“What Am I Going To Do In A Bloody Great Big House?”
Charlie Watts was all about simple and classic, as he told Sylvie Simmons.
THE SLENDER, SILVER-HAIRED man who answered MOJO’s knock on his hotel-room door wore loungepyjamas, monogrammed slippers and an inscrutable look on his face. In a room as neat as its occupant, the one personal item on display was a zip-up case containing 150 of his favourite CDs: “Classical, jazz, mostly things I had on vinyl when I was 16. I’m not,” Charlie Watts said, “what you imagine I’m like.”
It was July 2002 and The Rolling Stones were in Toronto rehearsing for their 40 Licks tour. Each rented their own separate residence. Mick’s looked like a wannabe Palace of Versailles. Charlie snorted. “What am I going to do in a bloody great big house? It’s easier to live in a hotel. Mick would prefer to rent a house, but he travels with more people than I do. Mick can’t move without five people moving with him, doing things. He’s always been like that. I’m not like that. I don’t travel with anyone and I don’t want anyone. I would
to have people around me”, he shuddered. “Apart from my wife and daughter.”
The prospect of the tour, Charlie said, “Fills me with horror. Always has. Because I don’t like leaving home. But there’s no other way. You can’t be a drummer and live at home. You can play a piano at home, but you can’t be a drummer. And I love playing drums.”
For an hour and a half we talked on a host of different subjects. Sometimes a question evoked a sharp one-liner. But surprisingly, given his distaste for talking about him himself – particularly to a journalist – he’d often answer in depth, at his most animated when talking about jazz.
“Since I was about 12, when I first heard jazz music properly, whenever I’ve played the drums I’m attempting to be playing with Charlie Parker or Muddy Waters. I still have the same childish enthusiasm and admiration for those people as I had then.”
“Still the same.” That kept coming up. Charlie was the steady heartbeat of the Stones. The one time that changed – his heroin period in his forties – he still couldn’t explain. “Why? I honestly don’t know, but it nearly killed me. It was so unlike me.”
He talked about his bandmates with biting honesty, but also affection. The news of Mick’s forthcoming knighthood did evoke a scoff, but he added, “If Paul McCartney got one, Mick should have got one. And Mick really enjoyed it so I’m very pleased for him. But if Mick got one, Keith should have got one. That,” Charlie said with a wry smile, “would have really been something else.”