Thank you Charlie Watts: 5 tracks demonstrating his jazzman genius

In Denmark Street, central London, it is still possible to get close to where it all really started for the Stones, in terms of their greatest recordings. To record their first album, in January 1964, they gathered for five days with their managers at Regent Sounds studios, a cramped spot in the heart of Tin Pan Alley, then the centre of the British music publishing industry. Regent was relatively cheap, not being connected to a major label, and the rumour is that the Stones management never paid for the studio time there. Who knows?  It’s all “slipping away”, as Keith Richards put it in the ballad of that name. I doubt the remaining Stones, other than archivist and founding bass player Bill Wyman, can remember much about Regent Sounds.

To paraphrase the presenter/director of the spoof documentary, rockumentary, Spinal Tap, when he’s satirising fan boy fixation on rock’n’roll history and early origins: don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore.

Actually, in the case of the Stones and Regent Sounds, that’s wrong. It is still there, sort of. If you find yourself near Tottenham Court Road and you love the Stones and want a shiver sent down your spine, do look for Regent Sounds on Denmark Street. The space is still there in the form of one of the best guitar shops in London. The owners respect the history and have kept as much of the original studio feel and signage as possible.

Regent Sounds studios in the early and mid-1960s was owned by a member of the Baring banking dynasty who liked these new, young popular beat combos and wanted them to have a place to make good records.

So it was that the Stones, five scruffy herberts plus their piano-playing roadie, collectively the unsmiling antidote to the supposedly cuddly Beatles, turned up and got to work. Their earliest demos and singles cuts had been a mixed bag, too tentative, sometimes with dubious use of reverb. In contrast, on the debut album recorded at Regent the playing punches through the speakers. They sound completely assured to the point of cockiness, capturing on disc the essence of the early Stones. It’s an exhilarating routine straight from the Dartford Delta, honed in clubs in Richmond, involving a hair-raising noise centred on Chicago blues and early rock’n’roll primalism. A friend who saw the band in that period went along to see them at the Station Hotel, in the room at the back. You’ve got to see this lot, a friend told him: “They’ve got a singer who dances around like a f***ing chicken.” And on it goes.

On that first album, ”The Rolling Stones”, there are a few glitches in song choice, and a shaky original called “Tell Me.” But on the best numbers this is as good as British raw rock’n’roll ever gets before or since.

At Regent, a cramped space, the musicians were jammed in and the instruments were closely miked. The excitement generated by a band that knows it is this good is infectious. Their version of Carol by Chuck Berry is possibly better than the original, or perhaps just different, but certainly punchier and more joyous, much less languid than the blueprint by Keith’s hero Chuck. The Stones have announced their arrival, by smashing the doors down.

But the first thing you hear on the opening track of that album is Charlie Watts.

Route 66 opens with one of his electrifying, quick little rolls. It’s like being serenaded by the crack of a machine gun firing into the ceiling. There had been previous moments of genuine rather than ersatz excitement in fledgling British rock’n’roll, not least Paul McCartney in 1963 counting 1-2-3-4 at the start of I Saw Her Standing There. The Watts intro, and the crunching, interlocked guitar parts played by Richards and Brian Jones are a dirtier and more grown-up affair than Macca’s count-in.

Then, Mick Jagger hymns the highway, that’s my way, that’s the best, as the lyric goes. Bobby Troup’s sophisticated road-trip tune, once sung sweetly by Nat King Cole, and then reinterpreted by Chuck Berry, becomes in the hands of the young Stones in 1964 a thing of fierce beauty, oozing illicit excitement about the possibilities of technicolor America. The short twelve-bar solo in the middle by Richards is so precise and energetic that it still gives me the chills every time I hear it.

And it all starts, that track, with Charlie on the drums.

Since his death at the age of 80 was announced this week there have been many fine tributes. But among them, some myths have been repeated. Watts it is said he was the reliable “Wembley Whammer” (Mick Jagger’s joke name for his friend) who was rock solid. He never missed a beat; he was the quintessential rock drummer, supposedly.

It’s more interesting and exotic than that. The Stones sound, or sounded, the distinctive way they do partly because Watts was such an unusual player. His true love wasn’t rock’n’roll, it was jazz and the jazz greats who swung so beautifully. His lodestars were Elvin Jones and Roy Haynes, who played with Lester Young and Charlie Parker. Haynes is still on the go, aged 96.

To the Stones in the early 1960s, Watts brought a jazz sensibility. He once said that when he thought of the 1960s it was three-button suits and Miles Davis that came to mind rather than the ridiculous posturing of the psychedelic rock period.

You’ll hear the jazz influence on Watts time and again in his elegant fills, in the way he used the open high hat and snapped it shut just at the right moment, and in the manner he splashed cymbals sparingly to add colour. Yes, it was rock music the Stones played so Watts knew that he had to hit it hard and avoid too much fuss or complication. But there are so many subtle touches along the way. Note also that like the great jazz drummers he idolised, Charlie always played a small kit. The best drummers don’t need much to make the right, sympathetic, contribution.

Part of the charm of the Stones is that their playing style is slightly ragged and lolloping. A lot of that was down to Charlie. Richards identified this as a quirk he attributed to him, Keith, playing very slightly ahead of the beat, with Watts trying to catch up and hold on, and Bill Wyman in the middle trying to keep the whole clattering train together to prevent a crash. Some of the best moments in live footage come when Watts and Richards are completely on it together, fused in the moment into one beat, with Keith, one foot up on the drum riser, arm pumping away at his Telecaster, open-tuned with only five strings, trying to make Charlie smile.

Well, no more, sadly. That’s all over. Charlie Watts is gone. As John Harris of the Guardian put it, his passing is “a deep, sad moment for anyone who loves rock music and its history.”

There’s so much left to enjoy, though. I could easily have chosen 50 tracks to recommend, for those seeking to enjoy and appreciate the work of Charlie Watts. But there’s a Stones symmetry to the number five. They were a quintet. The best documentary made on them to date is an Arena special, 25 x 5, made in 1989. Five by Five was the name of the EP they recorded at Chess Studios, Chicago, on a visit to the rhythm and blues mothership in June 1964.

So, here are five special Charlie Watts moments:

1. Route 66. That opening track on the debut album. The album was bastardised and amended for the US American market, as “England’s Newest Hitmakers”. What you want is that original UK version, and as I said, it all starts with Charlie on the drums. Listen carefully, and you can hear that his bass drum pedal squeaks. Really, it is sad that I know this.
   
   

2. Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The song that saved the Stones. By early 1968 they were almost lost to acid and drug busts, producing some dismally bad attempts at psychedelia in the recording studio along the way. Luckily, Mick and Keith understood that the mood – in politics and culture – was darkening following the summer of love delusion, and they produced Jumpin’ Jack Flash in response. It’s changed over the years, in the way they play it. Keith Richards even retooled the guitar riff, and improved it, I think, so that it sounded by the 1980s quite different from the 1968 single. Anyway, the Watts drums on the original are the bedrock. Along with Gimme Shelter (see 3) this constitutes the invention of the modern, big, rounded, solid drum sound that is standard for most bands playing rock music. But again, because it’s Charlie Watts it has that flick of flair.
   
   Or via Rolling Stone magazine try the version captured by Martin Scorsese when he recorded the band at the Beacon Theatre in 2006. This is an offcut, from the camera view focused just on Charlie. The band’s a little ragged, but this is a chance to see close up the power Watts generates from that small kit. Also the physical effort involved. A lot of good drummers are wiry, lean. No wonder, done properly it’s a cardiovascular endeavour. Watts talked of dreading getting half way through the show and being exhausted, thinking “there’s another hour of this to go.” He makes hard work look easy.
   
   

3. Gimme Shelter isolated drums track, plus percussion by producer Jimmy Miller. This is available on Sound Cloud, although the Stones should package up the whole thing and release it as a masterclass showing how the song was made. The famous, spine-tingling vocals recorded in LA are also available as an isolated track, and the guitars. What an earth-shaking noise Watts produces here, and it swings. This changes the way you hear the full song. The drums are central.
   
   

4. Bye Bye Johnny. A Chuck Berry cover that features on their first EP. In 1972 they reintroduced it to their set for their North American tour. They were at the peak of their powers, having recorded Exile on Mainstreet, and they looked like they knew it. Keith never played better solos than he does here and Watts is with him every step of the way, powering the performance.
   
   

5. Elvin Suite, Part 1. As a jazz fanatic with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the music, Watts established various ensembles and bands outside the Stones, so he could play jazz. This composition is from a tribute project created with fellow-drummer Jim Keltner (collaborator of Ry Cooder) dedicated to players such as Max Roach. The Elvin referred to is Elvin Jones, who played with Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis. He was a key member of John Coltrane’s early to mid-1960s group. Although the original Watts-Keltner album is hard to find below £50, a version of the Elvin Suite is available to hear on Spotify. In 2010 in Copenhagen Watts played a concert with the Danish Radio Big Band, featuring some of Europe’s leading jazz musicians. Watts plays beautifully throughout, but on Elvin Suite, Part 1 he sounds most like the jazz drummer he always wanted to be, given a welcome break from vulgar rock’n’roll.

Thank you, Charlie.