It’s impossible to list Charlie Watts‘ 10 best songs, because the late Rolling Stones drummer never played badly. So here are 10 greats…
Without stretching the comparison too far, Charlie Watts was the Elvis Presley of rock and roll drumming: There was BC (Before Charlie) and after, and he can’t be compared realistically with anyone who followed because he’s an integral part of the foundation not just of the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band,” but rock and roll itself. Watts was wry and rock-steady in both his playing and his personality. Never a flashy drummer — he always used a small kit — his whipcrack snare, driving rhythms and preternatural sense of swing powered the band from the day he joined in January of 1963 until his death earlier today, at the age of 80. Yet his low-key demeanor and steadiness masked the complexity of his work: A lifelong jazz enthusiast — he led several jazz bands over the years during downtime from the Stones — his playing bore a groove and a subtlety that marks the greatest drummers of that genre, along with a disdain for the clichés that many rock drummers fall prey to. (See the songs below for more on that.) The Stones have not played a single concert without him since he joined (although they’ll play their first during their rescheduled U.S. tour next month), and released just a handful of songs recorded with a different drummer. The best-known of those,1974’s “Its Only Rock and Roll,” features Faces/Small Faces drummer Kenney Jones, who played on the song’s original session, and the group never replaced his part. Jones said in 2015, “I called Charlie up and said, ‘I didn’t mean to play drums on your album.’ He said, ‘That’s okay. It sounds like me anyway.’ He’s a lovely guy, Charlie. A perfect gentleman.” The core of Watts’ and the Stones’ greatness lies in the primal groove they attained on their best performances, a powerful, larger-than-life swing where the rhythm section and the guitars lock in and the entire sound seems to lift off. On tour, the Stones rarely changed their setlists after the first couple of gigs, so the quality of the show depended on the degree to which they attained that groove.
