As i've written before, Angry is best understood as the narrator repressing
his anger in order to win acceptance. But at least the narrator knows what
he's doing, knows he's manipulating his target

(a great song, the only one i listen to from every show this tour.
when darryl's bass kicks in, it goes next level)

The situation is much worse on "Get Close". Here the narrator is a
completely lost soul begging for a miracle, imagining a woman that
will suddenly appear out of nowhere and love him to the depth of
her being. Its a pathetic stalker's theme song, its someone fantasizing
about the chick who lives down the hall who has not the slightest
interest in him

I'm beginning to like this album, i'm beginning to like what a
vicious takedown it is of the delusional among us. Again, very
much like Satanic Majesties, including the intentionally silly
(and optionally lenticular) cover art.

not agreed obviously (about Angry)

but i do agree with you about how much better Mess It Up is live,
with all the added crunch

also, i just caught for the first time the onstage graphics for Sympathy,
the Stones fiddling while Rome burns (with little devils dancing on the ruins),
which fits very well with my current thinking about the overall theme of
Hackney Diamonds, and why they disguised their true feelings so well

no way would fans have accepted them telling the truth about things,
so they made art out of the sea of denial theyve had no choice but to
swim in. again, very similar to the sea of psychedelic beatlemania
they were forced to swim in in 1967

the madness of crowds

r-w, i appreciate your interest, but you seem to be
repeatedly taking one of my hastily written imprecise
phrases out of context rather than considering that phrase
as part of the overall thought i'm trying to convey

but on the plus side your questions have given me a chance
to get clear in my own mind why the hell i feel so
differently about Hackney than the overwhelming majority
of Stones online fans

i really absented myself from this board for months
because i had nothing coherent to say about this mystery.
All i could say was "i'm not hearing what you people
are hearing, probably i will at some point, but for now
i dont enjoy it..."

and here i have to reference Satanic again. I lived
through that era, the album was a hit and praised,
everybody was dropping acid to it, but for me it
was a bridge too far, it was Beatles crap, and i
rejected it/them and went back to my first love, soul
music, motown stax etc, via which i had come to love
the music and atttude of the Stones.

of course it was not very long until JJF and Beggars
brought me back into the fold, forever.

the important point here is that Satanic was not
immediately rejected by the fans. That only happened
over time as a new conventional wisdom developed
that Satanic was a failed attempt to imitate the Beatles.
and that is the "wisdom" that has persisted, in most
quarters, right up until now.

so it took me about ten years to re-evaluate
Satanic and start to appreciate it, not as an imitation
of the Beatles but as, intentionally, both a homage to,
and a parody of, the Fab Four. There's some damn fine
Beatles music on Satanic, but the overall purpose was
to mock them and the mentality of the masses that
elevated to lofty heights such increasingly silly music.

So. revvy, what's being both parodied and respected on Hackney?
Generic stones music and the fans that insist upon it.
De-fanged inoffensive homogenized. Do y'all honestly
think Mick and Keith are happy about being muzzled
this way? well, yeah, to some extent, but only because
it pays well.

but their true feelings are clearly revealed in the lyrics,
utilizing vicious passive aggression. Just one "sincere" lie
after another. A river of denial. A cascade of fake emotions
and absurd ideas.

Because that's who we are as a culture, as a society
currently. as i keep saying, if the stones told the
harsh truth, the album would have been rejected.
"trendy, peter pan, blah blah blah"

I've written quite a bit about various of the Hackney
lyrics already on these pages, and if I feel inspired
i'll write more in the future. I was inspired to write
about "close to you" on this page because the proposition
was put forward that it was a beautiful sincere love song
when to me its obviously the fantasy of a disfuctional
incel who has not the slightest chance of making a
genuine love connection.

for now i can't do better than that at getting at
the truth about what they're really saying with
this album as opposed to what people think they're
saying.  y'all think they gave you the pleasant generic
album you demanded of them, but no, there's
quite a bit of shattered glass in the stew

(i forgot to add that for me it is not just the lyrics.
i think the music sucks, even after keith and andrew
performed extensive surgery on it. mick's lyrics
are generally brilliant at accurately reflecting the
value of the music being presented, mick's
lyrics tell me that he doesnt think anymore of the
music than i do. as does the fact that he's chosen
to perform only the songs i praised when the album
was released, plus "mess it up", which if it was a
rocker on the album instead of a bubblegum thing,
i would have praised as well since it explains why
they made such a vanilla album)

gotta go but...

1) c'mon r-w, i've already made this point several times. its not some
authority thats keeping the Stones generic and muzzled, ITS THE FANS !
the fans want the lies and are willing to pay for it. they are not willing
to pay for the truth

2) I'll try to remember to write soon about "depending on you"