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A hotel in Amsterdam, October 1984.The Rolling Stoneshave gathered to discuss their future after several years of estrangement.
The 1980s are not pretty for the Rolling Stones.
At 5 a.m., Jagger decides he needs to talk toCharlie Watts, the bands drummer.
He calls Wattss hotel room.
As Stones biographer Stephen Davistellsthe now-essential Charlie Watts tale:
Izzat my drummer, then?
Wheres my fucking drummer?
Get yer arse down here right away!
Charlie came down, Keith said, grabbed Mick, went boom!
My favorite jacket, which Mick was wearing, got ruined.
Dont ever call me your drummer again, Charlie growled between clenched teeth.
Youre my fucking singer.
He was quiet and possessed the simple virtues of faithfulness and dutifulness.
Existing at any other time, he is likely to have lived out his life in happy obscurity.
But he had the good fortune to grow up in a society on the cusp of massive change.
He got his first drum set at 11.
Youre great, man, he says, but you need a fucking good drummer.
So we said, Charlie, we cant afford you, man.
Because Charlie had a job [at an ad agency] and just wanted to do weekend gigs.
But he always had to do it for economic reasons.
By this time were getting three, four gigs a week.
Well, we cant pay you as much as that band but… , we said.
When we got Charlie, that really made it for us.
The bands reputation grew.
The whole heart and soul of this band is Keith and Charlie, Richards wrote in his autobiography.
I mean, thats apparent to anybody whos breathing, or has a musical bone in his body.
That is where the engine room is.
The Stones were dirty and impolite and played a music hardly anyone in England had ever heard of.
Watts centered the band musically and almost intellectually.
But then came the subtleties of Wattss interactions with the other players.
At the same time, there was something to Wattss relationship with Jagger.
Watts said he always watched Jagger onstage, trying to anticipate his moves.
Watts, at this point, sneaked off and married his longtime girlfriend, Shirley.
He didnt tell his bandmates about it for weeks.
Watts, whodied August 24, 2021 at age 80, was steadfast.
As the years, and then the decades, rolled on, the band got bigger and still bigger.
He stayed courtly and soft-spoken.
The Stones would go out regularly, playing larger and larger shows, bringing in larger and larger paychecks.
Watts remained himself, observing life from the drummers chair.
Charlie Watts to me is the most honest man in the world to himself, to everybody.
He never even wanted to be a pop star.
It still makes him cringe.
Watts didnt survive the Stones famously toxic environment entirely.
(He duly took to60 Minutesto talk to Ed Bradley about it in 1994.)
He just did his job; henever missed a showin his entire career drumming for the band.
