Which member did Charlie Watts call the best to play with in The Rolling Stones?
There’s no way to accurately describe what great chemistry is in a group. Compared to other musicians who try their best to create the best music they can on their own, there’s a certain appeal in listening to that signature push and pull that comes from people who complement each other in the right way. And while The Rolling Stones never claimed to gel in terms of music theory, Charlie Watts knew that some artists were far easier to deal with than others when walking into the rehearsal room.
But considering the gig that Watts had behind the kit for years, he was never in love with rock and roll playing. He had come from a generation that relied on having a great sense of swing, and since his listening habits behind the scenes catered a lot more to genres like jazz, he was always looking for something a bit more sophisticated than a straightforward riff played over and over again.
Even if he picked the wrong genre, he always knew how to flesh out the arrangements of any Stones tune. Despite the traditional approach that every drummer uses, Watts was always known to rarely play his snare and his hi-hat together, always giving each part of the kit a space to breathe. He knew that negative space had some power behind it, and the same thing applied when they were writing riffs.
Not every Stones lick was supposed to be blazing fast by any stretch, and even when Brian Jones broke out more instruments to add to the mix, they were always focused on what could make the song sound better. That was simply the lead guitarist slot, though, and Keith Richards served as the perfect balance between the melodic and rhythmic side of what they were doing whenever they played.
A lot of people still claim that the role of rhythm guitarist goes to the one with less talent, but Richards was more than happy to leave his competition in the dust when he played. No, not everything he played was meant to knock everyone off their feet from a raw dexterity level, but when he locked in with Watts on the initial groove to ‘Honky Tonk Women’ or ‘Gimme Shelter’, there was no greater rhythm section in the world.
And even as late as the 1990s, Watts felt that he hadn’t met anyone who understood him musically quite like Richards, saying, “Keith Richards is the easiest person in the world to play with and so we just play like we normally play. I just start [it] off and he comes in, or he’ll start off and I come in. And we’d do three goes at it, look at each other, and he’ll say, ‘Try it tomorrow.’ Keith usually calls the shots because he’s writing the thing. And he knows if it’s right or wrong.”
So, despite Richards picking up a reputation as one of the greatest rock and roll troublemakers, he had a lot more on his mind than sex and drugs when he went into the studio. He knew it came back to making something that sounded passionate, and that meant finding the right groove whenever Watts started playing or he found the right riff in open G.
That internal chemistry may have been silenced when Watts passed away, but looking at what Steve Jordan has been doing with the group as of late, he is the perfect person to take Watts’s place behind the kit. There are hardly any people who can manufacture chemistry, but even in an era without Watts, there are always going to be players who study their favourites and can do them proud like Jordan does whenever The Stones have a show.
