Another sad day the self-effacing and unshakeable beloved drummer of the legendary rock band The Rolling Stones, Charlie
Watts, is dead. Watts died peacefully on Tuesday with his family at the
age of 80 in a London hospital, as his agent Bernard Doherty announced
to the British news agency PA. “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts,”
it read. “He passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today
surrounded by his family.” The statement referred to Watts as “one of
the greatest drummers of his generation” and closed by requesting that
“the privacy of his family, band members, and close friends is respected
at this difficult time.”
A few weeks ago it was announced that Watts would not take part in his
band’s upcoming US tour. He was recovering from unspecified medical
treatment, according to a PA spokesman. According to the BBC
broadcaster, Watts had already been treated for throat cancer in 2004.
Charles "Charlie" Robert Watts was born in Kingsbury, now a district
of London, in 1941. The son of a truck driver, he studied art and graphics at Harrow Art College, then took a job in a West End advertising agency and joined Alexis Korner's band Blues Incorporated as a drummer.The
loose blues collective also included singer Mick Jagger and guitarists
Brian Jones and Keith Richards, who all dropped out of the band to form
the Rolling Stones in 1962.
Just one year later, Watts quit his
job as a graphic artist when Stones guitarist Richards insisted he play
drums in the new band. Watts kept keeping his metronomic time for the
legendary rockers ever since.
With typical understatement, Watts was often been the overlooked man
in the background, letting his band mates take center stage.
"Charlie Watts gives me the freedom to fly on stage," Keith Richards once said of the taciturn drummer with perfect timing.
While
most rock stars tend to make headlines for their erratic lifestyles,
his lifestyle while on the road was in direct contrast to that of other
band members. He famously rejected the charms of the hordes of groupies
that dogged the band on all their tours, remaining faithful to his wife
Shirley, who he had married in 1964. However in the mid-1980s, during what he put down to a mid-life
crisis, Watts went off the rails with drink and drugs, leading to heroin
addiction.“It got so bad,” he later quipped, “that even Keith Richards, bless him, told me to get it together.”
Watts’ relations with Jagger, too, had reached an all-time low.
On one famous occasion, in an Amsterdam hotel in 1984, a drunken
Jagger reportedly woke Watts up by bellowing down the phone “Where’s my
drummer?”
Watts responded by going round to the singer’s room, hitting him with
a left hook, and saying: “Don’t ever call me ‘your drummer’ again,
you’re my fucking singer.”
The crisis lasted two years and it was Shirley, above all, who helped him get through it.
Universally recognized as one of the greatest rock drummers of all time,
Watts and guitarist Keith Richards have been the core of the Rolling
Stones’ instrumental sound: Richards spent upwards of half the group’s
concerts turned around, facing Watts, bobbing his head to the drummer’s
rhythm. A 2012 review of a Rolling Stones concert reads in part: “For
all of Mick and Keith’s supremacy, there’s no question that the heart of
this band is and will always be Watts: At 71, his whipcrack snare and
preternatural sense of swing drive the songs with peerless authority,
and define the contradictory uptight-laid-back-ness that’s at the heart
of the Stones’ rhythm.” Watts was never a flashy drummer, but driving
the beat for “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” for a two-hour
set, in a stadium, no less is an act of great physical endurance that
Watts performed until he was 78.
And he was modest too, having said he felt embarrassed when receiving minutes-long standing ovations. "I hate leaving home," he once said. "I love what I do, but I'd love to go home every night."
A jazz drummer in his early years, Watts never lost his affinity for the music he first loved, and as well as being a musician, Watts was also a keen artist and in 1964
published Ode To A High Flying Bird, a comic book tribute to the jazz
musician, Charlie Parker and 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, such as From One Charlie and Warm & Tender. In 2004 he also released Watts At
Scotts, a recording of him playing at London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s
alongside a group of other musicians.and he expanded that group into the Charlie Watts and the Tentet. He also released an album with Jim Keltner, and with The Charlie Watts Tentet released Watts at Scotts. and from 2009 onwards he played concerts with another group he put together, the ABC&D of Boogie Woogie.
Together with the Stones, Watts was inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. Rolling Stone magazine also put the time-keeper in twelfth place on its list of the best drummers of all time.
Through
near six decades with the Rolling Stones, Watts remained
skeptical of fame. In the end, he only wanted one thing, to make music.
"It's
been years and years and years I've been playing the drums, and they're
still a challenge, I still enjoy using drumsticks and a snare drum," he
once said.
Death will always create deep heartbreak and an inexplicable deep sense
of loss whoever you are. My thoughts currently are with others too who have lost their
beloved ones but for now, Rest in peace, Charlie Watts. You helped make rock and roll what it became, your drum beats will live forever one of the greatest drummers of our time.
Charlie Watts Orchestra -Flying Home
Charlie Watts - Boogie Woogie
-
Charlie Watts - If it Aint Got that Swing
