Charlie Watts is the one person in a Rolling Stones film who is not performing for the camera. He sits at the back, plays nothing he does not need to, says almost nothing, and we watched him anyway.
Fi1m perspective
Near the start of Gimme Shelter (1970), Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts sit at an editing machine and watch footage of the tour we are about to see. The Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin cut back to that room throughout the film. Jagger reacts to everything. Watts says almost nothing, and each time the film returned there we found ourselves looking past the singer at the drummer, because a man who keeps quiet while watching something the film has already told us went wrong is harder to look away from than one who talks. He is the one person in the picture who keeps still.
He joined the Rolling Stones in January 1963 and stayed until his death in August 2021, so the cameras had him for close to sixty years. They did not get much out of him, and that is what we like. He is there as himself in Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil (1968), in the studio for the sessions Godard filmed; in Martin Scorsese's concert film Shine a Light (2008); and in the archive footage of Crossfire Hurricane (2012). We have reviewed only the Maysles film, and it is the one to see.
He came to the band from jazz, from Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated and from listening to Elvin Jones and Philly Joe Jones, and he kept a jazz life going alongside, with a Quintet and a Tentet and a boogie-woogie group. He once explained what started it. "The first person whose playing I was aware of was the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, and the track was Walking Shoes, with Chico Hamilton playing drums. That’s what made me want to play the drums." You can hear it in what he plays: few fills, no solos, a snare that lands a hair behind the beat, and a right hand that lifts off the hi-hat on the upbeat so the backbeat can hit harder. None of this photographs well. A concert film wants a drummer who throws things in the air. Watts gave it a man doing something exact and declining to look pleased about it, and on a Rolling Stones stage that is the one place to rest your eyes.
There is not much a critic can hold against a man who does this little on purpose. The nearest anyone gets is that he never seemed to want the fame that came with the job and would rather have been playing jazz, which is not a criticism. Watch Gimme Shelter for the Garden shows and the quiet room in Alabama, then watch it again for the editing room. Jagger is trying to work out what he feels about what he is seeing. Watts already knows, and is not going to say.
Biography
Charlie Watts (2 June 1941 – 24 August 2021) was an English drummer who joined the Rolling Stones in 1963 and remained with the band until his death. He appeared as Self – The Rolling Stones Member in the 1970 documentary film Gimme Shelter.
Originally trained as a graphic artist, Watts developed an early interest in jazz and played with Blues Incorporated before joining the Stones. He also designed record sleeves and tour stages for the band, and performed with his own jazz ensembles, including the Charlie Watts Quintet.
Watts was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Rolling Stones in 1989.
