“Only another drummer can understand”: The drummer Charlie Watts considered his idol
For many casual rock fans, drumming feels like a thankless position. Even though many technicians have taken the drum throne and given their fans an education as to how much endurance goes into a performance, it’s hard to sway someone’s opinion when your entire job is banging on things for a living. Charlie Watts was always one for taste whenever he played, though, and he felt that everything that he knew and loved about the instrument came from this jazzy icon.
Because a lot of what Watts did was never strictly rock and roll in its presentation. The Rolling Stones may still be considered the de facto rock and roll band until the end of time, but what Watts laid down on the drums was centred around having a great groove rather than bashing the daylights out of everything like a drummer of John Bonham’s calibre.
In fact, a lot of his best moments include him taking bits and pieces out of the usual drumming formula. Considering that every other drummer hits the snare drum and the hi-hat at the same time, Watts always left space for the snare to come through, playing it by itself and keeping the arrangement much more sparse whenever he gets behind the kit.
That’s not to say that he can’t play some complex stuff. Hearing him turn ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ into a glorified samba is still one of the best moments of the band’s career, and the relentless bashing that he does on ‘Paint It Black’ is the whole reason why the song sounds spooky next to Brian Jones’s iconic sitar line.
When looking at Watts’s influences, it all came from swinging jazz, and that’s something that Max Roach knew all too well. Coming from the US, Roach was seen as one of the greatest drummers that the jazz scene had ever laid eyes on, never soloing per se but always laying down the thickest groove possible and letting the song breathe throughout its duration rather than everyone playing the right notes at the exact right time.
For Watts, seeing Roach play was always a learning experience, saying, “Someone like Max Roach… well, he’s a real idol of mine. Maybe only another drummer can understand exactly what he is doing and how well he does it.” And considering what he did with Miles Davis, that groove needed to be as tight as possible.
As much as Davis fostered creativity on his greatest albums, hearing Roach in the background nudging the beat every now and again was the reason why some of those tracks jump as well as they do. After all, the drums are something that you beat the hell out of, and Roach wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty whenever it came to taking the bass line for a bit of a walk underneath the soloists.
And considering how Watts played off of Keith Richards in his prime, it was the same dynamic of playing the song rather than playing the instrument half the time. Any drummer can use their time onstage as a vehicle to show off, but Watts learned a long time ago that it’s about getting the best performance rather than being the best performer.
