Charlie Watts, the self-effacing and
unshakeable Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock’s greatest
rhythm sections and used his “day job” to support his enduring love of jazz,
has passed away , according to his publicist. He was 80 year - old .
Bernard Doherty said Tuesday that Watts
“passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his
family.”
“Charlie was a cherished husband, father
and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest
drummers of his generation,” Doherty said.
Watts had announced he
would not tour with the Stones in 2021 because of an undefined
health issue.
The quiet, elegantly dressed Watts was
often ranked with Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and a handful of others as a premier
rock drummer, respected worldwide for his muscular, swinging style as the
Stones rose from their scruffy beginnings to international superstardom. He
joined the band early in 1963 and remained for nearly 60 years, ranked just
behind Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as the group’s longest lasting and most
essential member.
Watts stayed on, and largely held
himself apart, through the drug abuse, creative clashes and ego wars that
helped kill founding member Brian Jones, drove bassist Bill Wyman and Jones’
replacement Mick Taylor to quit and otherwise made being in the Stones a most
exhausting job.
A classic Stones song like “Brown
Sugar” and “Start Me Up” often began with a hard guitar riff from Richards,
with Watts following closely behind, and Wyman, as the bassist liked to say,
“fattening the sound.” Watts’ speed, power and time keeping were never better
showcased than during the concert documentary, “Shine a Light,” when director
Martin Scorsese filmed “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from where he drummed toward the
back of the stage.
The Stones began, Watts said, “as white
blokes from England playing Black American music” but quickly evolved their own
distinctive sound. Watts was a jazz drummer in his early years and never lost
his affinity for the music he first loved, heading his own jazz band and taking
on numerous other side projects.
He had his eccentricities — Watts liked
to collect cars even though he didn’t drive and would simply sit in them in his
garage. But he was a steadying influence on stage and off as the Stones defied
all expectations by rocking well into their 70s, decades longer than their old
rivals the Beatles.
Watts didn’t care for flashy solos or
attention of any kind, but with Wyman and Richards forged some of rock’s
deepest grooves on “Honky Tonk Women,” “Brown Sugar” and other songs. The drummer
adapted well to everything from the disco of “Miss You” to the jazzy “Can’t You
Hear Me Knocking” and the dreamy ballad “Moonlight Mile.”
Jagger and Richards at times seemed to
agree on little else besides their admiration of Watts, both as a man and a
musician. Richards called Watts “the key” and often joked that their affinity
was so strong that on stage he’d sometimes try to rattle Watts by suddenly
changing the beat — only to have Watts change it right back.
He also had an impact on the Rolling
Stones that extended beyond drumming. He worked with Jagger on the ever more
spectacular stage designs for the group’s tours. He also provided illustrations
for the back cover of the acclaimed 1967 album “Between the Buttons” and
inadvertently gave the record its title. When he asked Stones manager Andrew
Oldham what the album would be called, Oldham responded “Between the buttons,”
meaning undecided. Watts thought that “Between the Buttons” was the actual name
and included it in his artwork.
To the world, he was a rock star. But
Watts often said that the actual experience was draining and unpleasant, and
even frightening. “Girls chasing you down the street, screaming … horrible!...
I hated it,” he told The Guardian newspaper in an interview. In another
interview, he described the drumming life as a “cross between being an athlete
and a total nervous wreck.”
Watts found refuge from the rock life,
marrying Shirley Ann Shepherd in 1964 and having a daughter, Seraphina, soon
after. While other famous rock marriages crumbled, theirs held. Jagger and
Richards could only envy their bandmate’s indifference to stardom and relative
contentment in his private life, which included happily tending horses on a
rural estate in Devon, England.
Author Philip Norman, who has written
extensively about the Rolling Stones, said Watts lived “in constant hope of
being allowed to catch the next plane home.” On tour, he made a point of
drawing each hotel room he stayed in, a way of marking time until he could
return to his family. He said little about playing the same songs for more than
40 years as the Stones recycled their classics. But he did branch out far
beyond “Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” by assembling and performing
with jazz bands in the second half of his career.
Charles Robert Watts, son of a truck
driver and a homemaker, was born in Neasden, London, on June 2, 1941. From
childhood, he was passionate about music — jazz in particular. He fell in love
with the drums after hearing Chico Hamilton, and taught himself to play by
listening to records by Johnny Dodds, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and other
jazz giants.
He worked for a London advertising firm
after he attended London’s Harrow Art College and played drums in his spare
time. London was home to a blues and jazz revival in the early 1960s, with
Jagger, Richards and Eric Clapton among the future superstars getting their
start. Watts’ career took off after he played with Alexis Korner’s Blues
Incorporated, for whom Jagger also performed, and was encouraged by Korner to
join the Stones.
Watts wasn’t a rock music fan at first
and remembered being guided by Richards and Brian Jones as he absorbed blues
and rock records, notably the music of bluesman Jimmy Reed. He said the band
could trace its roots to a brief period when he had lost his job and shared an
apartment with Jagger and Richards because he could live there rent-free.
“Keith Richards taught me rock and
roll,” Watts said. “We’d have nothing to do all day and we’d play these records
over and over again. I learned to love Muddy Waters. Keith turned me on to how
good Elvis Presley was, and I’d always hated Elvis up ‘til then.”
Watts was the final man to join the
Stones; the band had searched for months to find a permanent drummer and feared
Watts was too accomplished for them. Richards recalled the band wanting him so
badly to join that members cut down on expenses so they could afford to pay
Watts a proper salary. Watts said he believed at first the band would be lucky
to last a year.
“Every
band I’d ever been in had lasted a week,” he said. “I always thought the Stones
would last a week, then a fortnight, and then suddenly, it’s 30 years.”
For much of his career, Watts resisted
the excesses of his bandmates, but he fell into heroin addiction in the
mid-1980s. He would credit his stable relationship with his wife for getting
him off drugs.
“I was warring with myself at that
time,” he told Rolling Stone magazine.
With his financial future secure
because of the Stones’ status as one of the world’s most popular live bands,
Watts was able to indulge his passion for jazz by putting together some of the
most talented musicians in Britain for a series of recordings and performances.
They typically played during the long breaks between Stones tours.
His first jazz record, the 1986 “Live
at Fulham Town Hall,” was recorded by the Charlie Watts Orchestra. Others by
the Charlie Watts Quintet followed, and he expanded that group into the Charlie
Watts and the Tentet.
Watts was an acclaimed jazz bandleader
when he was stricken with throat cancer in 2004. He received extensive
treatment and made a full recovery. His return to health allowed him to resume
touring with both the Stones and his jazz band.
By then, the young man who had worn his
brown hair down to his shoulders in the late 1960s had evolved into a craggy,
white-haired, impeccably dressed senior statesman of rock. Getting Watts to
talk about his place in rock history was almost impossible, but he seemed to
enjoy talking about fashion. It was not unusual to see him attired in a
custom-made suit and polka dot tie while his bandmates wore jeans and T-shirts.
In the tumultuous, extremely
competitive world of rock and roll, Watts seemed to make few enemies.
“It
all seems to boil down to a certain quality which is as rare as hen’s teeth in
the music business, but which Charlie Watts is perceived to have in abundance.
In a word, decency,” columnist Barbara Ellen wrote after interviewing Watts in
2000. “You’ve got to hand it to a … man who’s played with the world’s most
influential rock ‘n’ roll band … and stayed happily married to his wife,
Shirley … A man who, moreover, remains resolutely determined not to take his
elevated position too seriously.”
Watts is survived by his wife Shirley,
sister Linda, daughter Seraphina and granddaughter Charlotte.
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