Keith Richards had the chance to play alongside Charlie Watts for 58 years, until the drummer’s passing in 2021 at the age of 80. He was a crucial part of The Rolling Stones‘ sound and became a reference point for multiple drummers over the decades who were inspired by his playing. Richards, of course, was a huge fan of Watts and has already shared his opinion of him as a drummer, explaining what made him such a great musician.
What is Keith Richards’ opinion on Charlie Watts as a drummer
Initially, Keith Richards thought Charlie Watts was too Jazz-oriented and needed to incorporate more Rock and Roll into his playing, which he eventually did. “If you look at the size of his kit, it’s ludicrous compared with what most drummers use these days. They’ve got a fort with them. An incredible barrage of drums. Charlie, with just that one classic setup, can pull it all off. Nothing pretentious, and then you hear him and it don’t half go bang. He plays with humor too. I love to watch his foot through the Perspex. Even if I can’t hear him, I can play to him just by watching. The other thing is Charlie’s trick that he got, I think, from Jim Keltner or Al Jackson.”
“On the hi-hat, most guys would play on all four beats, but on the two and the four, which is the backbeat, which is a very important thing in rock and roll, Charlie doesn’t play, he lifts up. He goes to play and pulls back. It gives the snare drum all of the sound, instead of having some interference behind it. It’ll give you a heart arrhythmia if you look at it. He does some extra motion that’s totally unnecessary. It pulls the time back because he has to make a little extra effort. And so part of the languid feel of Charlie’s drumming comes from this unnecessary motion every two beats. It’s very hard to do— to stop the beat going just for one beat and then come back in. And it also has something to do with the way Charlie’s limbs are constructed, where he feels the beat.”
He continued:
“Each drummer’s got a signature as to whether the hi-hat’s a little bit ahead of the snare. Charlie’s very far back with the snare and up with the hi-hat. And the way he stretches out the beat and what we do on top of that is a secret of the Stones sound. Charlie’s quintessentially a jazz drummer, which means the rest of the band is a jazz band in a way. He’s up there with the best, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones. He’s got the feel, the looseness of it, and he’s very economical. Charlie used to work weddings and bar mitzvahs, so he knows the schmaltz too. It comes from starting early, playing the clubs when he was really young,” Keith Richards said in his biography “Life”.
Funny enough, Keith Richards would reprimand Charlie Watts and Ian Stewart in the early days of The Rolling Stones when he caught them listening to Jazz in their spare time. He would tell them to “stop that shit”, trying to break their habits and get them to listen to Blues artists like Muddy Waters. Eventually, Charlie developed a unique drumming style that became crucial to The Rolling Stones’ sound. He inspired many famous drummers, especially those who also loved Jazz, such as Phil Collins. According to Richards, Charlie always had a great feel for music, even from the beginning.
Keith Richards said Charlie was one of the greatest in the world and felt blessed to play with him
For Keith Richards, Charlie was one of the greatest drummers in the world, and he felt blessed to have played with him. Interestingly, Richards once revealed that they used to play some “little games” onstage, trying to sabotage each other’s playing.”I am the most blessed man in the world, the first drummer that I ever worked with was Charlie Watts and I’m still working with him (at the time).”
“It’s a constant source of enjoyment. Sometimes out there we try to screw each other up (laughs). I’ll cut the beat up a little bit and he’ll trip me back ‘boom!’ (We got) these little games. We don’t really mean to do that but sometimes you get mischievous and do that kind of thing. I mean, Charlie, if I can flip the beat for a moment he will catch it back and lay it back on me (laughs). A lot of it it’s experience but at the same time Charlie Watts is one of the greatest drummers in the world.”
“I mean, (he’s) so beautifully spontaneous and firm, he’s got the moves. I’ve worked between him, Steve Jordan, Charlie Drayton, Georgie Roselli, Joseph Modaliste from the Meters. I’ve worked with some of the best drummers, I’ve been blessed that way. Without a great drummer it’s such hard work to just keep the thing going. They give you the freedom to be able to do what you wanna do. You don’t feel like tied down. That’s really what it is,” Keith Richards said in an interview (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
What made Richards fell in love with Charlie Watts’ drumming
Keith Richards first fell in love with Charlie Watts’ drumming when the musician was a member of Alexis Korner’s band which sometimes had Ian Stewart on piano. “That’s where I fell in love with the men! Almost nobody was booking this kind of music in clubs at the time. (…) We said, “God, we’d love that Charlie Watts if we could afford him’. Because we all thought Charlie Watts was a God-given drummer and Stu put the feelers out. And Charlie said I’d love any gigs I can get, but I need money to hump these drums on the tube. He said if you can come back to me and say you’ve got a couple of solid gigs a week, I’m in.”
“(…) To me, Charlie Watts was the secret essence of the whole thing. And that went back to Ian Stewart— ‘We have to have Charlie Watts’—and all the skulduggery that went down in order to get Charlie. We starved ourselves to pay for him! Literally. We went shoplifting to get Charlie Watts. We cut down on our rations, we wanted him so bad, man. And now we’re stuck with him! At first we had neither Bill nor Charlie, though Bill is mentioned in the second diary entry (his diary).” When Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman started locking in together, that was when, according to Keith Richards, the band realized there was something even more special about the two of them playing together.
He said:
“Charlie was a jazzman. Bill was from the Royal Air Force. At least he’d been abroad. Charlie Watts has always been the bed that I lie on musically, and to see that note about how to ‘rectify’ his sound seems extraordinary. But like Stu, Charlie had come to rhythm and blues because of its jazz connection. A few days later I write, Charlie swings very nicely but can’t rock. Fabulous guy though… He had not got rock and roll down at that time.”
“I wanted him to hit it a little harder. He was still too jazz for me. We knew he was a great drummer, but in order to play with the Stones, Charlie went and studied Jimmy Reed and Earl Phillips, who was the drummer for Jimmy Reed, just to get the feel of it. That sparse, minimalized thing. And he’s always retained it. Charlie was the drummer we wanted, but first off, could we afford him, and second off, would he give up some of his jazz ways for us?” Keith Richards said in his book.
Charlie Watts passed away in 2021 at the age of 81. During his career, the drummer also released five solo albums, the last being “The Magic of Boogie Woogie” with ABC&D of Boogie Woogie in 2010. His final complete album with The Rolling Stones was “Blue & Lonesome” (2016), but previously recorded parts of his playing were used on “Hackney Diamonds” (2023) and “Foreign Tongues” (2026).