RIP Charlie Watts
Posted: Thu Aug 26, 2021 3:30 pm
The Guardian had some nice reminiscences of Charlie Watts today including some by Max Weinberg, longtime drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. This captured something of his spirit, and perhaps that of the LL:
I first met him around 1979 or 1980 – the Stones were playing a couple of nights in Madison Square Garden, and I was tagging along for this interview for Modern Drummer with a friend of mine. He was wearing a three-piece Savile Row suit, just incredibly turned out, and invites us into his hotel room so he can unpack. He had two beautiful leather suitcases on the bed, and he opened them up. Everything was immaculately folded; there was a precise toiletries kit. It was the exact opposite of the way I travel on the road. He took his clothes out of his suitcases, put them on the bed, refolded them, and put them in the drawers. I had never used a drawer in a hotel room in 15 years of being on the road. I thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. We did this interview, ordered room service, and he realised he had to get picked up to go to the Garden. He went into the bedroom, and came out wearing sweatpants and a sort of ripped T-shirt. He’d looked like an English lord, with this handsome, aristocratic, craggy face, and now he’s so dressed down to go “play with them”, as he said. Not “go play with my band, our band”, it was always “them, the Stones”. There was this funny kind of distance.