RIP
Charlie Watts, Rolling Stones Drummer, Dies at 80Chris Morris 30 mins ago
VARIETY
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Drummer Charlie Watts, whose adept, powerful skin work propelled the Rolling Stones for more than half a century, died in London on Tuesday morning, according to his spokesperson. No cause of death was cited; he was 80.
A statement from the band and Watts’ spokesperson reads: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts. He passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family.
Drummer Charlie Watts, whose adept, powerful skin work propelled the Rolling Stones for more than half a century, died in London on Tuesday morning, according to his spokesperson. No cause of death was cited; he was 80.
A statement from the band and Watts’ spokesperson reads: “It is with immense sadness that we announce the death of our beloved Charlie Watts. He passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family.
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“Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also a member of the Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation.
“We kindly request that the privacy of his family, band members and close friends is respected at this difficult time.”
On August 4, Watts abruptly withdrew from the Stones’ upcoming pandemic-postponed U.S. tour, citing the need to recover from an unspecified but “successful” recent medical procedure. A spokesperson said, “Charlie has had a procedure which was completely successful, but I gather his doctors this week concluded that he now needs proper rest and recuperation. With rehearsals starting in a couple of weeks it’s very disappointing to say the least, but it’s also fair to say no one saw this coming.” Unconfirmed reports said he had undergone heart surgery.
Watts had generally been healthy throughout his entire career with the Stones. He was stricken with throat cancer in 2004 but successfully recovered, and suffered from substance abuse in the 1970s and ’80s, but beat that as well.
Universally recognized as one of the greatest rock drummers of all time, Watts and guitarist Keith Richards have been the core of the Rolling Stones’ instrumental sound: Richards spends upwards of half the group’s concerts turned around, facing Watts, bobbing his head to the drummer’s rhythm. A 2012 review of a Rolling Stones concert reads in part: “For all of Mick and Keith’s supremacy, there’s no question that the heart of this band is and will always be Watts: At 71, his whipcrack snare and preternatural sense of swing drive the songs with peerless authority, and define the contradictory uptight-laid-back-ness that’s at the heart of the Stones’ rhythm.” Watts was never a flashy drummer, but driving the beat for “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” for a two-hour set — in a stadium, no less — is an act of great physical endurance that Watts performed until he was 78.
His last concert with the group took place in Miami on August 30, 2019, although he did appear with the band during the April 2020 “One World Together” all-star livestream early in the pandemic. Reviewing a show earlier in the 2019 tour, Variety wrote, “Sitting at a minimalist kit and moving even more minimally with his casual jazz grip, [Watts looks] like the mild-mannered banker who no one in the heist movie realizes is the guy actually blowing up the vault.”
The wiry, basset-faced musician was a jazz-schooled player who came to the Stones through London’s “trad” scene of the early ‘60s. He was the missing piece in the group’s early lineup, joining in January 1963; with Jagger and Keith Richards, he remained a constant with “the World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band” on record and on stage for more than 50 years.
He provided nimble, energetic support on the band’s long run of dirty, blues- and R&B-based hits of the early and mid-‘60s. He reached the pinnacle of his prowess on a series of mature recordings, made with producer Jimmy Miller in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, in which his sharp playing caromed off Richards’ serrated guitar riffs.
In the 2003 oral history “According to the Rolling Stones,” Richards said, “To have a drummer from the beginning who could play with the sensibility of Charlie Watts is one of the best hidden assets I’ve had, because I never had to think about the drummer and what he’s going to do. I just say, ‘Charlie, it goes like this,’ and we’ll kick it around a bit and it’s done. I can throw him ideas and I never have to worry about the beat…It’s a blessing.”
A flexible player, Watts displayed his malleable chops on the Stones’ forays into off-brand styles – psychedelia, reggae and (on the 1978 hit single “Miss You”) disco.
Though he grew weary of the band’s touring pace as early as the 1980s, he soldiered on with the Stones for three more decades, in what was arguably the most comfortable and lucrative drumming gig in music. He prevailed through bouts with heroin addiction and a battle with throat cancer, quietly addressing these challenges as the spotlight shined more brightly on his more flamboyant band mates.
Watts remained a picture of domestic bliss and tranquility amid the soap-operatic lives of his fellow Stones: He wed his wife Shirley in 1964, and the couple remained together, even amid rough patches, for the duration.
He maintained a love of jazz throughout his life, and from the ‘80s on would record regularly with various ad hoc lineups of his Charlie Watts Quintet, essaying the hard-swinging instrumental music that fired his early interest in music.
Watts was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Stones in 1989.
He was born June 2, 1941, in London; his father was a truck driver for the English rail system. Raised in Wembley, he gravitated as a youth to the music of early jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton and bop saxophonist Charlie Parker. He was an indifferent music student in school, but began playing at 14 or 15.
In “The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones,” Watts told Stanley Booth, “Fortunately my parents were perceptive enough to buy me a drum kit. I’d bought a banjo myself and taken the neck off and started playing it as a drum…[I] played newspaper with wire brushes. My parents bought me one of those first drum kits every drummer knows too well.”
He emblazoned the bass drum head of his early kit with the name “Chico,” after saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s drummer Chico Hamilton. In his teens, he worked in various regional jazz groups.
He was schooled as a graphic designer at Harrow Art School, and worked for a London ad firm. In 1961, he illustrated and wrote a fanciful tribute to Charlie Parker; it was subsequently published in 1964, after the Rolling Stones’ rise to fame, as “Ode to a High Flying Bird.”
In 1962, Watts first encountered some of his future band mates at London’s Ealing Club, a subterranean venue where first-generation trad-to-blues players like Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies took early stabs at replicating American R&B and blues.
After a stint doing design work in Copenhagen, Watts returned to London and accepted an offer from Korner to drum in his group Blues Incorporated, which for a time had featured Jagger as its singer.
Jagger was in the process of establishing his own blues-based band, originally called the Rollin’ Stones, with Richards, guitarist Brian Jones, bassist Bill Wyman and pianist Ian Stewart. The weak link in the unit was drummer Tony Chapman, and, after pleas from Richards and Jones, Watts replaced Chapman in the nascent group; he was replaced in Korner’s band by Ginger Baker, later of Cream.
Watts later admitted, “It was from Brian, Mick and Keith that I first seriously learned about R&B. I knew nothing about it. The blues to me was Charlie Parker or [New Orleans jazz clarinetist] Johnny Dodds playing slow.” He schooled himself by listening to recorded performances such drummers by Earl Phillips, Jimmy Reed’s accompanist, and Fred Below, who powered many of Chess Records’ major blues hits of the ‘50s.
He proved an apt pupil, and he forcefully completed the sound of the Stones (who soon subtracted Stewart from the permanent lineup and employed him as a sideman and road manager). From the band’s debut 1963 single, a cranked-up cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On,” he pushed the unit with seemingly effortless power and swing.
Watts lent potent support to the R&B- and blues-derived material recorded in the era when the purist Jones enjoyed parity in the Stones with Richards and Jagger. However, he was much more than a four-on-the-floor timekeeper, and flourished as Jagger-Richards originals pushed the band to the top of the U.S. and U.K. charts.
He stood out on the Stones’ first U.S. No. 1, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (1965) and on latter-day exotica like “Paint It Black” (1966) and “Ruby Tuesday,” “Dandelion,” “We Love You” and “She’s a Rainbow” (all 1967).
He came into his own with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Street Fighting Man” (1968) and “Honky Tonk Women” (1969), convulsive singles produced by Miller that marked the end of Jones’ tenure with the group (he died in 1969) and the arrival of guitarist Mick Taylor.
Those numbers and the subsequent “Brown Sugar” (No. 1, 1969) and “Tumbling Dice” (1972) – respectively drawn from the Stones’ landmark albums “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main St” – all exhibited the trademark sound of the Stones at their apex, with Watts bouncing hard off a lacerating Richards guitar intro.
From 1971-81, Watts appeared on eight consecutive No. 1 studio albums by the Stones, and appeared on three of the biggest-grossing tours of the era. From 1975 on, he brought his design skills to bear and worked with Jagger on configuring the elaborate stage sets that became a hallmark of the act’s later tours.
In the late ‘70s, he began using heroin, and his addiction became so acute that he nodded out in the studio during the recording of “Some Girls” (1978). He later said in an interview with the BBC that Richards – an enthusiastic abuser of the drug – shook him awake at the session and counseled him, “You should do this when you’re older.” Watts said he took the guitarist’s advice and stopped using the drug.
Despite his difficulties during that era, Watts smoothly navigated the dancefloor backbeat that propelled “Miss You,” the Stones’ last No. 1 single, released in ’78. During the ‘80s, he brought his whipcracking skills to the band’s top-10 hits of the period, the perennial show-opener “Start Me Up” (1981) and the dark fusillade “Undercover of the Night” (1983).
He again grappled with alcohol and drug issues in the mid-‘80s, but once again discreetly and successfully shook off his addictions, cleaning up for good in 1986.
In his 2002 book “Rolling With the Stones,” bassist Wyman (who exited the Stones in 1993) claims that Watts’ enthusiasm for working with the band waned in the late ‘80s, when conflict between Jagger and Richards over direction of the group threatened to run it aground permanently.
He increasingly recorded and toured on his own as a jazz band leader. He cut a big band album for Columbia in 1986; four sets with his own quintet from 1991-96; and worked on a collaborative project with fellow drummer Jim Keltner in 2000. In 2004, an album featuring his tentet was recorded at Ronnie Scott’s famous jazz venue in London.
Watts still dutifully clocked in with the Stones after Jagger and Richards reconciled: Their four studio albums between 1989-2005 were succeeded by mammoth tours that broke records internationally. His tour duty was not broken by a siege of throat cancer, diagnosed in 2004 and treated successfully.
At the half-century mark, the group made successful treks in the new millennium without any new product in stores, hitting the road for arenas in 2012-16.
In October 2016, the act filled the Empire Polo Field in Indio, Calif., site of the annual Coachella music festival on a double bill with Bob Dylan, as part of the three-day “Desert Trip” festival featuring ‘60s classic rock acts.
Watts is survived by his wife and daughter Serafina.
Issued on: 24/08/2021 -
The Rolling Stones' veteran drummer pictured at a concert in Santiago, Chile, on February 3, 2016. © Rodrigo Garrido, Reuters
Text by: FRANCE 24
Charlie Watts, the self-effacing and unshakeable Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock’s greatest bands and used his “day job” to support his enduring love of jazz, has died at the age of 80, according to his publicist.
Bernard Doherty said Tuesday that Watts “passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family”.
“Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation,” Doherty said.
Watts had announced he would not tour with the Stones in 2021 because of an undefined health issue.
Born in London in 1941, Watts started playing drums in London's rhythm and blues clubs in the early 1960s, before agreeing to join forces with Brian Jones, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in their fledgling group, The Rolling Stones, in January 1963.
The quiet, elegantly dressed Watts was often ranked with Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and a handful of others as a premier rock drummer, respected worldwide for his muscular, swinging style as the band rose from its scruffy beginnings to international superstardom.
The Stones began, Watts said, “as white blokes from England playing Black American music” but quickly evolved their own distinctive sound.
He would stay with the band for over 60 years, ranking just behind Jagger and Richards as the group’s longest lasting and most essential member.
04:05
A classic Stones song like “Brown Sugar” and “Start Me Up” often began with a hard guitar riff from Richards, with Watts following closely behind, and Wyman, as the bassist liked to say, “fattening the sound”.
Watts’ speed, power and time keeping were never better showcased than during the concert documentary, “Shine a Light”, when director Martin Scorsese filmed “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” from where he drummed toward the back of the stage.
Watts' deadpan expression and metronomic rhythms formed an integral part of the band's classic performances, counterbalancing Jagger's onstage energy and charisma and the goofing about between Richards and Wood.
While the other members became known for what Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper described as "marriage break-ups, addiction, arrests and furious bust-ups", Watts lived quietly with his wife of more than 50 years, Shirley Shepherd, on a stud farm in the remote Devon countryside.
"Through five decades of chaos, drummer Charlie Watts has been the calm at the centre of the Rolling Stones storm, on and off stage," the Mirror wrote in 2012.
He was treated in the 1980s for alcohol and heroin abuse but said he had successfully come off them. "It was very short for me. I just stopped, it didn't suit me at all," he told the tabloid.
A jazz drummer in his early years, Watts never lost his affinity for the music he first loved, heading his own jazz band and taking on numerous other side projects.
(FRANCE 24 with AP, REUTERS, AFP)
Charlie Watts: the heartbeat of the Rolling Stones
Issued on: 24/08/2021
Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts' calm style counterbalanced the onstage flamboyance of the band's other members PABLO PORCIUNCULA AFP/FileLondon (AFP)
British drummer Charlie Watts, who died on Tuesday at 80, was known as the quiet man of the scandal-soaked Rolling Stones, keeping the beat for the legendary rock group in his own steady style.
Watts' deadpan expression and metronomic rhythms formed an integral part of the band's classic performances, counterbalancing the onstage energy and charisma of singer Mick Jagger and the goofing about between guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood.
While the other members became known for what Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper described as "marriage break-ups, addiction, arrests and furious bust-ups", Watts lived quietly with his wife of more than 50 years, Shirley Shepherd, on a stud farm in the remote Devon countryside.
"Through five decades of chaos, drummer Charlie Watts has been the calm at the centre of the Rolling Stones storm, on and off stage," the Mirror wrote in 2012.
He was treated in the 1980s for alcohol and heroin abuse but said he had successfully come off them.
"It was very short for me. I just stopped, it didn't suit me at all," he told the tabloid.
Trashing hotel rooms and sleeping with groupies was not for Watts.
"I've never filled the stereotype of the rock star," he told Rolling Stone magazine in 1994. "Back in the 70s, Bill Wyman and I decided to grow beards and the effort left us exhausted."
- Early love of jazz -
Born on June 2, 1941 in London, Charles Robert Watts discovered jazz around the age of 10, with the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Charlie Parker.
Exploring drumming as a boy, he converted an old banjo that had a skin covering into a snare drum, according to the Rolling Stones' official website.
Watts discovered jazz around the age of 10 and, over the decades, kept his hand in, playing with various ensembles throughout his career with the Stones ANDREW COWIE AFP/FileBut he had no formal training and learned by watching great jazz drummers in London clubs, it says.
After studying art, he found a job as a graphic designer and played with a variety of jazz bands in the evenings before joining the Rolling Stones in 1963.
Throughout his career with the Stones, Watts actively kept up his love of jazz, as leader of a jazz quintet and tentet, and a 32-piece band called the Charlie Watts Orchestra.
- No fear of break-up -
As the Rolling Stones aged, Watts was blase about the prospects of the band splitting.
"To say this is the last show wouldn't be a particularly sad moment, not to me anyway. I'll just carry on as I was yesterday or today," he told New Musical Express (NME) in a 2018 interview, as the septuagenarian band prepared another tour.
Watts openly admitted that he often thought of leaving the group.
"I used to leave at the end of every tour. We'd do six months work in America and I'd say, 'That's it, I'm going home'.
"Two weeks later, you're fidgeting and your wife says: 'Why don't you go back to work? You're a nightmare.'"
Still rocking well into their 70s, Charlie Watts (L), Mick Jagger (C) and Keith Richards (R) of the Rolling Stones DON EMMERT AFP/FileHe was named the 12th greatest drummer of all time by Rolling Stone in 2016.
Ten years earlier, Modern Drummer magazine voted him into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame, alongside other notables such as The Beatles' Ringo Starr and Keith Moon of The Who.
Watts had a brush with throat cancer in 2004, making a full recovery.
He pulled out of the Stones' Covid-postponed US tour, scheduled for September 2021, as he recovered from a medical procedure.
"For once my timing has been a little off," he said. "I am working hard to get fully fit but I have today accepted on the advice of experts that this will take a while."
The band were last seen at the One World: Together At Home concert in April 2020, performing a socially distanced rendition of their 1969 classic "You Can't Always Get What You Want".
Watts joined from home, playing "air" drums.
© 2021
Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts dies at 80
The octogenarian rocker "passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family," his publicist said. Paul McCartney said Watts was "a fantastic drummer, steady as a rock."
Rock star Charlie Watts was also known playing jazz
Charlie Watts, the legendary Rolling Stones drummer, has died at the age of 80.
The musician "passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family," his publicist, Bernard Doherty said on Tuesday.
"Charlie was a cherished husband, father and grandfather and also as a member of The Rolling Stones one of the greatest drummers of his generation," Doherty added.
Watts revealed earlier this month he would not go on tour with the Rolling Stones in 2021 after undergoing a medical procedure.
The end of an icon
Charlie Watts was often described as one of the top musicians of his generation, helping to cement one of the greatest rhythm sections in the history of rock.
As a member of one of the first British bands to conquer the United States in the 1960s, the Rolling Stones went on multi-million pound tours across the world.
But in a recent interview with The Guardian he just spoke of himself as someone who was following his passions.
"I love playing the drums, and I love playing with Mick and Keith and Ronnie," Watts told The Guardian once. "I don't know about the rest of it. It wouldn't bother me if the Rolling Stones said: 'That's it ... enough.'"
Without Charlie Watts as a calming influence among rock 'n' roll's long-serving band, the Rolling Stones would probably have not lasted as long as it has.
Watts' diplomatic tact often served to bring the hot-tempered, quarrelsome Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to their senses. It was due to his calming influence that the Rolling Stones were still together when he passed away and were even ready to hit the road again once the pandemic subsided.
As Richards once said: "There couldn't be a Rolling Stones without Charlie Watts."
The music world pays tribute
Musicians from all over the world have been quick to praise Watts' musical genius which inspired a generation.
Fellow British star Elton John said Watts was "the ultimate drummer" in a Facebook post.
He called him "the most stylish of men, and such brilliant company," while offering his condolences to his family and the members of his band.
Tributes have poured in for Charlie Watts calling him "stylish" and "steady as a rock."
Another great British musician, Paul McCartney called Watts "a lovely guy."
"A fantastic drummer, steady as a rock. Love you, Charlie, will always love you," Paul McCartney said in a video he posted on Twitter.
"RIP Charlie Watts, one of the greatest rock drummers ever and a real gentleman," tweeted Canadian rocker Bryan Adams.
How did he die?
Watts was sidelined from the Rolling Stones earlier this month after his doctors found a unspecified problem they wanted to rectify, according to press reports.
At the time, he said that "for once my timing has been a little off" and he would not be going on tour as originally planned.
"I am working hard to get fully fit but I have today accepted on the advice of the experts that this will take a while," Watts added.
Charlie Watts continued to play drums until he passed away
Watts had received treatment for alcohol and heroin abuse, but said he had been able to leave those addiction problems behind. He also underwent treatment for throat cancer in 2004.
"We kindly request that the privacy of his family, band members and close friends is respected at this difficult time," his spokesman Doherty said while announcing the musician's death.
jc/dj (AP, Reuters)
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