Charlie Watts, legendary drummer for the Rolling Stones passed away peacefully in a London hospital surrounded by his family on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2021. He was 80.
“Everybody thinks Mick and Keith are the Rolling Stones … Charlie Watts is the Stones.”
- Keith Richards, guitarist for the Rolling Stones
The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer was born on June 2, 1941, to a working-class family in London.
Growing up in Wembley, Watts took up music in his teenage years, landing on the drums thanks to his perceptive parents who noticed the adolescent thumping around the house.
Watts swapped his drumsticks for pencils and brushes at the Harrow art school before starting his first career in advertising in 1961.
Watts spent his nights in blues clubs around London, where he soon met his future bandmates.
Mick Jagger and Watts briefly played together in previous acts, including with Alexis Korner of Cream, before the iconic frontman scouted the drummer for his new group, the “Rollin’ Stones,”
In 1963, the Rolling Stones released their first single, a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On.”
Two years later, the band reached No. 1 on the US pop chart with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
Watts grappled with alcohol and drug abuse, including heroin addiction, throughout his career until the mid-’80s as the Stones’ career plateaued and members’ interests diverged.
The drummer would record and tour with his own jazz outfit during this time, releasing his own big band record for Columbia in 1986.
He continued working in jazz circles through the ’90s and early 2000s — until Richards and Jagger finally reconciled creative differences.
A bout of throat cancer in 2004 didn’t stop Watts from joining the Stones for A Bigger Bang Tour for the following two years — one of the highest-grossing tours of all time earning over $558 million.