5 Years Ago Today: Rolling Stones Drummer Charlie Watts Dies at 80

Charlie Watts was born June 2, 1941, in London, the son of a lorry driver, and jazz found him early. Per Rolling Stone's obituary, Watts grew up collecting 78s by Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, and Charlie Parker, and took up drums around age 14. By his early twenties he was splitting time between playing jazz combos, sitting in with Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, and working a day job as an ad-agency graphic designer. He wasn't chasing a rock career. The Rolling Stones' original 1962 lineup, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, pianist Ian Stewart, bassist Dick Taylor, and drummer Mick Avory, who later became a founding member of the Kinks, played only a handful of shows before Avory was out and Watts was in. Watts played his first gig with the Stones on January 12, 1963, at the Ealing Jazz Club.

For nearly six decades, Watts' playing was the part of the Rolling Stones that never needed a spotlight to matter. As Richards put it in 1979, quoted in Rolling Stone's obituary: "Everybody thinks Mick and Keith are the Rolling Stones. If Charlie wasn't doing what he's doing on drums, that wouldn't be true at all. You'd find out that Charlie Watts is the Stones." His relentless pound drove (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction to No. 1 in the US in May 1965. His ice-cold snare defines Gimme Shelter. His groove lock with Richards' guitar carries Beast of Burden, and his loose, almost jazzy feel on 19th Nervous Breakdown and the bounce under Jumpin' Jack Flash are studied by drummers who never touched a rock kit before. Rolling Stone ranked him 12th on its list of the 100 greatest drummers of all time, a mark The Washington Post's obituary also cites in summing up his career.

Watts was never the archetypal rock drummer. Vanity Fair inducted him into its International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame, a detail Rolling Stone's obituary attributes to his lifelong pull toward jazz style over rock and roll excess. He married Shirley Shepherd in 1964 and stayed married to her for the rest of his life, a rarity among his bandmates. Watts described his own approach to leadership candidly in a 1991 interview quoted by Rolling Stone: "I'm big on letting people do what they want, which doesn't make for good bandleaders. If I had led the Rolling Stones, they wouldn't have gotten anywhere. We'd still be running around trying to find an amp, 30 years later." Away from the band, he indulged the jazz career he might have chased instead, debuting the 32-piece Charlie Watts Orchestra in 1986 and releasing "From One Charlie" with the Charlie Watts Quintet in 1991, a tribute to his teenage hero Charlie Parker.

Watts was diagnosed with throat cancer in June 2004, was treated, and went into remission, continuing to tour and record with the Stones for years afterward. In the summer of 2021, weeks before the band's No Filter tour of U.S. stadiums, representatives announced Watts would sit the tour out. Per Rolling Stone's obituary, the band's statement at the time read: "Charlie has had a procedure which was completely successful, but his doctors this week concluded that he now needs proper rest and recuperation." No further public detail on the procedure or a cause of death followed. Watts died August 24, 2021, in a London hospital, with his publicist's statement noting he "passed away peacefully... surrounded by his family." He was 80. His full documented gear, from his Gretsch jazz kit down to his cymbals, is covered on his CYS drummer profile.

Vic Firth built a signature model around the touch that made Watts' playing instantly identifiable: understated, dark-voiced, built to serve the song rather than dominate it.