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I just heard that Charlie Watts, the drummer of The Rolling Stones, died.
I met him back in 1963, when The Stones were just getting started, and he was a lovely guy, the only one of them who wasn't either so far up himself or high on something, who gave a fan a little facetime and some conversation, without being in any way condescending.
Apart from that, he was one of those mostly unsung brilliant drummers who anchored the group for over fifty years. It makes me feel very sad and very much mortal to hear of his death as he was only a few months older than me.
R.I.P. Charlie
Comments
Live at the Marquee
If I ever get my time machine up and running, London's Marquee Club 1963 will definitely be one of my first stops. The Stones were great right from their first album and had a rare feel for American musical idioms (if you want to hear something embarrassing, before they discovered acid and became ponderously profound the Moody Blues started out as a blues rock band like so many other British bands back then- Howlin' Wolf they weren't!) And after they focused more on their own material than covers (Mick might not be likeable but he wrote some phenomenal songs and did have a sexy swagger) they were even better. And Charley Watts held it all together, indispensibly, like on Going Home, a rock song that was (GASP!) six whole minutes long, unprecedented at the time. Wish I could have met him. Our era is drawing to a close, and us with it. Bummer.
~hugs, Veronica
,
As teens me and a friend did meet one of my rock idols Ray Davies on Sunset Blvd, but very briefly. He took off running like we were gonna start screaming and chasing him like in Hard Days Night- LOL
And remember...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLqzLEB3E0
I saw the Stones
1969 week of Thanksgiving at the Spectrum.
And who knew how oddly attracted I was and utterly ashamed when I saw this album cover?
standing in the shadow? (1966)
L-R Brian Jones, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, and Charlie Watts, with Bill Wyman in the wheelchair. I hated myself for being attracted to Brian Jones.
Love, Andrea Lena
Back in the day...
you were either a Beatles fan or a Stones Fan.
The Fab four were a bit too clean-cut (circa 1964) for me. The Stones had this rawness and anti-establishment vibe about them that drew me in. I only saw them once, at their Hyde Park gig. Their take on what was at the time called 'black music' (wrongly IMHO) was so different than the run of the mill pop song. I did meet (encounter more like) Mick one day as he left the BBC at the top end of Regent St. I was a student at the Polytechnic of Central London and was heading for the Regent St building to use the swimming pool. You never knew who you'd meet outside that place.
Those were the days eh?
Samantha
He was very good drummer
and I believe the Stones will miss him, but then, how much longer can they keep going? The era of the Baby Boomers is beginning to wind down and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it any more than I am about being called one of them.
Angharad