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RIP Charlie Watts

Bosco

By Bosco
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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5261

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And by all accounts was as good a husband, father and grandfather as he was a musician.  He and Shirley were married 57 years.   Never fit the stereotypical role of a rock star.   When the Stones went to the Playboy Mansion he opted to hang out in the game room.   Loved the fact that the drum kit was at the very back of the stage.  Begrudgingly did the videos, presser and photo shoots. 

Guy just wanted to be a musician.  And man, was he. 

This sucks. 

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OWLVIS

OWLVIS 557

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I've been a huge Rolling Stones fan for years as have a lot of people. I don't know how many people really understood how important Charlie watts was to the stones development it may not make sense to many but I have the opinion that Charlie was as true drumming as Stevie ray Vaughn was the guitar,

inasmuch as he was technically proficient and a very good drummer but still approached it in a reckless rock and roll and creative way that led so much to the Stone's unique sound and development into the  Worlds greatest rock and roll band .

This board has plenty of musicians that will explain it better but the way the stones had Keith Richards on rhythm guitar set the pace and then Charlie and Bill  followed him was unique to the Stones but it's amazing that Charlie watts had the skill to do that. 

 

RIP

 

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5261

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Great story:  Mid-1980s, an intoxicated Jagger phoned Watts's hotel room in the middle of the night, asking, "Where's my drummer?" Watts reportedly got up, shaved, dressed in a suit, put on a tie and freshly shined shoes, descended the stairs, and punched Jagger in the face, saying: "Don't ever call me your drummer again. You're my fucking singer!"

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45979

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One of my favorite memories of Charlie, and it's really obscure and almost meaningless, was what my friend pointed out when we attended their Bridges To Babylon show at Texas Motor Speedway:

"What I love is how Charlie often doesn't play the hi-hat on 2 or 4 because that's when he hits the snare drum."

 

Who does that?  Who plays 8ths on the snare but leaves off 3 and 7?  That's Charlie.  You can see him do it at times in the video above.

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dcar00

dcar00 14276

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Just now, jimmyjazz said:

One of my favorite memories of Charlie, and it's really obscure and almost meaningless, was what my friend pointed out when we attended their Bridges To Babylon show at Texas Motor Speedway:

"What I love is how Charlie often doesn't play the hi-hat on 2 or 4 because that's when he hits the snare drum."

 

Who does that?  Who plays 8ths on the snare but leaves off 3 and 7?  That's Charlie.  You can see him do it at times in the video above.

  I'm no drummer but you can tell that no one is gonna play it like he did.   minimal kit, just in the groove, not overpowering, the shit just swings.  it kinda seems like all rock drummers now play very similarly.

I guess the guys like Watts, Moon, Ringo, Copeland, Bonham, Mitchell, Baker, Helm, etc grew up on the Jazz greats like Krupa, Roach, Rich, etc.  it just doesn't swing as much.

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Carl Spackler

Carl Spackler 3486

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13 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

"What I love is how Charlie often doesn't play the hi-hat on 2 or 4 because that's when he hits the snare drum."

 

Yes!  This was one of the first things I noticed about Stones songs when I was a young whippersnapper.  Just sounded completely different to me from every other drummer.  (He does the same thing on his cymbals in that video.)

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boilerhorn

boilerhorn 1393

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Posted (edited)
34 minutes ago, Dennis Taylor said:

Damn RiP...I was glued to MTV when it first came out and I remember all those Stones videos with Charlie and Bill chilling in the back cracking up at Mick, Keith, and Ronnie going crazy

RIP Charlie Watts.

 

Here is a perfect example of that: Waiting on a Friend.  Mick's waiting for Keith to show up and they walk together to a bar.  They get there and meet Ronnie and you have to look quick to see Bill and Charlie "hiding" behind a pole.  About 30 seconds after Mick and Keith arrive, Bill stands up and appears to imitate a Mick dancing (2:58).  Mick engages them around 3:22, almost forcing Charlie and Bill to be a part of the video.  It's wonderful. 

EDIT:

@Topper13 beat me to the punch.  I'll still leave the link :)

Edited by boilerhorn
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Hate

Hate 20116

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I always loved how he had the simplest drum set up when compared to the other bands of the 70’s and 80’s that I grew up with. It always struck me as funny how he could get so much sound and provide exactly what the band needed without all of the other stuff for showing off. RIP to a legend. What a life he lead. 

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5261

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That Zilker show in '06 will always be a memorable one.  I don't remember how many GA tickets they sold but they got you access right in front of the stage.   We got in line a little after 8 that morning.  Cool but sunny day.   Probably 20th in line or so.  A couple trips to places on Barton Springs during the day for food and they opened the gates around 5 or so.    Mad sprint all the way to the other end of Zilker.   Long day of waiting but the payoff to be that close to the stage was well worth it, and more. 

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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32395

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Posted (edited)
20 minutes ago, Hate said:

I always loved how he had the simplest drum set up when compared to the other bands of the 70’s and 80’s that I grew up with. It always struck me as funny how he could get so much sound and provide exactly what the band needed without all of the other stuff for showing off. RIP to a legend. What a life he lead. 

 

charliewattsmastersplace.jpg

 

 

https://www.drummerworld.com/drummers/Charlie_Watts.html

 

 

Edited by Francisco 2.0
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smwhorn

smwhorn 482

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Saw the Stones 6 or 7 times over the years.  The most recent tours were the 2019 shows in Houston and DC.  I think he was 78 at the time and never left the stage as I recall.  RIP Charlie Watts.  Rest well.

 

Edited by smwhorn
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Deej

Deej 76835

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15 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

That Zilker show in '06 will always be a memorable one.  I don't remember how many GA tickets they sold but they got you access right in front of the stage.   We got in line a little after 8 that morning.  Cool but sunny day.   Probably 20th in line or so.  A couple trips to places on Barton Springs during the day for food and they opened the gates around 5 or so.    Mad sprint all the way to the other end of Zilker.   Long day of waiting but the payoff to be that close to the stage was well worth it, and more. 

They were all GA tickets, I believe. We showed up right before the show and moved right to the front. 

Edit: Except for the ones in the structure that was the stage backdrop. 

Edited by Deej
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GhostOfTomJoad

GhostOfTomJoad 9335

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Listening to Sticky Fingers with tear filled eyes.

Wild Horses-that Charlie recorded the demo track on using a toy drum set-is such a perfect example of his brilliance. He only gave the song what it needed to hold it together. He never He was so intuitive.

And god, Can't You Hear Me Knocking and Moonlight Mile are as good as it gets. His snare to hi-hat cymbal shots were so crisp & clean. Precise as a professional assassin.



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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5261

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12 minutes ago, Deej said:

They were all GA tickets, I believe. We showed up right before the show and moved right to the front. 

Edit: Except for the ones in the structure that was the stage backdrop. 

 

Primarily all GA.  They had some temporary bleachers on the side about 1/2 way back, pretty big ones, that were reserved seating.  

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Chad Fuck

Chad Fuck 17686

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55 minutes ago, Deej said:

They were all GA tickets, I believe. We showed up right before the show and moved right to the front. 

Edit: Except for the ones in the structure that was the stage backdrop. 

I was literally getting in a car to go to the State Fair in Dallas, when a friend from Austin called and asked if I wanted to see the Stones in Zilker instead.  Future Mrs. F got in the car, expecting to go to the Fair, but I said, "Fair?  We're headed to Austin!"  Off we went.

Saw them in '89 (last tour with Bill Wyman), then Voodoo Lounge (94?), Bridges to Babylon.  Had tix to see them at COTA and Cotton Bowl.  I have Cotton Bowl tix still if they maintain the tour.

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Deej

Deej 76835

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9 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

I was literally getting in a car to go to the State Fair in Dallas, when a friend from Austin called and asked if I wanted to see the Stones in Zilker instead.  Future Mrs. F got in the car, expecting to go to the Fair, but I said, "Fair?  We're headed to Austin!"  Off we went.

Saw them in '89 (last tour with Bill Wyman), then Voodoo Lounge (94?), Bridges to Babylon.  Had tix to see them at COTA and Cotton Bowl.  I have Cotton Bowl tix still if they maintain the tour.

Caught the Steel Wheels and Voodoo Lounge tours at the Cotton Bowl, Bridges to Babylon at Texas Motor Speedway, and the Zilker show.

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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5261

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Good obit / retrospective from NYT:

Charlie Watts, whose strong but unflashy drumming powered the Rolling Stones for over 50 years, died on Tuesday in London. He was 80.

His death, in a hospital, was announced by his publicist, Bernard Doherty. No other details were immediately provided.

The Rolling Stones announced earlier this month that Mr. Watts would not be a part of the band’s forthcoming “No Filter” tour of the United States after he had undergone an unspecified emergency medical procedure, which the band’s representatives said had been successful.

Reserved, dignified and dapper, Mr. Watts was never as flamboyant, either onstage or off, as most of his rock-star peers, let alone the Stones’ lead singer, Mick Jagger; he was content to be one of the finest rock drummers of his generation, playing with a jazz-inflected swing that made the band’s titanic success possible. As the Stones guitarist Keith Richards said in his 2010 autobiography, “Life,” “Charlie Watts has always been the bed that I lie on musically.”

While some rock drummers chased after volume and bombast, Mr. Watts defined his playing with subtlety, swing and a solid groove.

“As much as Mick’s voice and Keith’s guitar, Charlie Watts’s snare sound is the Rolling Stones,” Bruce Springsteen wrote in an introduction to the 1991 edition of the drummer Max Weinberg’s book “The Big Beat.” “When Mick sings, ‘It’s only rock ’n’ roll but I like it,’ Charlie’s in back showing you why!”

Charles Robert Watts was born in London on June 2, 1941. His mother, the former Lillian Charlotte Eaves, was a homemaker; his father, Charles Richard Watts, was in the Royal Air Force and, after World War II, became a truck driver for British Railways.

Charlie’s first instrument was a banjo, but, baffled by the fingerings required to play it, he removed the neck and converted its body into a snare drum. He discovered jazz when he was 12 and soon became a fan of Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus.

By 1960, Mr. Watts had graduated from the Harrow School of Art and found work as a graphic artist for a London advertising agency. He wrote and illustrated “Ode to a Highflying Bird,” a children’s book about the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker (although it was not published until 1965). In the evenings, he played drums with a variety of groups.

Most of them were jazz combos, but he was also invited to join Alexis Korner’s raucous rhythm-and-blues collective, Blues Incorporated. Mr. Watts declined the invitation because he was leaving England to work as a graphic designer in Scandinavia, but he joined the group when he returned a few months later.

The newly formed Rolling Stones (then called the Rollin’ Stones) knew they needed a good drummer but could not afford Mr. Watts, who was already drawing a regular salary from his various gigs. “We starved ourselves to pay for him!” Mr. Richards wrote. “Literally. We went shoplifting to get Charlie Watts.”

In early 1963, when they could finally guarantee five pounds a week, Mr. Watts joined the band, completing the canonical lineup of Mr. Richards, Mr. Jagger, the guitarist Brian Jones, the bassist Bill Wyman and the pianist Ian Stewart. He moved in with his bandmates and immersed himself in Chicago blues records.

In the wake of the Beatles’ success, the Rolling Stones quickly climbed from being an electric-blues specialty act to one of the biggest bands in the British Invasion of the 1960s. While Mr. Richards’s guitar riff defined the band’s most famous single, the 1965 chart-topper “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” Mr. Watts’s drum pattern was just as essential. He was relentless on “Paint It Black” (No. 1 in 1966), supple on “Ruby Tuesday” (No. 1 in 1967) and the master of a funky cowbell groove on “Honky Tonk Women” (No. 1 in 1969).

Mr. Watts was ambivalent about the fame that he achieved as a member of the group that has often been called “the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band.” As he said in the 2003 book “According to the Rolling Stones”: “I loved playing with Keith and the band — I still do — but I wasn’t interested in being a pop idol sitting there with girls screaming. It’s not the world I come from. It’s not what I wanted to be, and I still think it’s silly.”

As the Stones rolled through the years, Mr. Watts drew on his graphic-arts background to contribute to the design of the band’s stage sets, merchandise and album covers — he even contributed a comic strip to the back cover of their 1967 album “Between the Buttons.” While the Stones cultivated bad-boy images and indulged a collective appetite for debauchery, Mr. Watts mostly eschewed the sex and drugs. He clandestinely married Shirley Anne Shepherd, an art-school student and sculptor, in 1964.

On tour, he would go back to his hotel room alone; every night, he sketched his lodgings. “I’ve drawn every bed I’ve slept in on tour since 1967,” he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1996. “It’s a fantastic nonbook.”

Similarly, while other members of the Stones battled for control of the band, Mr. Watts largely stayed out of the internal politics. As he told The Weekend Australian in 2014, “I’m usually mumbling in the background.”

Mr. Jones, who considered himself the leader, was fired from the Stones in 1969 (and found dead in his swimming pool soon after). Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards spent decades at loggerheads, sometimes making albums without being in the studio at the same time. Mr. Watts was happy to work with either, or both.

There was one time, however, when Mr. Watts famously chafed at being treated like a hired hand rather than an equal member of the group. In 1984, Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards went out for a night of drinking in Amsterdam. When they returned to their hotel around 5 a.m., Mr. Jagger called Mr. Watts, waking him up, and asked, “Where’s my drummer?” Twenty minutes later, Mr. Watts showed up at Mr. Jagger’s room, coldly furious, but shaved and elegantly dressed in a Savile Row suit and tie.

There was one time, however, when Mr. Watts famously chafed at being treated like a hired hand rather than an equal member of the group. In 1984, Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards went out for a night of drinking in Amsterdam. When they returned to their hotel around 5 a.m., Mr. Jagger called Mr. Watts, waking him up, and asked, “Where’s my drummer?” Twenty minutes later, Mr. Watts showed up at Mr. Jagger’s room, coldly furious, but shaved and elegantly dressed in a Savile Row suit and tie.

 

“Never call me your drummer again,” he told Mr. Jagger, before grabbing him by the lapel and delivering a right hook. Mr. Richards said he narrowly saved Mr. Jagger from falling out a window into an Amsterdam canal.

“It’s not something I’m proud of doing, and if I hadn’t been drinking I would never have done it,” Mr. Watts said in 2003. “The bottom line is, don’t annoy me.”

At the time, Mr. Watts was in the early stages of a midlife crisis that manifested itself as a two-year bender. Just as the other Stones were settling into moderation in their 40s, he got hooked on amphetamines and heroin, nearly destroying his marriage. After passing out in a recording studio and breaking his ankle when he fell down a staircase, he quit, cold turkey.

Mr. Watts and his wife had a daughter, Seraphina, in 1968 and, after spending some time in France as tax exiles, relocated to a farm in southwestern England. There they bred prizewinning Arabian horses, gradually expanding their stud farm to over 250 horses on 700 acres of land. Information on his survivors was not immediately available. Mr. Doherty, the publicist, said Mr. Watts had “passed away peacefully” in the hospital “surrounded by his family.”

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
Edited by Wally Pryor
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