SO LONG CHARLIE

 

So long to a timekeeper for the ages. The rather amazing Charlie Watts, long time lifetime drummer for the Rolling Stones passed away onto that great gig in the sky today at 80. And it’s more than fair to say a fair chunk of my soul’s identity went with him.

In mine and so many lives, Charlie was just always there. When I graduated to my very first big boy rock and roll album in 1978, Some Girls, there was Charlie, if not front at center, living deep in its beating heart. With every subsequent release all the way up thru A Bigger Bang in 2005, Charlie provided the jazz-based background drumming soundtrack to our lives. Growing up, getting older, trying to find and/or escape responsibility in the truest rock and roll sense, there was Charlie. You see, quite unlike the linear, piledriving hammerings of a John Bonham or a Max Weinberg, or the chaotic free-for-all stylings of a Keith Moon, Charlie Watts swung. His rhythms were insouciant, snaky, insinuating. They got under your skin, and before you knew it, they were a part of your DNA.

Mick and Keith were the window dressing, but I knew it as soon as I dropped the needle on side 1 track 1 of Some Girls and Miss You started disco slinking out, something about this sounded apart, sounded different in that steamy long-ago June of 1978. And the lion’s share of that came from Charlie. The others were the gleaming (well, this was ’78 so not so much gleaming as chipped, worn and rusted out – hey, PUNK, remember?) chassis; Charlie was the engine.

Am determined NOT to make this maudlin, because that was the last thing the man would have wanted – would have right pissed him off I’m sure, so just 2 stories before I go, both prototypically Charlie...

 

Sometime during the 70s, not even sure if it was during the Mick Taylor or Ronnie Wood years, but the boys were deep into partying post-some recording session in the wilds of the UK and late into the night. Jagger, deep into his cups, drunkenly calls up Charlie’s house and mistakenly slurs into the phone when Charlie answers, “Where’s my drummer?”

Watts immediately hangs up, throws off the covers, changes out of his jammies and puts on his best 3-piece, Saville Row suit. Hops into his car and drives down to the recording studio he had left hours ago. Marches up to the studio entrance door and knocks briskly. Just so happens that Jagger is the one that pulls the door open. As he does so Charlie punches him once, squarely in the nose knocking Mick sprawling to the ground. Looks down at him and says, “I’m not your drummer – you’re MY fucking singer!”

And then there’s this bit of pricelessness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8r10iWpQlE

So here’s to hangin around and a life well lived. And I mean well lived; even thru a MAJOR heroin and booze problem during the 1980s (and I only say MAJOR because when even Keith Richards has to advise you to “go easy, man” you know you’re dealing with a bit of an issue...) But you know what, thru it all he remained one thing more than anything else: a gentleman.

 

We’ll somehow get along without you; but it just won’t be the same. Not at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZHwmzJa2UM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBlLbNVBKCc