Bringing Back the Boogie: Charlie Watts

You know Charlie Watts as the drummer and a founding member of the Rolling Stones.  He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 with the Stones and its well known that he is considered an irreplaceable member by bandmates Keith and Mick.  Despite his tremendous success with the Stones, his personal love has always been Jazz, and he plays Jazz with Axel Zwingenberger, Ben Waters, & Dave Green whenever time allows.  Recently he stopped by the SiriusXM studios to talk with Ron Bennington about his latest project with those guys– The A B C and D of Boogie Woogie. Excerpts of the interview appear below.

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Ron Bennington: This music that you’re playing on this album, this is the kind of music that you grew up with? This is the music that you first fell in love with?

Charlie Watts: The feel of it is. I mean, yeah. One of the godfathers of this music or founding members is a guy called Meade Lux Lewis. And the bass player who I have known since I was 5 and I both had records by Meade Lux Lewis when we were about 12, when we first started listening to jazz. So I supposed I grew up with it. But many jazz people… I used to listen to and this type of thing was, yeah, I suppose you could say I grew up with it.

Ron Bennington: What was it about jazz music?

Charlie Watts: Swing. The swing of it is what I fell in love with, yeah.

Ron Bennington: And by the time you started playing professionally, jazz had kind of lost some of it’s audience.

Charlie Watts: No. By the time…well, David and I used to play in jazz bands. And by the time… When would I be professional? I became professional, as they laughingly call it, when I made more money with the Rolling Stones than I did when I went to work. Which meant that was 6 months after I joined the Rolling Stones. So that’s 50 years ago. And jazz, in ’63, it was quite big and popular. Jazz died out as a popular form, it seemed to have. It’s still strong, going well and young guys play really well still today, still going, there’s nothing wrong with what’s called the music, but I suppose it’s lost it’s way a bit. In the ’70s, it became less popular. But in the ’60s, it was really still quite big. But the ’50s is when it was really fashionable.

Ron Bennington: So for you, yourself, when you listen to music, do you listen to jazz above all else if you’re going to listen?

Charlie Watts: Well no. Nowadays, I usually listen to classical music stations whenever…except in New York I listen to 89-something. I usually listen to a jazz station.

Ron Bennington: Who were your early jazz heroes? Were there people that...

Charlie Watts: Well, the first guy ever I was aware of being a jazz man, Earl Bostic was the first record that I fell in love with, “Flamingo”. And the first jazz things, what spurred me on to be a drummer you might say was a guy I emulate, I fell in love with the drums of [unintelligible]…Gerry Mulligan. And Chet Baker was obviously one of the great looking things and Charlie Parker.

Ron Bennington: And then when you started to play with the Stones and found out that this is what you were going to be doing for a living, did you…?

Charlie Watts: I didn’t. It wasn’t like that. It caught up. When I joined the Stones, I was in 3 other bands, I mean kind of, but they never had any work. Nor did the Stones actually when I joined them. And slowly we got more work. That’s one of the amazing things about the Rolling Stones as a group of people as well as a phenomenon as a band in a way, is that we’ve always..it grew very quickly. We didn’t have that awful gap, the wait before we could do, it was very, we became popular very quickly. For some, don’t ask me why or how? But we did. And I always thought, I always said it’d last about 8 or 6 months or 3 years at the most. Because that’s what bands did. So it just went on and on and on and on and here we are 50 years later.

Ron Bennington: And almost through the whole thing, you’ve been waiting for it to end.

Charlie Watts: Actually, I tried to end it a few times, but no one believed me. (laughs) But yeah, kind of.

Ron Bennington: Well, one of the few things I think that Mick and Keith have always agreed upon is that they need you.

Charlie Watts: (laughs) One of the few things, okay.

Ron Bennington: But despite all that, they always said yeah, we got to have Charlie playing. And so whether or not you wanted to the band to last, it seems like it has been your responsibility. I would say you have a lot to do with that.

Charlie Watts: It wasn’t really the band lasting, it was me doing it longer. Because the thing is our tours, not nowadays, but they used to be so long. That by the end of whenever, there was another one, 2 weeks later. And by the end of, I don’t know, 6 months in America, so that was it, I couldn’t do anymore. But 2 weeks later, you’re back on the plane going to Johannesburg or where ever. Well I think they could have carried on anyway without me, but I don’t believe all that really.

Ron Bennington: How long do you think a show should last when you go out?

Charlie Watts: For me?

Ron Bennington: Yeah, for you.

Charlie Watts: I think an hour of anyone is long enough. And I think, I actually liked the days when you had about 5 headliners on. The first tour that we did and we did many after, but the first one we did, the Rolling Stones, we were second to go on. A very famous record producer, who became a famous record producer, was the first one on, then it was us, Bo Diddley…sorry, Little Richard would go on after us and then it would be Bo Diddley and the Everly Brothers.

Ron Bennington: And that was your favorite.

Charlie Watts: And that was, you know the Everly Brothers do like a half an hour and they would do all their, fabulous, that time, that age, they were so professional. And Bo Diddley was fantastic and Richard was the best. Richard, you couldn’t stop him.

Ron Bennington: He was actually just back in town here playing like about 2 or 3 weeks ago.

Charlie Watts: Really? He’s a great, really underrated piano player, Richard. Because he was so good. I mean “The Girl Can’t Help It” is fantastic. His song is in the movie, he’s the star of that movie, well him and Jayne Mansfield are the stars of that.

Ron Bennington: And such an originator and doesn’t get as much play as Chuck Berry or Elvis.

Charlie Watts: Never. Well you know he is one of them. Nobody gets as much as Elvis. It’s like the Beatles and Elvis. They’re just the names. But under them, yeah. I’ve never been an Elvis fan really. I was always Richard and Fats Domino.

Ron Bennington: Why was that? What was it about Elvis?

Charlie Watts: Well I think because I always loved, I don’t know what you call it now, Afro-American, I mean Black…

Ron Bennington: Right, Black music.

Charlie Watts: Even when I was a kid. My favorite singer was, believe it or not, Billy Eckstine. I mean, I don’t know why? But I always had great admiration for these guys that were, and the music I listened to was Duke Ellington and Count Basie, so obviously, you know.

Ron Bennington: So that must have been amazing for you to come to New York the first time where…

Charlie Watts: Well, the first time I came here, a guy called Ian Stewart who was our boogie piano player, we looked at New York and we went to Birdland.

Ron Bennington: Right away? First thing.

Charlie Watts: And that was, and I saw the wonderful Sonny Rollins there and his trio.  Yeah, so that was it really. I’d seen America. (laughs) The rest of it, I didn’t…

Ron Bennington: Didn’t interest you.

Charlie Watts: No, it didn’t interest me. Actually at the time and by the time we had got to San Antonio, Texas, that was another, wow, what’s this? Texas State Fair and all that. That’s another part that I never knew that existed really.

Ron Bennington: Well, it is a massive country.

Charlie Watts: Oh it’s ridiculous. I mean you can go around, well Duke Ellington used to go around it and he’d come back a year later playing every other night or every night. It is amazing.

Ron Bennington: But in England at the time I guess you had only heard about Hollywood and New York City and had no idea how much space was in between those 2 places.

Charlie Watts: Well not if you were an avid fan of those people that lived in Hollywood and New York. Chicago, I obviously knew about. I mean I learned about Chicago through Mick and Keith. Well, I mean I knew about Chicago with Al Capone really. But Mick and Keith taught me the music side of it.

Ron Bennington: They came from a blues background. They loved the blues.

Charlie Watts: Yeah, but all our love was from records. We never saw these guys. We never saw Jimmy Reed actually do it. Until the ’60s, which I didn’t know he had been to London, but Bill actually put me right on there. A very good program he did called “Blues Odyssey”. He did a book and a TV program. It’s very good. It’s really good.

Ron Bennington: Bill was always more the blues as well?

Charlie Watts: No, not then. Bill was the only guy in the band actually that loved Jerry Lee Lewis. Bill was a rocker, as we call William. So he loved Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Keith was a Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters guy. I was Charlie Parker. (laughs)

Ron Bennington: Charlie Parker.

Charlie Watts: I was totally out of the loop, really.

Ron Bennington: But all those things came together. All those influences came together and kind of made the Rolling Stones, it probably took that much.

Charlie Watts: I mean, there’s musicians and there’s that mixture of musicians. You must know and I know hundreds of bands that make one record and then the guitarist wants to make, they go off and then you get…And then there’s other guys that are schooled that could play really well or after, you see them in clubs. It’s a lucky combination of who you get with, how it jells. The Who, Pete Townshend, John (Entwistle) and Keith Moon as a trio was, it’s never been…. even now Pete, although he probably didn’t have the energy or the interest to do it, but you’re never going to find a Keith Moon again. That mixture, you don’t get it. And even with Zeppelin, you know when John went…Bonham, it’s not the same ever. And Jimmy plays just as well now and Robert sings equally as well, but it was never quite the same without John, that sound. And it’s a mixture of things, of all things that make…Ringo, John and Paul, the Beatles were never the same when John went. I’m sure they would have gotten together and done something really if he had lived on. But it was never the same without him.

Ron Bennington: And isn’t also amazing that you can walk into clubs and see a great musician playing in front of a half of dozen people and then that person never catches on. They never find that place.

Charlie Watts: You just quoted the jazz world for me. (laughs) Very well. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it’s their own fault because they get totally self-indulgent. And good luck to them if they won’t bend. So that’s what they do. And sometimes you just slip through the thing. It’s very, even now there’s so many young kids that play brilliantly in Europe and here I know. There’s great great players and you see them and you never hear of them again. Why? I don’t know. Why it should be? I have no idea. But in the little time I’ve been looking at them in clubs and that, they just go.

Ron Bennington: And how did you bring this whole project together?

Charlie Watts: I didn’t bring it together. Ben Waters brought it together. Him and Axel (Zwingenberger) said they’d like to play together. I had done a television show with Dave Green and Axel, 20 years before that. And Ben said, why don’t we do that? Get them two to do it. And he rang us and I said, yeah that would be alright. It was for one show.

Ron Bennington: Just to do one.

Charlie Watts: Yeah. And that was 3 years ago. And now we just do it whenever it’s convenient to do things. Because sometimes, I’ve got things to do and most of the other guys, the two piano players and Dave, you know Axel works all the time. That’s what he does for a living. He plays boogie woogie for a living. Ben, you employ to do, you know he can be the bartender…

Ron Bennington: Whatever it takes.

Charlie Watts: Ben is Mr. Entertainment, really. Also, a wonderful piano player. But that’s what he does. And Dave is a on-the-phone jazz musician. So you ring him up and he’ll be…both excellent. Dave will play in jazz thing the night before they came here. The night before last.

Ron Bennington: When you get together with the Stones, is it just right back or does it take awhile to get that chemistry? Do you feel like…

Charlie Watts: No. We start straight away, we’ve done it so long. Usually it takes awhile to get your hands together and that. Because physically it’s much harder working with the Stones than that.

Ron Bennington: And why is that?

Charlie Watts: The energy level is a lot higher. The volume you have to play at is more.  Rock and roll is a bit harder than that. That’s..because of Dave Green, it’s got a very jazz feel. I’m talking about playing. They may not sound like it, but it does have that because he’s an acoustic bass player and he’s a jazz bass player. So it has a feel which I love. So it swings things really.

Ron Bennington: And how about with the Stones, Charlie? Any new plans or…?

Charlie Watts: Well we’ve got loads of plans. I don’t know. We’ll still talk, we haven’t done anything about it.

Ron Bennington: Charlie, so great to see you. A B C & D of Boogie Woogie. Thank you so much Charlie.

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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.

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