On Wednesday (September 6), The Rolling Stones officially announced their new album Hackney Diamonds and shared its lead single "Angry." This will be the band's first original material since 2005's A Bigger Bang and first album since Charlie Watts' death.
During a live premiere of the new song, the bands surviving members discussed the album and how things have changed since the drummer passed away in 2021. “Ever since Charlie’s gone it’s different, of course. I mean, he’s number four. His missus is up there… Of course he’s missed. Incredibly,” Keith Richards said. “But thanks to Charlie Watts also we have Steve Jordan who was Charlie’s recommendation for if anything should happen to him. [He told us,] ‘Steve Jordan’s your man.’”
“[Watts chose him] way, way back, and also he’s been a friend of ours. I’ve worked with Steve so it was a kind of natural progression,” he continued. “It would have been a lot harder without Charlie’s blessing on that, you know?”
Fallon then asked if the album would feature contributions from Watts. “There’s 12 tracks on the album and most of them are Steve, but two are tracks we recorded in 2019 with Charlie. And so we used two of the tracks we recorded with Charlie before,” Mick Jagger said.
Ronnie Wood confirmed that the tracks are called "Live By The Sword" and "Mess It Up" and appear back to back midway through the album.
Hackney Diamonds is slated for an October 20 release. Watch the band chat with Fallon above.