Mick Jagger Wanted 'Deadline' Pressure to Complete New Album 'Hackney Diamonds': 'You're Not Doing Take 117'

Mick Jagger kept his Rolling Stones bandmates to a tight schedule making their first new album in 18 years.

In a new interview with WSJ Magazine, the rock icon, 80, revealed that he put deadline pressure on the group to keep Hackney Diamonds on track.

He recalled telling Keith Richards after the Stones' last European tour ended in August 2022, "What I want to do is write some songs, go into the studio and finish the record by Valentine’s Day. Which was just a day I picked out of the hat — but everyone can remember it. And then we’ll go on tour with it, the way we used to.”

Jagger said Richards, 79, pushed back, telling him it wasn't going to happen. However, Jagger was undeterred.

“I said, ‘It may never happen, Keith, but that’s the aim. We’re going to have a f---ing deadline,’ ” he continued in the interview, which appears in WSJ Magazine's October issue, available on newsstands Oct. 7.

“Otherwise, we’re just going to go into the studio, for two weeks, and come out again, and then six weeks later, we’re going to go back in there. Like, no. Let’s make a deadline,” he added.

Jagger told the publication he was striving to replicate the swift turnaround of the band's 1978 album, Some Girls. “Not that you’re rushing,” he said of the process. “But you’re not, like, doing take 117. So that you don’t get bogged down in conversations about whether this song’s a good one, whether this song’s worth it.”

He said he wanted to give the recordings urgency, to draw the listener in. “Even if it’s a nice song, if it’s not done with enthusiasm, it doesn’t really get to you, does it?” he explained.

In the end, the deadline pressure worked. The band recorded basic tracks in four weeks and just missed their Valentine's Day target by a few weeks.

Jagger's push to keep his bandmates on pace reflects his history of being a stabilizing force for the Stones over the years, guiding them and keeping them going in a gritty industry. “I mean, it is kind of my role, you know? I think people expect me to do that,” he told the magazine.

“I don’t think anyone’s saying, ‘Oh, I should be doing the “clarity” role.’ I don’t see Ronnie [Wood, the band’s guitarist] saying to me, ‘Mick, I think you should retire from the clarity role and the vision role and I’ll do it.’ No one else wants to do it! I just got dumped with it. And I made a lot of mistakes, when I was very young. But you learn.”

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The Stones announced Hackney Diamonds at a press event in London earlier this month. Jagger, Richards and bandmate Ronnie Wood took the stage to talk to Jimmy Fallon about the album, which releases on Oct. 20.

"We wouldn't have put this album out if we didn't really like it," Jagger said to Fallon. "We must say that we are quite pleased with it. We’re not big-headed but we hope you like it."

In an emotional moment, the trio also touched on what it was like to record the album without their longtime drummer Charlie Watts, who died in August 2021.

"Ever since Charlie’s gone it’s different, he’s number four," Richards said. "He’s missing, he’s up there. Of course he's missed incredibly."