LONDON (AP) — A rock’n’roll juggernaut was descending Wednesday on London’s Hackney district, where The Rolling Stones are set to unveil their new album, “Hackney Diamonds.”
Hard-core fans were already lining up Wednesday morning outside the Hackney Empire, where Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood will be interviewed onstage by “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon in a livestreamed event at 2:30 p.m. (1330 GMT; 9:30 a.m. EDT).
Inside the ornate former Edwardian musical hall where Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel once performed, Jagger, 80, Richards, 79 and Wood, 76 are due to give details of the Stones’ first studio album of new songs since “A Bigger Bang” in 2005.
The band released a set of blues covers, “Blue & Lonesome,” in 2016.
The album is the first since drummer Charlie Watts died in in 2021, and is due to include some contributions he recorded before his death.
Mick Jagger ready to attend the Rolling Stones “Hackney Diamonds” Launch Event at Hackney Empire on September 06, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Jo Hale/Redferns)
Brazilian fan Taric Fioravanti, from Sao Paulo, lined up to get a glimpse of the band, saying he hoped the new songs would sound like his favorite Stones album, “Some Girls.”
“I love these guys,” he said. “Keith Richards is one of the biggest guitar heroes in the history of rock music.
“(And) they’re 80 years old. Most bands have stopped making new music” by that age, he said.
Announcement of the new material follows a cryptic teaser campaign, in which the band’s iconic mouth and tongue logo was projected onto the façade of landmarks in cities around the world, including New York, London and Paris.
The band members may reveal what drew them to Hackney, the vibrant east London borough that gave the world stars including playwright Harold Pinter and actor Idris Elba.
“Hackney Diamonds” is a slang term for shattered glass, and the band also teased fans with an ad in the local Hackney Gazette newspaper for a fictional glass repair business: “When you say gimme shelter, we’ll fix your shattered windows.”
Founded in 1962, the Stones show no signs of planning to retire. Last year the band played a 60th-anniversary tour of Europe, with Steve Jordan replacing Watts on drums.