The only drummer the Stones ever had (which makes them the World’s Luckiest Rock and Roll Band), he eschewed all flash, never soloed, and settled instead for always being at the right place at the right time, serving the song, not his ego. Where other star drummers buried themselves behind drum kits the size of houses, Charlie Watts kept things simple. And once he escaped the ’60s, he displayed impeccable taste in clothes. Likewise, in a business where romance and lasting relationships are too often the first casualty, he remained faithful to the same wife his whole adult life. In the ’80s, he had a dalliance with addiction to both drugs and alcohol but quickly sobered up.
Keith Richards saw it a little differently: “Charlie Watts has always been the bed I lie on musically.”Īnother word for what Wyman was talking about is swing, an ineffable quality more associated with jazz than rock, a sort of push-pull almost Zen state that’s easy to recognize and hard to define. It’s dangerous because it can fall apart at any minute.” So the drums are very slightly behind Keith. And while much has been written about how the band achieved their sound, no one ever came closer than ex-Stones bass player Bill Wyman: “Something happens when we play together. What this sleights, of course, is that what made the Stones so great was not individual virtuosity but their ability to mesh as a band. Not that we ever got the chance to put that conjecture to the test, since night after night, decade upon decade, Charlie was there, the still center of a turning world, holding things together. If the drums stopped, it would be a disaster, the Walls of Jericho tumbling down.” But: “If Charlie missed a beat or came down missing the ‘one,’ everyone in the house would know it. Mick and Keith were allowed their frailties. Surely this solo shot says everything about how his bandmates, not exactly shrinking violets, felt about him.Īs they should, because as Mike Edison points out in his marvelous Watts biography, Sympathy for the Drummer, anyone else in the band could have an off night and audiences didn’t seem to mind much. On the 1970 live album Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! Mick Jagger gives that famous shout-out, “Charlie’s good tonight, ain’t he?” And that’s unarguable, but the truth is, Charlie was good every night.Ī more revealing compliment can be found in that album’s cover, which features Watts alone (OK, in the company of a mule, bedecked with “jewels and binoculars,” which has to be one of the most obscure and certainly weirdest Dylan references ever).
#ROLLING STONE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE ROCK QUIZ MOVIE#
But the other night I was watching some movie that used “She’s a Rainbow” on its soundtrack, and I found myself thinking, it’s the drumming that saves this song. No one, for example, would ever suggest that Their Satanic Majesties Request is a great or even very good Stones record.