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Germanie’s DW.com recently wrote and article on Charlie Watts, an excerpt is below with a link to full article:
For almost 60 years, Charlie Watts has set the pace for the Rolling Stones. As the drummer celebrates his 80th birthday, he’s going back on the road with the band.
Several years ago, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts told British newspaper The Guardian that he wouldn’t mind if his band called it a day — as long as it was “amicably.”
“I love playing the drums, and I love playing with Mick and Keith and Ronnie,” he said. “I don’t know about the rest of it. It wouldn’t bother me if the Rolling Stones said: ‘That’s it … enough.'”
After all, the drummer has been playing with the band for nearly six decades and turned 80 on June 2. At some point, you have to think about when you are going to retire. On the other hand, he told The Guardian: “I don’t know what I would do if I stopped.”
Without Charlie Watts as a calming influence among rock ‘n’ roll’s long-serving band, the Rolling Stones would probably no longer exist.
Watts’ diplomatic tact has often served to bring the hot-tempered, quarrelsome Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to their senses. It is due to his calming influence that the Rolling Stones are still together and ready to hit the road again once the pandemic has subsided, with their 2020 tour having been postponed.
As Richards once said: “There couldn’t be a Rolling Stones without Charlie Watts.”
Keith Richards drafts Watts into the Stones
Charles “Charlie” Robert Watts was born in Kingsbury, now a district of London, in 1941. The son of a truck driver studied art and graphics and joined Alexis Korner’s band Blues Incorporated as a drummer.
The loose blues collective also included singer Mick Jagger and guitarists Brian Jones and Keith Richards, who all dropped out of the band to form the Rolling Stones in 1962.
Just one year later, Watts quit his job as a graphic artist when Stones guitarist Richards insisted he play drums in the new band. Watts has been keeping metronomic time for the legendary rockers ever since.
Read the full article: HERE
