WATT TO SAY:
Mr. Charlie Watts (1941 – 2021)
There is a wonderfully satisfying story that routinely pops up when discussing the mythos of Charlie Watts. It goes that a certain (drunk) Mick Jagger called up Watts at five in the morning demanding to see his drummer. Watts put down the phone, shaved and dressed himself in his finest Savile Row suit. Twenty minutes later, he knocked on the door, passed Keith Richards wordlessly and uttered the immortal words: “Never call me your drummer again,” before promptly planting a right hook on Jagger. He glided out as Richards raced to stop Jagger sliding into an Amsterdam canal.
This wasn’t in keeping with the dapper, distinguished, unflappable stoic – the ultimate cool lad – but it only adds to his enigma.
What can be said of Watts that hasn’t already been said? He was a drummer, but he wasn’t just a drummer. He was the drummer. If Jagger was and is the gyrating fire of drawl and snarl, and Richards the brimstone riffing seductively, then Watts was the ice – the steadiness of his jazz-inflicted swing underpinned everything from the riotously suffocating Gimme Shelter and the hugely danceable Honky Tonk Woman to the samba-dipped Sympathy for the Devil and the sinister 4/4 of Paint It Black.
In an era of beats being sampled from nascent T-1000s, Watts is irreplaceable. As a teenager, he studiously collected the records of Charlie Parker and other American jazzmen, later moonlighting (rather ably) as a jazz drummer to supplement his steady daytime graphic designer job. It took the rest of the Stones a while to cobble together a five-pound-a-week package to lure him into rock and roll. As Keith Richards later wrote in his autobiography, Life, “We went shoplifting to get Charlie Watts.”
Always in his element in jazz rather than stadium rock, Watts regularly filled Ronnie Scott’s and other clubs with larger-than-life jazz ensembles, happily using his sticks and brushes to ethereally mark his presence, Richards and Jagger bellowing their approval from the back of the house. He went on to record a loving record of standards entitled Long Ago and Far Away.
His very existence essayed contempt of the now prevalent celebrity culture that his band arguably helped solidify into the mainstream. Perennially dressed to the nines (and tens and elevens), his commitment to understated yet timeless Savile Row suits, sleek in their structured silhouettes, narrow waists, broad lapels and flowing trousers, served as a striking contrast to the camp Jaggerian attire of the 70s and the hedonistic, woke-up-like-this Richardsian jackets. His marriage – his only one – survived fame’s entire ordeal. He is perhaps best described, though, by yet another wonderfully satisfying story – one of Watts in the Playboy mansion eschewing bunnies and booze in order to spend the night in Hugh Hefner’s games room.
Drummers are an ugly sort to watch when in flight. They smash and slide, beat and thrash, whip and cry, their work is bold and brash – their sweat gesticulates almost as if it has a consciousness of its own. Watts didn’t do that. He danced with his drums, waltzed with them, never out of step, not one for a balletic lift, more a classy dip and heaven forbid a mishap with toes. He avoided the drumming pyrotechnics of Keith Moon and his like, opting for (or perhaps more aptly pioneering) a timeless steadiness that anchored the extravagance and excess of the Stones’ oeuvre. Amid the feathered pomp and circumstance of a Rolling Stones show, amid the pageantry and the catwalk of Jagger, Richards and Wood, amid the screams and shrieks and moans, one entity stood stylishly unperturbed – Watts sauntered onto and off stages, almost like the graphic designer he once was, modestly and unabashedly clocking in and out of the Swinging 60s.
He created cool. He embodied cool. He was just so bloody cool. Mr. Charles Robert Watts, of Wembley, London, passed away on Tuesday, August 24th, at the age of 80. He is survived by his wife Shirley and daughter Seraphina.