Ode To Another High Flying Bird
In Memoriam of Charlie Watts
Charlie Watts exited the Rolling Stones on August 24th, 2021 the only way his bandmates would allow: he passed away.
The last time the world needed to get its collective head around the loss of a Rolling Stone was in 1969 when the band’s founder, Brian Jones, was found dead in his swimming pool.
For a little perspective, Man had yet to walk on the Moon.
There were other changes over the years that caused some mild discomfort among fans: the appearance of a shockingly boyish Mick Taylor as Jones’s official replacement; the appearance of ex-Faces guitarist Ronnie Wood as Taylor’s official replacement in the mid-70s; the unconcealed absence of Bill Wyman on albums and tours from 1994 hence, after the band’s founding bassist took his final bow upon the conclusion of the Urban Jungle tour, having gravely underestimated the resolve of his four other mates to keep the party — and the business — going.
But for 52 years — something not unlike an eternity by the reckonings of today’s music industry — the long, ominous shadow of “Mr. D”. stayed clear of the Rolling Stones, choosing instead to darken the doorways, foyers, and boudoirs of the band’s inner circle: inamoratas, mentors, producers, engineers, publicists, confidants, managers, collaborators.
It has been their sad fate to bury almost everyone whom they met, befriended, and loved along the way: proof, perhaps, that one should never try to outdo, or out-roll, a Rolling Stone.
When it returned to the fold, Death claimed with characteristic irony the one member who, comparatively speaking, was the healthiest, the quietest, the most strait-laced, and undoubtedly the most beloved of them all, Charles Robert Watts, known affectionately as the Wembley Whammer and Mr. Wang-Dang- Doodle.
Son of a lorry driver for British Railways with a degree from Harrow Art School and a compulsive love of jazz, Charlie was the unlikeliest member of what was originally billed as a “rhythm and blues” outfit; the one who didn’t seem to fit in, although Keith insisted early on in a fan magazine that “[Charlie] fits in really well because you only don’t fit in if you’re awkward. And Charlie ain’t awkward.”
Actually, the dissimilarities between Charlie and his new mates were what made him the perfect match: nobody in the band was redundant in his mist.
He was dapper, clean shaven, well rested; the one “bad boy” who didn’t look so bad. Everyone else was in need of a “wash,” as early manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham was fond of saying to the press, knowing the reaction that kind of copy would get from the people he needed more than teens to sell albums: the teens’ parents.
Charlie adored swing and the be-pop periods of Charlie Parker and Lester Young. The others loved Jimmy Reed and Howlin’ Wolf.
He had a steady and respectable gig as a graphic designer at an ad agency; everyone else had, for the most part, nothing else to do but to stay up all night and play the blues.
In 1964, the year after he joined the Stones, he became happily married and notoriously monogamous. He was married to the same woman, Shirley Ann Watts, 57 years later when he “quit the band” upon his death at the age of 80. (His mates were — some still are — famously “polyamorous” as it is now fashionable to say.)
Fittingly for a lone jazz-prowling wolf, he was the last member of the original lineup to commit fully to the band known originally as The Rollin’ Stones, a spinoff of Alexis Korner’s and Cyril Davies’ Blues Incorporated, which was sort of a finishing school for any English kid that cut his teeth on Skiffle, and who was dead-serious about making it with the next big thing known as R&B.
British R&B.
Bill Wyman, who became a Stone just a few months before Charlie, was pegged as “the quiet one.” Every band during the British Invasion needed a “quiet one.” It was an unstated expectation that made it easier for a hyperopic press corps to jar and label different members of different bands that were, to blurry, cynical, and soon-to-be irrelevant eyes (and ears), seemingly interchangeable. The Beatles had George Harrison. The Who had John Entwistle. The Kinks had everyone who wasn’t Ray Davies.
Bill was and still is stone-faced but he wasn’t quiet; he merely assumed, wrongly or rightly, that nobody else really cared about what he had to say. To this day, he insists that the only reason he was invited to join the Stones was due to a magnificently crafted Vox AC30 amplifier that he lugged to his audition. “I didn’t impress them,” he remarked years later. “My equipment did.”
In reality, Charlie was the quietest Stone. His drummer-mime persona became something of a running joke on Stones tours of latter years. During obligatory band intros, Mick would hold the microphone up to Charlie and ask him to say “Hello.” Charlie, still the same “deadpan, dog-faced boy” as Bill Wyman lovingly described him once, would oblige and repeat, “Hello.”
Mick, with mock astonishment, would then turn to the crowd and declare, “He speaks!”
How then, did this rarest of high flying birds, a well-dressed man of “almost casual genius” who remained “effortlessly cool in our mostly uncool existence,” to quote my great and good friend Ted Grossman, restrain himself from doing what all rare birds are expected to do: fly the coop.
I had the honor of putting a similar question to Charlie Watts when I interviewed him for Newcity in1992. The Stones were between albums. And he was touring with a quintet that he assembled in support of a new printing of his book, Ode to a Highflying Bird, a 1960 art school project in homage to Charlie Parker that he published in 1964.
“They are my friends,” he replied. It was that simple.
That line gave me pause when I heard it 30 years ago. It gives me pause now.
His answer told me everything one needed to know about Charlie Watts, the man. And why he suffered, though not always joyfully, the one thing he absolutely hated about being in the Rolling Stones decade after decade after decade after decade after decade: touring.
He much preferred the quiet, gentle life of a country squire with his family, his horses, his rescued greyhounds, his antiques, and his jazz.
In a 1991 Rolling Stone article by David Fricke, Charlie admitted that, despite the living hell of the road, he could never, would never leave his mates hanging. He didn’t need the Rolling Stones; but the Rolling Stones needed him, and he knew it.
“I said ‘no’ [to touring] thirty years ago,” he said — thirty years ago.
“Nobody believes me anymore.”
Charlie, loyal to the end, never believed himself.
Everything one needs to know about Charlie Watts, the musician, can be heard on any of the recordings he made with his friends, the Rolling Stones. And there are plenty of them: They have to date released 30 studio albums, 33 live albums, 29 compilation albums,121 singles, 32 box sets, 48 video albums, 77 music videos. And there are in circulation an untold number of rarities, outtakes, and bootlegs — in record stores, at record shows, and on the digital music platform of one’s choice.
Ask Alexa, Siri or Google to play a random sampling and one will hear and feel everything that made him the band’s secret weapon; the heartbeat of an infallible musical entity that was far, far greater than the sum of its aging and fallible parts; a gentleman drummer who preferred Duke of Windsor plaid and knots to ripped tees and eyeliner; who announced himself with an unmistakable thicka-twack, and dropped any beat as if he invented it — blues, rock, soul, psychedelia, country, folk, funk, punk, disco, power pop, world.
Anything.
No matter the genre the band explored on its fantastic voyage — a journey of deep, reverential musical appreciation which, if they were starting off today would be lazily and stupidly mislabeled as “cultural appropriation” simply because everything original originally comes from somewhere else — the feel if not the sound always had a curious catch; an unmistakable swing that was always more jazz than blues or rock and roll.
“That’s why the Rolling Stones was a more interesting band than bands like Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman’s Hermits, the Searchers or the Hollies,” Charlie remarked in According to the Rolling Stones. “We had a much broader, much deeper, musical background.”
There are other recordings, too: guest appearances as well as his solo efforts with his Charlie Watts Orchestra, The Charlie Watts Quintet, The Charlie Watts Tentet; his work with fellow drummer Jim Keltner, and a little known side project, The A,B,C, & D of Boogie Woogie. (He was the “C.”)
Somewhere in all of this, too, there resides an explanation for how Charlie Watts, like Johnny Cash, was able to transcend genres, identity politics, and musical tastes. That is, how it came to pass that, whatever one felt or still feels about the Rolling Stones or rock and roll period; however one votes or doesn’t vote; whatever one believes or doesn’t believe about monarchy, democracy, God, gods, afterlives, vaccines, climate change, or composting, Charlie is everybody’s darling.
Living in a country where we are no longer permitted to discuss religion or politics with anyone who disagrees with us, Charlie Watts was, is, and always will be the safest topic of any dinner conversation, in any household, in any tax bracket.
One reason could be that he spoke, eloquently, through his music, saying everything that needed to be said perched behind his Gretsch kit, accented with syncopated fills, an indefatigable kick, and those impeccably timed hit and run crashes. Nobody in their right mind would argue with him in this capacity, even on Charlie’s worst days, and he didn’t have many.
During the Stones’ glam period, those signature fills became a mite trashier — “sophisticated dishevelment” to borrow Stewart Copeland’s wonderful phrase — as if Charlie and his whole kit had taken a tumble down a flight of stairs.
But Charlie tumbled in time.
It’s true that he was, next to Brian Jones, the most musically gifted of any of the original members and yet was devoid of ego, which partly explains why he never took a drum solo in his life: “Drum solos — well, in the hands of Louis Bellson or Tony Williams, they‘re remarkable, but I’ve never been interested in them myself.”
If somebody in the studio could play something better, he promptly handed over the sticks, surrendered his throne, and took five, never begrudgingly. As a result, he is not playing on more than just a few hits during the band’s golden age, when Jimmy Miller stepped in after Andrew Loog Oldham stepped off as the band’s producer. (It’s Miller playing on most of “Tumbling Dice” and all of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”)
Charlie the Humble had no problem taking advice if it meant getting a number right. Bobby Keys, the late West Texas fury who played sax for the Stones in the studio and on tour, and for a while made that particular instrument the sixth member of the band, used to tell a wonderful story about how he had to stand behind Charlie and clap out the wonky time signature for “Ventilator Blues.”
One thing Charlie didn’t particularly like: Presumption. In the mid-80s, he had heard Mick Jagger asking around an Amsterdam hotel, “Where’s my drummer?” When Charlie caught up with Mick early the next morning, he screamed into his face, “Never call me your drummer again!” Then he punched the vocalist in the face — a “drummer’s punch,” according to Keith’s eyewitness account in his autobiography, Life.
“It takes a lot to wind up that man,” Keith added.
Though it could have happened at any moment during some rather dodgy live performances, the wheels never came off the band. In the Martin Scorsese documentary Shine A Light, Bill Clinton introduces Charlie to his mother-in-law thusly: “Charlie keeps it all going.”
Bill Clinton was bang-on. Charlie did keep it all going. He wasn’t just a swift and steady clothes horse who oriented and held together the rest of a stubbornly unbroken team at full gallop; he was the whole bloody yoke.
There was, though, something more to the man, something we sensed collectively about Charlie Watts that every human being searches for, longs for, in a friend, in a spouse, in a parent, and most certainly in a drummer: constancy, the rarest of traits in a world where, as Shelley wrote, naught endures but mutability.
As every outside influence, as every nasty habit, as every bad thing one could imagine threatened to rip the band apart over a mind-bending 60-year run, the group to the man knew it had in the pocket a constant drummer and a friend; a heart that would not fail the body when it came time to make music.
Predictably, Mick, Keith, and Ronnie will go on with the show. The band has still got the soul, and a revisionist-proof history that it can trade on, commercially, for years to come.
But the band’s heart has stopped beating.
“Everybody thinks Mick and Keith are the Rolling Stones,” Keith said in 1980. “If Charlie wasn’t doing what he’s doing on drums, that wouldn’t be true at all.
“You’d find out that Charlie Watts is the Stones.”
