Charlie Watts was the ultimate drummer. The most stylish of men, and such brilliant company. The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson said he was "shocked" to hear the news about Watts, who he described as "a great drummer". The news came weeks after it was announced that Watts would miss the band's US tour dates to recover from an unspecified medical procedure.
Watts was previously treated for throat cancer in Charlie Watts was never the most flashy drummer. Instead, he was the subtle, stoic heartbeat of The Rolling Stones for almost 60 years. A jazz aficionado, he fell in love with the drums after listening to Chico Hamilton play brushes on Walking Shoes ; and was only introduced to the dark arts of rock 'n' roll by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in the early s.
He joined the Stones in after the band had discarded several other drummers - and they never looked back. His jazz-inflected swing gave the Stones' songs their swagger, pushing and pulling at the groove, creating room for Jagger's lascivious drawl. He was at his best on the cowbell-driven Honky Tonk Women or the locked-down groove Gimme Shelter where he even threw in some uncharacteristically showy fills.
On and off the stage, he was quiet and reserved - sticking to the shadows and letting the rest of the band suck up the limelight. I f Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were the mind and body of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones, standing most of the time in the shadows, was clearly the soul.
Jagger was out front on stage, and Richards, the lead guitar, was the man with the music. He was the most hairy, the most dapper, and the most versatile with musical instruments.
He was the first to leave the group — months, actually, before the news announcements. He was a Rolling Stone before he joined in , and he led the life of a true Rolling Stone from to Brian Jones was born February 28, in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire county, 98 miles to the west of London.
He had musical, well-to-do parents in this health-spa-dominated, well-to-do-town. Brian Jones played trad jazz with various bands in small clubs and halls around the west country until the music — and a confining daytime office job — drove him off to distant Scandinavia.
Just as Jones suffered with Jagger and Richard through jobless, moneyless, foodless days and nights in and out of a dingy Chelsea flat, he was in the forefront when it came time to work — trad jazz was beginning to fade — and to fight against the older musicians so determined to maintain their club jobs.
But the full group — with a college student Dick Taylor on bass and a succession of fill-in men on drums — really began when Jones found a club in Richmond-Surrey willing to hire them.
First press clippings which Brian saved in his wallet , the addition of Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman; help from Paul McCartney and John Lennon in the recording studios, growing audience enthusiasm — and the band rolled. Life as a Rolling Stone, of course, was life as a blotter for massive smear jobs by the press and by straight entertainers bewildered by the ragtag, long-locked young rebels. He did speak of a short period in the s when he tried to deal with a mid-life crisis by bingeing on drink and drugs.
I went mad really. But I stopped it all. It was very easy for me. In , he was diagnosed with throat cancer after having quit smoking in the late s, and underwent radiation therapy. The cancer went into remission, and he returned to recording and touring with the Stones. Despite newspaper accounts of a drunken spat with Jagger in the s over whether the singer or the drummer was more important to a group, Watts was in a magnanimous mood when he spoke to the Guardian newspaper in Watts was always known as a keen shopper and a snappy dresser.
Through Korner he met Brian Jones, who would play at Blues Incorporated gigs, and they found regular fans in Jagger and Richards, who also ended up playing with the group. Jagger, Richards and Jones soon formed their own group, the Rolling Stones, with Watts joining in They — Brian and Keith — never went to work, so we played records all day, in that rather bohemian life.
Mick was at university. But he paid the rent. Always using a straightforward four-drum setup — positively minimalist compared with the multi-instrument setups favoured by many rock groups — he gave the Rolling Stones propulsive, unfussy backbeats on every one of their studio albums, beginning with their self-titled debut.
My thing is to make it a dance sound — it should swing and bounce. This video has been removed.
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