recorded over a long period, and it was mixed up with excerpts from previous sessions. I don’t really recall us having a sit-down talk and saying, ‘OK, we’re going to make a record that’s different.’ I don’t think we did at all.”

Goats Head Soup, then, doesn’t vary too much from the, by now, well formed Stones formula. But there is a noted relaxation by comparison to Exile, and one track in particular - the ballad Angie, written by Richards while drying out in a Swiss clinic. “Angie was a pretty ballad with strings,” Jagger explained to Sexton, “so if you’re going for the lead-off track, it couldn’t be further away from the gritty stuff of Exile.” Jamaica may have played a part. Richards has likened the spirit there in 1972 and 1973 to London ten years earlier. On top of that, Bob Marley’s Catch A Fire had just come out. The sunshine isle offered plenty to infuse the recording process, resulting in an album with a decidedly more soulful feel.

Jagger recently explained, appropriately, to Rolling Stone, where Goats Head Soup fits in the Stones chronology: "It’s not an album that’s as revered as Exile On Main Street, which preceded it, in most people’s minds — I suppose including me," he said, pointing out that a few tracks still feature in their stage sets. "We do Angie. We do Heartbreaker. We sometimes do Dancing With Mr D. It’s not an album we do that many songs from. I mean, it’s a different kind of album. It was more or less done in one place, in a relatively short space of time, as opposed to Exile, which was very spread out time-wise. And so it is a different-sounding record. It’s got some good things."

Work on Goats Head was a lot more focused, resulting in less overmatter than its predecessor. That said, some lucky soul at Universal Music managed to unearth the unreleased Scarlet, All The Rage, and Criss Cross, which appear in the box set. As he's done with other reissues, Jagger applied some new work on them from home. "Actually not as much work as some of the ones I’ve done on previous releases," he told Rolling Stone. "All The Rage, didn’t really have much vocals, so I had to write that, basically. And obviously do the vocals. But Criss Cross and Scarlet, I didn’t do any vocals for. I just did some stuff at the end [for] my fade-out vocal."

Scarlet, in particular, is arguably the new release's point of interest. "It's a bit of an odd one," says Jagger, "because it wasn’t really recorded for Goats Head Soup. It was just a song that we had knocking around. I remember doing it with a couple of other people, in addition to the version that was found." Those "couple of other people" included one Jimmy Page, who plays lead guitar on the track, which wasn't, either, recorded in the Jamaica sessions. Prior to joining Led Zeppelin and indeed the Stones’ West London blues scene contemporaries The Yardbirds (where he replaced Eric Clapton before handing over guitar duties to Jeff Beck), Page was one of the most sought-after session musicians. Barely out of his teens, he played on Beatles and Kinks tracks, and even The Who’s debut single, I Can't Explain. Scarlet ended up being recorded in the basement studio of The Wick, a legendary residence up on Richmond Hill once owned by Sir John Mills, then owned by Ronnie Wood, and now owned by Pete Townshend (and Mick Jagger once owned a house just a few doors further down the road) .

“Ronnie didn’t actually play on it,” Page told Paul Sexton. “Keith came in and set up his equipment, and I took my guitar. Obviously I paid a lot of attention to what he was doing and then came up with a riff that would go with a contraflow. It was great to work with Keith right from the bare bones of something.” The result is a track Page now finds “really powerful”, 48 years later. “I thought it sounded really solid, and everybody’s really on form.”

That comment, interestingly, is equally applicable to Goats Head Soup overall. Across all of its sessions, it’s a supreme example of musicianship, not to mention the skills of producer Jimmy Miller, whom the Stones have always credited with being the glue that bound Jagger and Richards’ creativity, but also brought out the best in the rest of the band, and their extended circle of session men, regulars like Ian Stewart and Bobby Keys, as well as keyboard players Nicky Hopkins and Billy Preston.

Goats Head has been considered to be the record that ended that golden run of Stones albums. Their next, It’s Only Rock'n'Roll, saw Mick Taylor make his penultimate - an often underestimated - contribution (Wood would make an appearance on Rock'n'Roll, ahead of Taylor quitting the band for health reasons). On the Live In Brussels ’73 companion album contained in the Goats Head box set, you can feel the stage chemistry between his and Richards’ guitar work.

Critics, then, are free to express their opinions about Goats Head Soup, but it is at the end of the day, a Rolling Stones album and a very good one at that. If you divorce from their casual slide into international playboyism and even cliche over the rest of the 1970s and 1980s, it’s albums like this that remind you what the Stones represent and why their place in rock and roll’s star gallery should be unimpeachable. What they lack in The Beatles’ late-period creativity and progressiveness, they more than make up for in their relentless energy and the mask of simplicity that often hides the cleverness of Jagger and Richards’ songwriting, and the joy of hearing a band, one you think you know, still coming up with surprises, almost five decades after they were first planted on record.

The end is nigh: Sheryl Crow's Threads

After my post last week about an abruptly different employment status, this latest headline might appear alarmingly nihilistic, but fear not. Following my conscious uncoupling last week I suddenly have time on my hands to catch up on numerous overdue domestic tasks. That includes listening to the small pile of records that has accumulated like traffic cones stacked up by the road, ominously, long before the road gets dug up. Top of the pile, through no particular selection process, is Sheryl Crow’s Threads which, the singer says, will be her last.

She has been touting the prospect of retirement from album making for a while, recently telling Rolling Stone that she’d fallen out of love with the process. “I’ve loved making albums, I’ve loved growing up with albums, [but] I don’t think people listen to albums as a full artistic statement anymore,” she explained. “They cherry pick and make their own playlists or you’ll only hear a song if comes up on a playlist. For me to make a full artistic statement, with a beginning and a middle and an end, and to put the emotion and the money and the time into it only to have it not be heard that way? It seems slightly futile.” Crow is not done yet with the idea of making new music, however, but says she’ll focus on writing and releasing individual songs. Which makes consideration of Threads interesting. “I feel really good about this being my last album,” Crow told Rolling Stone. “I feel like it’s really the summation of my creative life all the way until now. Threads is a beautiful final statement.” Whether it is or whether it is not I’ll come onto in a moment.

But, first, let me take you back a couple of weeks, when I had a job, and was sitting at Munich Airport after yet another corporate country visit. I suddenly realised that the music being piped into the departures area was Coldplay, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what Coldplay song it was (and couldn’t be arsed to fire up SoundHound to find out) because I stopped buying Coldplay albums as they (band and albums) had ceased to be of any interest whatsoever. They’d become over-earnest, the music wallpapery and Chris Martin had basically become a bit of a tit, what with all that latter day hippie-dippieness. The Coldplay song I heard in Munich was pleasant enough, don’t get me wrong, but ordinary. Pleasing, but nothing outlandish. A Ford Mondeo, if you will. William Shatner, even (you’ve seen his face all your life, and even though he’s now, remarkably, in his 80s, it doesn’t seem any different to when he was Captain Kirk in the 1960s). Familiar, like a neighbourhood that never changes.

So what’s that got to do with Sheryl Crow? Well, there have been emerging parallels. 27 years ago, when her debut album Tuesday Night Music Club burst through via the gloriously infectious All I Wanna Do, Crow commenced a run of albums that strolled between LA cool and Stonesesque rock and roll, blues and country, soul, edgier stuff and alt-country folkiness. It was always polished - though thankfully not gloss-polish. It was mature without sounding old, familiar without being derivative. It rightfully propelled her into rock’s executive lounge, recording and touring with the Stones, Eric Clapton (whom she dated, later writing My Favourite Mistake about the experience), and headlining a package tour with John Mayer (I was lucky enough to see their San Diego gig). Such is Crow’s standing that she’s never been short of stellar associations, from the late B.B. King to Bob Dylan. Which brings me to Threads, her eleventh studio record and a 17-track collection of collaborations with a galaxy of luminaries, from Stevie Nicks and Willie Nelson to Clapton and Sting, and from Chuck D to Vince Gill and even Johnny Cash, whom, if memory serves me, died in 2003.

Duet albums are often this way, an excuse to do something with musical mates but which add very little actual value to the principal act’s value proposition. Threads, though, might be different but, perhaps, only in the context of being Crow’s last album. For there has been a creeping sense of diminishing returns with her most recent. That’s not to say that 2013’s Feels Like Home and 2017’s Be Myself weren’t good, they just lacked the vibrancy that made earlier efforts like TNMC, Sheryl Crow and The Globe Sessions zippy and fresh, even with patent, denim-clad classic rock vibes. Things had begun to feel over-familiar, lacking groove. The Coldplay Syndrome.

Picture: Instagram/Sheryl Crow

If Feels Like Home was a reflection of Crow’s relocation with her two adopted sons to Nashville, leaving behind the Californian free spirit that was core to her early work, Threads opens with Prove You Wrong, featuring Nicks and young country star Maren Morris, and as much of a country marker as she could possibly make. Strangely, for an opening song - traditionally a blunderbuss of a track to wake up the listening programme to come - it’s probably the weakest of the 17. Thankfully, the following 16 tracks liven up in varying ways. Tell Me When It’s Over, co-written with and featuring country rocker Chris Stapleton, is one of her best in years, while Lonely Alone with Willie Nelson is a beautiful, gentle confessional. So Live Wire takes a deliciously bluesy route with Bonnie Raitt (who was “instrumental” in Crow picking up a guitar at the age of 17) and Mavis Staples adding a gospel-infused sensibility. The cover of George Harrison’s Beware Of Darkness, featuring Sting and Brandi Carlisle, runs a risk of mawkishness, but is actually quite good (with, thankfully, Sting’s appearance being understated). Others, such as Story of Everything (with Gary Clark Jr. and Chuck D), Still The Good Old Days (with Joe Walsh) and Dylan’s Everything Is Broken (with Jason Isbell) work less well. As an exercise in the application of professional friendships, Threads can’t be faulted. It is as its best when Crow’s natural ability for writing songs with rock-blues roots comes to the fore and you don’t, actually, care all that much who she’s working with on the track.

There are a couple of songs worth highlighting: a cover of the Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge track The Worst - a surprising choice at that - is a intriguing duet with Keith Richards. Keef, we all know, is not a natural singer, and yet his rasp provides a wonderful counter to the sweetness of Crow’s own voice. And then there’s Redemption Day, a track Crow included on her eponymous second album in 1996. Originally written after she’d toured US troops in Bosnia, Cash re-recorded the song in 2002, with the intention of making it being the “cornerstone” of his next album, but he died before it could be released. “Cut to now,” Crow explained recently, “and with everything that’s going on in America and in the world that song kept coming to mind so I asked his family if it would be OK if I used his demo vocal.” Cynics might be troubled by such raiding of a dead icon’s past, but the song - already good to begin with - is hauntingly good. We can sometimes sit discomfortably with retreads, reissues and re-recordings, be they of songs, films or television series, but here Crow’s cover of her own song is perfect. “I can’t think of many better compliments as a songwriter [than Cash recording one of your songs],” she said recently. “It was a very humbling experience, to hear him now with this crazy person in office – it was definitely sobering.”

Crow is only 57 - just five years my senior - so it would be horrendous to think of her retiring. She says she’s not, but given that she’s been drawn to, and has drawn to her, some of rock’s grandest statespeople, both on Threads but historically, all because of her traditions of songcraft, it would be a shame to think that the well has run dry. Her argument that the album, as a curated sequence of songs, is a spent force has some validation in this age of streaming services. But at risk of being an old head - face facts, I am - there is still a place for records with a beginning, middle and an end, that tell rich stories through lyrical heft and high quality musicianship. And that should stand out as being recognisable when piped through an airport.

Rolling in the deep: Stones still going, 57 years after their live debut

I have, on many occasion, used this platform to write about my fascination with the suburban British roots of some of rock's biggest global superstars, especially Eric Clapton and others who (like me) emanate from the Surrey/south-west London borders. These suburbs also play a part in, arguably, the most enduring success story of London's musical product, The Rolling Stones, who are - as I write - in the midst of their delayed US 'No Filter' tour, heading for New Orleans (along with Hurricane Barry, which is about to batter the Louisiana coastline).

That the Stones are, in 2019, still rolling is all the more remarkable when you consider that they played their first official gig under the name 'Mick Jagger & The Rollin' Stones' on this very day, 57 years ago, at London's Marquee Club, as it once was at 165 Oxford Street.

"It is quite amazing when you think about it," Jagger told Rolling Stone magazine on the gig's 50th anniversary. "But it was so long ago. Some of us are still here, but it's a very different group than the one that played 50 years ago." The line-up that night included Jagger, Brian Jones and Keith Richards, but not Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, who would join the Stones later.

The significance of that first gig is even more remarkable when you consider its chronological place: Jagger and Richards had only rekindled their childhood friendship the previous October, when they famously met on Platform 2 of Dartford railway station, the latter enamoured by the Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry records under crook of the future Stones frontman's arm. By the following spring they were members of the Blues Boys quintet, which later led to their involvement in Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated on the other side of London at the Ealing Jazz club, prompting Jagger and Richards to start jamming with the outfit (which also included Jones, Watts and eventual Stones keyboard player Ian Stewart). The jams led to the formation of a group playing cod covers of Berry and Waters numbers. Given the confected rivalry between the Stones and The Beatles, it should be remembered that the Liverpudlian band had, at this point, yet to sign with George Martin and Parlophone, or even release a single. The 'British invasion' was yet to commence.

By the time the new combo - which featured future Kinks drummer Mick Avory (according to Richards' autobiography Life) - managed to get booked for the Marquee, Jagger was still studying at the London School of Economics and just a couple of weeks shy of his 19th birthday. Like Richards, he was still living at home. The older Jones had migrated to London from Cheltenham and was already living the dream. The gig itself came about by a happy accident: Blues Incorporated were the Marquee's regular Thursday night band, but they'd been invited to do a live BBC radio broadcast elsewhere. Jones used his considerable charm to persuade the Marquee's owner, Harold Pendleton, to let their new group fill in. It was then, with Jones the band's de facto figurehead, that he got in touch with the local listings magazine Jazz News to plug the gig. When asked for the band's name, he caught a copy of Muddy Waters' Best Of album out of the corner of his eye, and saw the track listing for the song Rollin' Stone. A legend - one which remains to this day arguably the most enduring of the rock era - was born.

As for the gig itself, the Stones performed a sweaty 18 songs, all blues covers including Bright Lights, Big City, Kind of Lonesome and Blues Before Sunrise, ending with Elmore James' Happy Home. Jones pocketed six pounds in old money, while the rest took home five each. Even so, for those days and for their age, not a bad wage for a night's work, and the foundation of the money-making machine to which the Rolling Stones would become adept.

When celebrating the gig's 50th anniversary in 2012, Jagger was somewhat uneasy about the landmark: "Part of me goes, 'We’re slightly cheating,' because it’s not the same band, you know," he told Rolling Stone. "Still the same name. It's only Keith and myself that are the same people, I think. I've tried to find out when Charlie's first gig was, and none of us can really remember and no one really knows. But it's an amazing achievement, and I think it's fantastic and you know I'm very proud of it." Richards, ever the contrarian, was less fussed about the anniversary: "...[we] always really consider '63 to be 50 years, because Charlie didn’t actually join until January. So we look upon 1962 as sort of the 'year of conception'. But the birth is next year."

Even so, the now-near 60-year-old band, continuing to bowl over audiences over with their exuberant brand of blues, their showmanship, their sheer corporate might (The Rolling Stones BV is actually incorporated in Amsterdam for reasons, I'm told, of tax efficiency rather than Keith's proximity to the city's delights...). Even so, as they finally kicked off their No Filter tour earlier this week in Chicago - delayed due to Mick Jagger's heart surgery - the band, with a combined age of its core membership of 300, were every bit as dazzling as they've ever been, playing songs like Street Fighting Man, Tumbling Dice, Sympathy For The Devil, Paint It Black and a ten-minute version of Satisfaction with as much vibrancy as a band a quarter their age.

Picture: Facebook/The Rolling Stones

After all these years of mega tours like this one, not to mention the some 24 studio albums they've recorded (with another on the way), plus all the Glimmer Twins aggro and regular splits and spats, it would be easy to look upon the Rolling Stones as some vaudeville act still pounding the boards, six decades on from their first outing. Having seen them four times in my life (with the last one, in Amsterdam 13 years ago one of the best ever), I'd still like to see them one more time. For all their success, their wealth and all that comes with it, the Stones today are still, largely, the blues purists they were on this day in 1962. The Beatles and other contemporaries may have given way to psychedelia and progressiveness - and that's absolutely fine - but the Stones have never wavered from their core interest in 57 years (with the exception of the faux disco of Miss You), With that, they have retained and even reinvigorated their zest for what they do and have always done best. And, even if they have lost original members, inevitably like most of their contemporaries from the 1960s, the Stones today are still a force. A nature-defying one at that.

Time still on their side - the Rolling Stones' Blue & Lonesome

Three weeks ago I spent a delightfully indulgent morning in New York City trawling through the 54-year history of the Rolling Stones at Exhibitionism, their own lavish, Bowie Is-style showcase of memorabilia, which had crossed the Atlantic following a successful run in London during the summer.

At first it felt odd to be in New York's West Village looking at a history so seeped in London's musical heritage - such as the faithful recreation of the squalid Edith Grove flat shared by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones as The Greatest Rock'n'Roll In The World™ was being formed in 1962. It was in this "pigsty" (Richards' own word) that he and Jagger, his fellow Glimmer Twin, consolidated their love of blues music and, indeed, their enduring - if somewhat tempestuous relationship. That love of the blues had been forged somewhere east of their Chelsea digs, in suburban Dartford where, on October 17, 1961, the former friends from primary school were reacquainted on Platform 2 of the town's station, with Richards sparking up a conversation about the records his future partner-in-crime was holding: Chuck Berry's Rockin’ At The Hops and The Best of Muddy Waters.

Much has been written about how London's middle class suburbs not only succumbed to the music of the Mississippi Delta, but even exported it back there (the Stones famously turning up at Chess Studios in Chicago to record their 12x5 album and discovering Muddy Waters - their hero - up a ladder painting the building's front). While this might sound a little arriviste, the Stones have put back into America everything they took out of it, which is why the choice of Manhattan for Exhibitionism's second run seemed perfectly normal.

Even if the band's roots are firmly in London - in Dartford, Chelsea, the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond that they made their own - they long ago stopped being 'just' a British band. As the recently released tour film ¡Olé! Olé! Olé! depicted, they long ago became a global brand, perfectly at home in Buenas Aires, Caracas or São Paulo, and as much a religion in many of these places as they are rock royalty. One of the points underlined by the film is how, 54 years since their first gig at London's 100 Club, the Stones remain in rude health and still prepared to chart new ground (the film sees them touring Latin America, playing Havana, a rare occurrence for a Western rock band), making you question if any of today's X-Factor crop will be around in five years' time, let alone ten times that period.

The Rolling Stones' endurance, perhaps more so than Paul McCartney, who still tours, is that they are as vital and as invigoratingly entertaining today as a live act, as they ever have been, perhaps more so. They can't need the money, so let's leave that thought at the door, which makes the night-after-night playing of Honky Tonk Woman, Sympathy For The Devil or Satisfaction (and that riff) an endeavour of both consumate professionalism and an enduring love of doing so. Of course, being paid handsomely helps, too: this year they will earn some $65 million from touring alone which, even if you factor in the cost of touring (including wages for non-'full members', like bassist Darryl Jones - who, after 20 years feels he should be an official Stone), will still furnish Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood's bank accounts handsomely.

© Simon Poulter 2016

Snobs, cynical musos and the jealous might sniff at such business, with all that griping about how these and other heritage tour wrinklies are clogging up channels for younger artists. But the reality is that the world is a better place with the Stones continuing to perform, even if that means the only way of seeing them is to pay inflated ticket prices for vast stadium appearances.

No one would dispute that creatively, their best is behind them, as far back as those louche days of recording Exile On Main Street, Beggars Banquet and Sticky Fingers. But their mastery is undimmed. Richards is still inventing every day, be it chords or tunings, and in many respects is keeping the blues alive as the genre's originals continue to dwindle; Watts remains one of the sharpest drummers in the game, while Wood is a vastly underrated guitarist whose history goes back as long the as peer group of suburban six string-slingers like Clapton, Page and Beck; and Jagger, the ultimate frontman, a paradox of bandy-legged, arm-flailing 28-inch-waisted campness combined with the steely business sense of a corporate CEO.

With Jagger, Richards and Watts in their 70s, and Wood catching up at 69, it is still remarkable that, even with the slick circus around them, the Stones have the energy or the inclination to keep going. But they do, and if anything appear to be doing so with as much relish as ever. Which is why it might be tempting to expect Blue & Lonesome, their new studio album of blues covers, to be a lazy afternoon of bar room standards that any half decent pub band with a Stratocaster-playing lead could knock out. Thankfully, it's not. Instead, it's an accomplished, joyful jaunt through long forgotten songs, reanimating them with the right measure of authenticity, vintage amps and even more vintage guitars, and even Jagger himself demonstrating that, despite the knighthood and executive status, he is still a pure bluesman at heart. His harmonica work throughout Blue & Lonesome is some of the best you'll ever hear.

Recorded over the course of three days last December at British Grove Studios in Chiswick - just a couple of miles from the site of the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond where their residency established the band forever -  Blue & Lonesome's 12 songs dig deep into the artists that, as callow teens, the Stones soaked up, from blues harmonica master Little Walter, whose Just Your Fool kicks off the album, to the likes of Howlin' Wolf, Magic Sam and Little Johnny Taylor, whose Everybody Knows About My Good Thing includes a cameo by Eric Clapton, that other veteran from the south-west London blues scene.

© Simon Poulter 2016

Blue & Lonesome is no nostalgic meander, or even an attempt by the Stones to complete a 54-year cycle. This is more than homage, too, no faithful but predictable covers of standards, in the manner of those 'Pays Tribute To...' records K-Tel used to knock out via Woolies.

This is a band aware of their roots, reaching out to enjoy them again, as dynamically as they did in the first place. Then, it was with cheap instruments and an even cheaper home life, but always through the shared love of a music created many thousands of miles away amid the heat, sweat and toil of the American South.

The originals of the form may be all-but gone, but the music is being kept alive by, perhaps, the most famous exponent of the blues, the British band that became a global phenomenon and, six decades later, still are.