LONDON (AP) – Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock’s biggest rhythm sections and used his “day job” to support his enduring love of jazz, has died, according to its advertiser. He was 80 years old.
Bernard Doherty said on Tuesday that Watts “died peacefully today in a London hospital surrounded by his family”.
“Charlie was a beloved husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the best drummers of his generation,” Doherty said.
Watts had announced he would not be traveling with the Stones in 2021 due to an undefined health problem.
Watts ’quiet, elegant suit was often ranked with Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, and a handful of others as the first rock drummer, respected worldwide for his muscular style and oscillating as the band went from its messy beginnings in the international superstar. He joined the Stones in early 1963 and remained for the next 60 years, standing just behind Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as the most enduring and essential member of the group.
Watts stayed and stayed largely sidelined through drug abuse, creative confrontations and ego wars that helped kill founding member Brian Jones, caused bassist Bill Wyman and Jones ’replacement, Mick Taylor, left their job and otherwise made the Stones the most exhausting. of jobs.
A classic Stones song like “Brown Sugar” and “Start Me Up” often began with a hard guitar riff by Richards, with Watts following closely, and Wyman, as the bassist liked to say, “fattening the sound.” Watts ‘speed, power and tempo were never shown better than during the concert documentary, “Shine a Light,” when director Martin Scorsese filmed “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from where he played the drum towards the back of the stage.
The Stones began, Watts said, “like white blocks from England playing black American music,” but they quickly evolved their own distinctive sound. Watts was a jazz drummer in his early years and never lost his affinity for the music he loved for the first time, conducting 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 just sat in his garage. But he had a constant influence on and off stage, as the Stones defied all expectations by going as far back as the 70s, decades more than their former rivals, the Beatles.
Watts didn’t care about flashy solos or attention of any kind, but with Wyman and Richards they forged some of the deepest grooves in rock in “Honky Tonk Women,” “Brown Sugar,” and other songs. The drums adapted well to everything from the “Miss You” nightclub to the jazzy “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” and the dreamy ballad “Moonlight Mile”.
At times, Jagger and Richards seemed to agree on little more than their admiration for Watts, both as a man and as a musician. Richards called Watts “the key” and often joked that his affinity was so strong that, on stage, he sometimes tried to shake Watts by suddenly changing the pace, only to make Watts change him again.
Jagger and Richards could only envy his indifference to stardom and relative satisfaction in his private life, when he was as happy tending the horses of his estate in rural Devon, England, as he had ever been on stage. an exhausted stage.
Watts sometimes had an impact beyond the battery. He worked with Jagger on the increasingly spectacular stages of the group’s tours. He also provided illustrations for the back cover of the acclaimed 1967 album “Between the Buttons” and unwittingly titled the album. When he asked Stones manager Andrew Oldham what the album would be called, Oldham replied “Between the Buttons,” that is, undecided. Watts thought “Between the Buttons” was the real name and included it in his artwork.
To the world, he was a rock star. But Watts used to say that the actual experience was unpleasant, unpleasant, and even frightening. “Girls chasing you down the street, screaming … horrible! … I hated it,” he told The Guardian in an interview. In another interview, he described battery life as a “cross between being an athlete and a total nervous wreck.”
Author Philip Norman, who has written extensively about the Rolling Stones, said Watts lived “with the constant hope that he would be allowed to take the next plane home.” On tour, he tried to draw every hotel room where he stayed, a way to mark time until he could return to his family. He said little about playing the same songs for over 40 years when the Stones recycled their classics. But he parted ways far beyond “Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash ”reuniting and performing with jazz bands in the second half of his career.
Charles Robert Watts, the son of a truck driver and a housewife, was born in Neasden, London, on June 2, 1941. From childhood, he was passionate about music, especially jazz. He fell in love with drums after listening to Chico Hamilton and was taught 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 attending Harrow Art College and playing drums in his spare time. In London, in the early 1960s, there was a revival of blues and jazz, with Jagger, Richards and Eric Clapton among the future superstars who began. Watts’ career began after he played with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, for whom Jagger also performed, and was encouraged by Korner to join the Stones.
Watts was not a fan of rock music at first and remembered being guided by Richards and Brian Jones while absorbing blues and rock records, especially the music of bluesman Jimmy Reed. He said the band could find its roots in a brief period in which he had lost his job and shared an apartment with Jagger and Richards so he could live there without rent.
“Keith Richards taught me rock and roll,” Watts said. “We would have nothing to do all day and play these records over and over again. I learned to love Muddy Waters. Keith told me how good Elvis Presley was and until then he had always hated Elvis.
Watts was the last man to join the Stones; the band had been searching for months to find a permanent drummer and feared Watts would be too accomplished for them. Richards would recall that the band wanted it to come together so badly that members cut back on expenses so they could afford to pay Watts a proper salary. Watts said he believed at first that the band would be lucky to last a year.
“All the bands I had been in had lasted a week,” he said. “I always thought the Stones would last a week, then a fortnight, and all of a sudden, they’re 30.”
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Former Associated Press writers Greg Katz and Janelle Stecklein compiled biographical material for this story.