Charlie Watts Biography
Charles Robert Watts, 2 June 1941, Wembley, Middlesex, England. Watts began playing drums in childhood and showed an inclination towards traditional jazz. He played part time until, in 1963, he switched musical allegiances and joined the Rolling Stones. The band had started out the previous year when Mick Jagger and Keith Richard, who were school friends, teamed up and, with Brian Jones, Ian Stewart, Dick Taylor and drummer Tony Chapman began playing R&B. The line-up shifted, with Bill Wyman replacing Taylor while Chapman was replaced by Carlo Little, Mick Avory and others. After Watts joined he was at first reluctant to make music his full time career but eventually, in January 1963, he capitulated. The Rolling Stones secured a residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, near London, and began attracting audiences and media attention. With Stewart out of the band, the line-up of Jagger, Richard, Jones, Wyman and Watts was maintained until Jones' death. By this time, the band's fame was international and they had become icons of the new era of popular music in the UK and, as time passed, most of the rest of the world as well. From as early as 1964 outrage and controversy followed the Rolling Stones wherever they went with surliness, bad public behaviour and general unseemliness the very least of their reputation. Drugs busts and court appearances, sexual encounters and shattered marriages seemed the norm. Except for Charlie Watts. Despite the examples set by his on-stage colleagues and in the face of all manner of off-stage temptations, he remained a solid, detached, workmanlike, unflamboyant journeyman musician. By the 80s, when the Rolling Stones peripatetic lifestyle had begun to wear and their touring schedule was cut back, Watts began making occasional returns to the music he had started out in: jazz. By now, he was showing signs of bop influence and was particularly interested in the music of Charlie Parker. He formed a big band, a massive, star-studded conglomeration that seemed to include just about everyone who was anyone on the London jazz scene. Against the odds, this huge band, which sported a dozen or more saxophonists, including Peter King, Evan Parker, Danny Moss and Courtney Pine, a huge brass section, including Harry Beckett and Jimmy Deuchar, two vibraphonists, pianist Stan Tracey, and two other drummers apart from Watts, proved to be very effective in its occasional live performance tours and recordings, Live At Fulham Town Hall. Watts continued with these jazz dates during the 90s and beyond, including some attractive small group sessions, some which paid tribute to Charlie Parker and on which his sidemen included King and Gerard Prescencer. He also made a small group session with fellow drummer Jim Keltner. He broke off from these personally financed jazz activities every few years for a world tour with the Rolling Stones. On those tours, as Jagger cavorted and Richard swaggered as if time had stood still a quarter of a century ago, Watts sat there punching out a solid beat and observing the frantic goings on with bemused detachment. Indeed, as time passed, Watts' playing became ever more assured as can be heard on the band's Bridges To Babylon. Although Rolling Stones observers suggest that Richard was responsible for setting the tempo of their performances, it was Watts who kept the band firmly anchored and in many ways this can be seen as an important contributory factor in assessing their longevity. In his jazz group work, Watts is similarly content to be supportive and undemonstrative. Technically, he has never been anything other than a solid sideman and his playing style reflects his unfussy on-stage demeanour.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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