The End of an Era: Charlie Watts (1941-2021)

 It was early this morning when an era came to an end.  Noted rock and jazz drummer Charlie Watts, forever a member of the Rolling Stones from 1963 onwards, passed away at a London hospital.  He was 80 years old.  He had been hospitalized a few weeks ago and was unable to tour with the rest of the band this year.

Back in 2004, Watts had battled throat cancer though he quit cigarettes in the 1980s.  Surgery was successful, and he went on with his career until near the end of his life.

The band's rhythm section--Watts and original bassist Bill Wyman (now around 85!)--was one of the band's great assets.  That rhythm section was one of most notable in all rock music.

While the rest of the band plans to continue touring this fall, a replacement if you can call it that will tour with them.  The big question is how much longer Jagger and Richards want to continue now that the man Brian Jones (who passed away 52 years ago) hired as the drummer is no longer around.  They did continue after Bill Wyman left after the Steel Wheels tour, which was over 30 years ago, but these guys were 30 years younger.

Watts didn't really fit in with the rest of the band.  He never got into all the crap the rest of them did although he did battle booze and drugs decades ago, but he successfully battled those in private.  In fact, he was kind of an embarrassment, for he had a wife, Shirley Shepherd, from 1964 on, whom he met before he ever became famous.  Unlike the rest of the bunch, he never cheated on her, was devoted to her and his daughter and other family members, and they would tour with him.  Watts, like Wyman, also had other interests.  As I recall reading what Wyman had said, Jagger and Richards have few interests outside of music.  That wasn't the case with the other two.  Watts was trained in graphic arts, and he helped designed stages for the group.  He was totally unpretentious.  I don't recall anybody ever having a bad word to say about him.  That should tell people what kind of person he was.

While his death at 80 shouldn't come as a surprise to people, it still was a shock.  I was a mere 9 years old when the band started touring the U.S., coming on the heels of the Beatles invading the country.  I am 66 years old now.  Can you imagine having a band that has been in existence for 59 YEARS and whose founder has been gone for 52 of them?  That is longer than most marriages.

Rolling Stone:

Watts was born on June 2nd, 1941, in London, the son of a lorry driver. A jazz fan and 78 collector from an early age (Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, and Charlie Parker were particular favorites), he took up the drums around age 14, sleeping in his favorite suit now and then to give it the same look as Parker’s. Watts played in jazz combos until 1962, when he started splitting his time between playing in Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated and working as an ad-agency graphic designer. 

He was not the Stones’ first drummer. The band played its first gig in 1962, with the lineup of singer Mick Jagger, pianist Ian Stewart, guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones, bassist and future Pretty Things leader Dick Taylor, and drummer and future Kink Mick Avory. 

Within months Avory was out, Watts was in, and he played his first gig with the Stones on January 12th, 1963, at the Ealing Jazz Club. Their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On,” was released in June 1963. “It’s All Over Now,” their first U.K. Number One, arrived in June 1964. (“I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” driven by Watts’ relentless pound, hit Number One in the U.S. in May 1965.

For all of his low-key skill behind the kit, Watts seemed well aware that he was an irreplaceable element of the Stones’ sound. As one famous story from the band’s heyday goes, Jagger once phoned Watts’ hotel room in the midst of an all-night party, 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!”

Yes, Charlie Watts was low-key, but you definitely didn't want to piss him off! 

New York Times::

“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.”