“Only another drummer can understand”: The jazz drummer Charlie Watts called his idol
When looking at the players who inspired the best rock and roll drummers of all time, a pattern emerges. Rather than looking inside their own genre at the other musicians pounding the kit alongside a full band of guitarists and a lead singer giving it their all, the best players seem to look elsewhere. They peer out to a more refined and more elegant form that requires a whole other school of skills. For Charlie Watts especially, he looked out to jazz.
It’s true of Ringo Starr, too. Together, the two players, Watts and Starr, provided the beat to two of history’s most influential rock and roll bands. It would be tough to find a modern rock group that doesn’t reference either The Beatles or The Rolling Stones as a vital inspiration. They feel foundational as if all music ever since has been built on the ground they laid and that rock music was forever changed by what they made.
But while Starr and Watts obviously both loved rock music and the early blues tunes that first inspired rock and roll, their influence as instrumentalists came from jazz. Starr looked to Cozy Cole, the drummer for titans like Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong. However, a different player stood out to Watts.
“Someone like Max Roach… well, he’s a real idol of mine,” Watts said. Roach’s résumé is incredible. He’s sat behind the kit for names like Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus and many more. Helping them to create their sound through jazz’s long-held tradition of improvisation and jamming, Roach was a vital force in establishing the cool jazz sound and helped pioneer bebop, a new, thrilling form that morphed from more traditional jazz.
“Maybe only another drummer can understand exactly what he is doing and how well he does it,” Watts said of Roach’s playing. But really, that’s the whole point of jazz. Despite being incredibly skilful and technical, working on a whole other scheme of chords and rhythms to any other genre, its beauty is that it’s often understated. Roach’s style only really stands out to drummers because, within the unit of the band, everything is supposed to move as one. A jazz band has to act like one organism, with each limb serving the greater good of the full body or the song. Even as players take their turn to solo, the object isn’t for individual glory but to move the tune along and keep the energy going.
That’s what Watts took from jazz and what Starr did, too. Perhaps that’s even why all the best players seem to be jazz-inspired, as the genre teaches a player to be less selfish, less flashy and more focused on the big picture. Starr once said, “People always feel it’s weird, but I never listened just for the drums,” focusing instead on the broader energy of the song.
Watts followed the same teachings passed down by the same genre. “I was always brought up under the theory the drummer was an accompanist,” he said.
“I don’t like drum solos,” he added, “I never take them. I admire some people who do them, but generally, I don’t like them. It’s not something I sit and listen to. I prefer drummers in the band playing with the band.”
Under that philosophy, he sees his role as a foundational, grounding force in the band, just like a good jazz drummer. They feel the energy of the song and keep it going, moving with the rest of the band as a unit rather than vying for the spotlight.
