The drummer who featured on some of The Rolling Stones’ most popular hits: “Not everyone turned up”
When you think about The Rolling Stones, the two key figures that immediately spring to mind are Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Seen as the faces of the band, their vocals and guitar playing, respectively, have always been two of the most defining features of the group, and they’re the only two people to have featured on every studio album from the group since their formation. Without either of them, the Stones would surely cease to exist.
However, until 2021, one other member could also claim to have been present on every Stones record. Steadfastly providing the backbeat for 58 years, drummer Charlie Watts had also been there since the beginning, and the only record the band have released without his input to date is their most recent, Hackney Diamonds, having been recorded following his passing. You could argue that Watts was just as integral to the band as Jagger and Richards, and the loss of a founding member who had been such a stalwart in the band would no doubt have been a tragedy.
Despite being present for the recording of every album, Watts didn’t necessarily feature as the drummer on every single song. There were times when his services weren’t required at all, with the songs taking a stripped-back approach where drums wouldn’t have been appropriate, and on other occasions, it would appear that Watts was entirely absent from recordings, with another individual taking his place behind the kit.
Filling his shoes on a number of the band’s biggest hits was producer Jimmy Miller, who was recruited by the band to work on five of The Stones’ records between 1968 and 1973. During this period, Miller was credited for having helped define the sound of what is arguably the band’s golden period, working as a producer on celebrated records such as Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St. However, it wasn’t just his production work that the band ought to be grateful for, as he was more than adept at filling in as an additional musician when needed.
If additional drums or percussion were needed, Miller would seemingly be the go-to man to step in, and as a result, it’s his drumming that can be heard instead of Watts’ on tracks such as ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, ‘Shine a Light’ and ‘Happy’. He’s also the man behind the tubs during the outro of ‘Tumbling Dice’, scraping the güiro on ‘Gimme Shelter’ and smacking the cowbell on ‘Honky Tonk Women’, providing an additional percussive element to the song to Watts’ drumming.
So why wasn’t Watts performing on some of these tracks? Firstly, he found the drum part for ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ too tricky to play, and Miller was forced to step in. For the others, it’s worth noting that relationships between band members were particularly fraught during the recording of 1972’s Exile on Main St, where Miller appeared on three songs.
Speaking of the troubled period and the gruelling process, bassist Bill Wyman said: “Not everyone turned up every night. This was, for me, one of the major frustrations of this whole period. For our previous two albums, we had worked well and listened to producer Jimmy Miller. At Nellcôte, things were very different.”
Miller was an integral part of The Stones’ success in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, and without his stand-in drumming input on some of their biggest hits of the period, certain songs may never have come to fruition due to Watts’ absence.
