Charlie Watts on the biggest “fault” of his drumming
The Rolling Stones have always prided themselves on the rhythmic foundation which got them to where they are today. Although the band may be a rock group in name, there’s a heavy emphasis on “rhythm” in their love of rhythm and blues, with Keith Richards becoming a shining example of how a rhythm guitarist can shape any band. While Charlie Watts was used to holding down the low end whenever he would play with The Stones, he admitted that his way of playing wasn’t usual.
Before the band had gotten started as we know them today, The Rolling Stones began in the mind of Brian Jones. Looking to put together a blues band that could go toe-to-toe with anyone else in the field, Jones quickly found magic when he asked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to join the band, bringing a love of blues and a songwriting partnership that would last a lifetime.
Although Watts had been playing in bands before The Stones, his way of playing a song was never about being flashy. While many English bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who thrived on having an explosive drummer behind the kit, Watts was always keen to hold down the low end however he could, laying a firm foundation for the rest of the group to build the song around.
When talking about how his style works, though, Watts quickly pointed out how incompetent he was in some respects, saying, “One of the faults in my playing, I never learned to play. I learned by watching. I should have gone to school and learned how to do it. I should’ve gone to classes. I learned by watching the great drummers in London … and American players when they came over.”
While there are unconventional pieces of Watts’s technique compared to the likes of John Bonham, those serve as subtle quirks that help push the song along. Rather than take the traditional approach by playing the snare drum and hi-hat together, Watts hardly ever combined the two on any singular hit, creating space in the arrangement that left room for Richards to add his rhythmic chops to the song.
Watts would also talk about how important it is for him to take lessons as he went along, explaining, “There’s so much to learn. You think you’ve cracked it, and you are all right, and you go to this little club in New Orleans, and there’s some guy nobody’s heard of except five of his mates who play in the band, and he’s a great little drummer.”
As the band evolved from one era to the next, Watts would go on to use different pieces of percussion to suit the song, adopting the bongos on the song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ and even playing the Eastern percussion instrument the tabla with sticks instead of his hands. Although most artists would use different techniques as tools when writing different songs, Watts often followed the music towards where he thought a specific track would be going.
