![\"Charlie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Charlie-Watts-Mick-Jagger-The-Rolling-Stones-1965-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
(Credits: Bent Rej)<\/p>\n
Tue 31 March 2026 21:00, UK <\/p>\n
Being the drummer of The Rolling Stones<\/a> would seemingly come with an inevitable life of rock and roll chaos. <\/p>\n Following in the drunken slipstream of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts had everything in place to squeeze every drop of the industry\u2019s hedonism, should they so wish, and combine that with the pressure to compete with your instrumental counterparts, Keith Moon, John Bonham and Ginger Baker, they all embraced the chaotic energy of a drummer\u2019s lifestyle, proudly exercising the mantra of \u2018sex, drugs and rock and roll\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Watts bucked that trend and represented a somewhat refreshingly conservative antidote to the heady world of The Rolling Stones, both on and off stage. It wasn\u2019t as if he was reserving all of his chaos, waiting to unleash it onto his kit the minute the stage lights turned down; no, he practised a rather mellow approach to all facets of his life and consequently, anchored the sprawling rock and roll sound of one of the world\u2019s most chaotic bands<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never played with a drummer quite like him,\u201d Jagger once remarked of his bandmate. But as he continued to explain why he was so unique as a musician, he in turn explained how his temperament guided the art form. In essence, Watts\u2019 early style, which wasn\u2019t rock and roll at all, gave some balance to the early sound of the band, which, in Jagger\u2019s mind, helped separate them from the rest of their peers. <\/p>\n Jagger said, \u201cHe really swings. That\u2019s the bottom of it. A lot of drummers are great, but they don\u2019t really swing. Charlie is not a power drummer. He\u2019s a swing drummer, which I suppose shows that he\u2019s a jazz drummer; he started being a jazz drummer<\/a>. I don\u2019t think he ever thought of playing rock and roll. Rock and roll was a dirty word to him, I should think, when he was growing up, because he liked all these jazz drummers that play with a very light touch, swing drummers that never played eights. Charlie, I don\u2019t think, ever played eights, when I met him.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, there came a point where Watts\u2019 hand was somewhat forced. You can\u2019t be in the rhythm section of a world-conquering rock and roll band and not let loose from time to time, and so, after early years of the band spent with Jagger and Richards, who were beginning to bring a more hardened edge of rock and roll to the band\u2019s sound that would swiftly conquering the world, Watts clicked into a similarly rocky gear. <\/p>\n Jagger continued, \u201cThen he had to get into playing heavier shuffles, but he plays it with a very light touch. He loves all those blues drummers of the period, like on, Chuck Berry\u2019s records and the drummers that play with Muddy Waters. Those kind of shuffle drummers. When you listen to those records, you can\u2019t really hear the drums like you hear them now, but it just swings like crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to look at The Stones, in particular Jagger and Richards, and remark on how integral they are to the success of the band, to a point where you could quite easily say they would not have been the band they were without those two. <\/p>\n But maybe, in a more unassuming way, the case for Watts\u2019 being the centre of that argument is a lot stronger, for he was the unsung hero whose jazz-fusion drumming style brought all of the sonic elements together.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/far-out-magazine\/img\/google-discover.svg\")
<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Bent Rej) Tue 31 March 2026 21:00, UK Being the drummer of The Rolling Stones would seemingly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[177457,25720,96,128,15747,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-506514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-british-rock","tag-charlie-watts","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-the-rolling-stones","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}