Mick Jagger - Rolling Stone : octobre 1971

Table talk with Mick In Paris

Twenty tracks recorded in Richard's basement are finished

L'Hotel is the Paris hotel that Oscar Wilde made famous by dying in it. You can, if well-heeled enough, sleep in the very room. The specialty of the restaurant is Steak de la Oscar Wilde, which is what he ate on the night he died.
Now Mick Jagger is not Oscar Wilde. And if Chuck Berry is, it was Mick Jagger who stayed at L'Hotel for a week or so, spending time while Bianca was expecting the last days of her expectancy. Bobby Keys was there too, just passing time on his way back to London to finish his album, just passing wasted through the lobby in his buffalo blanket jacket, just passin' through mistah . . .
"France is alright, as long as you can get out," Jagger said, competing with the Boulez being pumped over the bar's sound system. "Like I've been in France longer than I've ever stayed in England. There's fuck-all live music here, there's Jacques Brel and electronic music. Even the accordion players are dead."
Just last spring, Jagger wasn't sounding keen at all on an American tour. But the idle months in Antibes have made changes. "I think Mick Taylor wants to play on stage with somebody. I think he's a bit frustrated. We're not touring all the time: I don't want to tour all the time. So I don't know what he wants to do. And I'm not the only one talking about going to America. Mick does; Bill Wyman's gone for a vacation. Charlie, he's in the country with his sheep and horses, that's what he does. Gad, the houses are really a hell of a long way away. Takes you a long time to get there.
"Now I want to go to America and look around. Go to L.A. Maybe Texas. Nooooo Orleans. Then Florida. I really miss having things to do -- well, anyway . . . last winter there were all these sessions. A lot was going on. Now it's nothing. I guess you get what you put in. Like I can't be contributing to something if I'm not there, but even in the clubs, I don't know. Is it in America?
"Christ. Do you wanna drink? Where's a waiter? S'il vous plait! Hey, see voo play, y'all out there." He turns back to the interview. "We've not finished the album, we've just cut twenty tracks since July. Plus we've got about twenty-eight others."
That's all the Stones do all day now, make music in Keith's basement at his fabulous mansion on the Mediterranean Coast?
"Yeah. The studios are not that great. OK, but not really good. It's terrible. I don't like it. Like it's too hot in the summer. I can't hear anything down there. We cut some nice things, but we'll mix it at Island or someplace."
The waiter brought the wine. "I hate to talk about what we're doing anymore. Like the union in America is giving us such a hassle. The only way they find out what we're doing is through Rolling Stone. I'll have to ask your co-operation. I mean, we can't record in America. They've sent us warning letters and all that. They've never done that to anyone else. Last time we were there they tried to fine Leon Russell £5000 for writing an arrangement for us. Legally, English bands aren't supposed to record there, but they all do."
The American tour then?
"Yeah, we've had hundreds of ideas on how to do this tour. Like we were thinking of doing it in a caravan. In coaches and do all sorts of places we wouldn't normally get to. Like . . . the South. Or just go by bus for the first ten days to get it all together. Some areas. You can't cover the entire country in a Greyhound bus, not with a big show, you're just wasting your time. Somebody gets stuck in a restaurant and that's a draag.
"Or we thought of getting a regular back-up band. That's an old spade tradition. Say, keyboards, brass and chicks. Nine pieces maybe, so we can have four other singers as well as using the brass and chicks ourself. The Stones have already been in touch with the Memphis Horns. And there are four other singers who are really good. I like Stevie Wonder very much. I've always admired him. But, I don't know. Whether it's right or wrong, he's always playing in clubs. Well, not clubs, but . . . niteries. You know? Or there could be one or two people who've never been seen by white audiences. You could take Little Milton and Bobby Bland. Plus there could be some younger people as well. Get a -nicely balanced show."
But where do the Stones play?
"In most towns there's a large ballroom which holds 5-6000. Which I consider a large ballroom. Either we're going to play in a club with 500 people and actually play or we're going to play really big crowds. Playing to 5000 is really nonsensical; it's not intimate. I mean, the best I've ever played has been in a club, but I haven't done that in ages. So I really don't know what to do anymore, I've forgotten. I got into the thing very early on in how to play the big halls and I know how to do it. It's very exaggerated. Like, before public address-systems, politicians used to make very exaggerated gestures.
"We'll tour Japan before America. The Zeppelin were just there. I'm relying on them to tell me what to do, what not to do. [Snorts.] It's the only place in the world we haven't been. The only Record Market, as they say. Whatever that means. They got good amps there. I should imagine. Not to mention chicks in the bathhouses. It's a good excuse for me to stay around."
The waiter brought some more red wine, plus the bill. And L'Hotel is expensive. You know the kind of joint: Twenty dollar breakfasts and that. Thinking of money, how's Allen Klein?
"We tried to be nice about it, and friendly, for about a year now, eighteen months. I mean, I really hate lawsuits, but he won't . . . y'know. He was supposed to pay me a certain amount of money per annum and he hasn't for years. I mean, you can't go on asking people, so eventually we had to do it like this. It's not big business, it's just that I don't have much money. Really. In actual fact. He just got us into a terrific mess and he's not a very nice person. I don't think-he's genuine. Who cares? Allen Klein can jump in the East River for all I care, but he does owe me some money.
"Who cares? This new album is fucking mad. There's so many different tracks. It's very rock 'n' roll, y'know. I didn't want it to be like that. I'm the more experimental person in the group, you see I like to experiment. Not go over the same thing over and over. Since I've left England, I've had this thing I've wanted to do. I'm not against rock 'n' roll, but I really want to experiment."
Electronic music?
"Well that's the obvious thing to do, but I don't know if that's more valid than anything else. The real experiment is what you want to say. You can express a very freaky or experimental idea in a strict framework, or you can express a very trite, boring, oft-repeated idea within an experimental framework. I can go BLLLLEEEoomblom, plug in the old synthesizer, but that's a mite trite. That might be 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On.' Then y'see, you could have a whole new form.
"The new album's very rock 'n' roll and it's good. I think rock 'n' roll is getting a bit . . . I mean, I'm very bored with rock 'n' roll. The revival. Everyone knows what their roots are, but you've got to explore everywhere. You've got to explore the sky too."

CHRIS HODENFIELD (RS 94 - October 28, 1971)

Monsieur Jagger

Ensuite vient Mick : langue de bois le bonhomme, ou glissant comme une planche savonneuse si on préfère … Je préfère franchement ses entrechats et ses feulements sur scène ou gravés.
C’était dans Uncut ou Mojo il y a un an :
Invité à donner le pire défaut de son (ex ?) jumeau qui fêtait ses 60 ans, il a répondu au journaliste qu’il ne lui en citerai qu’un : Keith est loyal, très loyal, trop loyal. Loyal to a fault. La qualité prise en défaut ou le défaut qu’on consent à énoncer parce qu’issu d’une qualité. Ca doit être du petit point la conversation avec Sir Mick… Il a eu le temps de peaufiner tout ça, et de limer ses griffes…
Enfin le voici, de 1971 à nos jours…

Charlie - The Observer (supplément anglais au quotidien Guardian) - juillet 2000

Proper Charlie Charlie Watts has always marched to a different drum than the rest of the Rolling Stones. He has been happily married for 36 years, he had a drug habit when the others had quit, and a pathological fear of screaming girls. Now he has returned to his other first love, the drummers of the bebop era
Barbara Ellen Sunday July 9, 2000 The Observer

You'd be hard pressed to find anybody with a bad word to say about Charlie Watts. He's a Rolling Stone, of course - and so, by definition, a legend - but there's more to it than that. After all, Mick Jagger is a Rolling Stone and people queue up to say bad things about him.
Certainly, for a lot of drummers, Charlie Watts is the stick-wielding colossus by whom all others should be judged. I should know, I lived with a former drummer for years and had to sit through many a misty-eyed eulogy in the small hours. It was like a crash course in Charlie studies. Why Charlie was so talented. Why Charlie was such a class act. Why Charlie was so unassuming. Why Charlie was the undisputed God of backbeat. Hey, I wanted to scream (and sometimes did), screw Charlie, what about me? The 'Charlie effect' seems to carry through to people who have only the most glancing interest in the Stones. We might have a grudging soft spot for the ludicrous Mr Jagger. We might warm to charming, riff-crunching Keith Richards and his craz-eee sidekick Ronnie Wood. Some might even mourn the departure of Bill Wyman, who resigned in 1993, or, more pertinently, the death of Brian Jones, who drowned in his swimming pool in 1969, mere days after the official announcement that the Stones had sacked him.
Charlie's the one, though. Charlie's the Stone who is so universally well liked that he commands instant respect without even trying. I remember the Manic Street Preachers once telling me how they'd bumped into Charlie Watts briefly at a recording studio, and what a 'gentleman' he'd seemed. To put this small compliment into perspective, it should be noted that the Manic Street Preachers is a band so hard to impress, if Elvis Presley rose from the dead and wanted to jam with them, they'd tell him to bring his own beer. It all seems to boil down to a certain quality which is as rare as hen's teeth in the music business, but which Charlie Watts is perceived to have in abundance. In a word, decency. You've got to hand it to a 59-year-old man who's played with the world's most infamous rock'n'roll band for 38 years, and stayed happily married to his wife, Shirley, for 36 of them. A man who, moreover, remains resolutely determined not to take his elevated position too seriously.

'There's a lot more interesting people around than rock'n'roll bands,' Charlie Watts tells me in no uncertain terms, over a lazy pub lunch.

'There's this huge cult grown up around rock'n'roll, but I never saw it myself. I don't mean I never saw it going on, I mean I just didn't "get" it.'

And then, the drummer whose own rock'n'roll band inarguably rates among the most significant musical forces in global pan- cultural history, shifting literally hundreds of millions of records along the way, stares into his espresso, and ponders apparently without irony:

'What have we got to be so egotistical about?'

Charlie and I meet first at The Observer photographer's studio in a small street in Islington which my A-Z hasn't heard of. I have to bang on a couple of graffiti-strewn doors before I finally find it, and by then I'm 15 minutes late. This isn't good, I think, as I barge my way into the studio. Charlie Watts has always seemed so organised and precise. The other Stones might have spent the best part of their careers resembling dishevelled tarts in a rock-themed brothel, but not Charlie Watts. He could be the type to take offence at the late arrival of a journalist. I needn't have worried.

'I didn't even know you were late,' says Charlie, when we're introduced.

And with that, he gives one of his mellow grins, and trudges back to his stool for more photographs. Later, during the course of our conversation, Charlie Watts is to demonstrate again and again how important appearances are to him.
Marvin Gaye: 'The coolest-looking man - the epitome of a black American.' Elvin Jones: 'Beautiful!' Duke Ellington: 'Stylish.' Kenny Clarke: 'Chic, like Fred Astaire.' Zoe Ball: 'She's really ugly, isn't she?' That last one, muttered as a casual aside during our drive to the pub-restaurant, was clearly an aberration for Charlie.

He's definitely one for praising rather than denigrating, especially where his musical heroes are concerned.

'All the musicians I love look beautiful,' he says. 'The way a man looks as he plays, his style , is very important to me.'

Charlie himself makes a point of being nicely turned out. The day I meet him, his sharp blue suit speaks of timeless chic and East End betting shops. The eyes are gentle, the swept-back silver hair is thinning but hanging in there. Then there's those Slavic cheekbones, and the delicate, surprising body.
All the Stones are renowned for being shorter than you'd expect, but Charlie's slightness makes him seem shorter still. Right now, though, his body is rather less noteworthy than his body language.
Staring into the camera lens, Charlie manages to look both serene and agonised - like a small boy having a tooth pulled at the dentist, who's determined not to cry in front of his mother.

'I hate doing things like this,' he admits later. 'Interviews, videos, pictures, all of it. I'd prefer Keith to do it for me, but he can't really, can he?'

Seeing as Charlie is promoting his latest solo project a tribute album - honouring jazz drummers, put together with fellow aficionado Jim Keltner - Keith Richards' sudden appearance in the publicity schedule might indeed be surprising. It's Charlie who's had the lifelong love for jazz, and who's done various acclaimed tours and albums with his own Charlie Watts Quintet. All these years on, the drummer still seems totally besotted by the genre that bit him first, long before he'd even heard the name Rolling Stones. Nor could anyone dismiss this latest outing as a simple case of 'vanity publishing'. A second CD features diverse contemporary ambient-techno-drum'n'bass mixes by artists such as Coldcut and The Propellorheads. However, the main record is a muso bath of purist excellence put together with obvious taste and passion.

'I'd like it to sell,' says Charlie. 'Nobody ever brings a record out not wanting people to buy it. My wife doesn't like it, though,' he smiles.

'She prefers the Stones.'

And which does Charlie prefer?

'I love both,' he says instantly.
'With the jazz, it's great being onstage with such wonderful players, and with the Stones, it's great being up there with your friends. I stand firmly with my rock'n'roll band - though I have to say,' his eyes narrow thoughtfully,
'I have always considered the Stones to be a great blues band - rock'n'roll to me is Little Richard.'

We're sitting in the restaurant in the back of the pub. By now, Charlie has relaxed considerably. When we first came in, he'd sat, fidgeting, eyes averted, unable to make up his mind whether he wanted the interview to start or not.
Usually, when you hear that a world-famous celebrity is 'shy', you take it with a pinch of salt, but Charlie's reserve seems genuine. When he finally thaws, he is friendly and courteous to a fault, but initially, his paralysing shyness hangs between us like an exclamation mark. You wouldn't believe any other Stone, but you trust Charlie Watts when he tells you that he never enjoyed the female attention the band got in the early days.

'Girls chasing you down the street, screaming... horrible!' he says.

But Charlie, I say, isn't that supposed to be every man's dream?

'Maybe it is,' he shrugs. 'But I hated it. It was quite flattering, I suppose. And it's fantastic to play to audiences like that. For me, that was the whole point of being chased down the street... Playing the drums was all I was ever interested in. The rest of it made me cringe. The girls only really loved Mick, Brian and Keith anyway,' he continues sagely. 'Bill and I were older, and Bill looked it then. He looks much younger now.' Charlie cackles. 'Bill used to have this terrible Tony Curtis haircut - Keith does this great impression of it.'

The Stones themselves didn't seem to make much impression on Charlie in the very early days:
'I used to play with loads of bands, and the Stones were just another one. I thought they'd last three months, then a year, then three years, then I stopped counting.'

He remembers them travelling together in a small van:

'Me and Keith were in the back, on a ledge, under a blanket. Brian conned his way into the front on account of his asthma.'

Does he have any nostalgia for those years?

'No,' says Charlie. 'We tour very well now - first class and Rolls-Royces, and that's the only way to do it. Those were valuable times, though, because that's how you became a working band. And we still are. There's bigger gaps between work, but we're still a working band.'

Even when the Stones started to become a serious proposition, Charlie continued to consider them a blues band, and remained stubbornly resistant to the allure of rock'n'roll:

'To me, it was about as interesting as something like flower power,' he says.
His eyes twinkle wickedly: 'That's just me, though.'

Charlie Watts was born in 1941, the son of a British Rail lorry driver. He studied graphic design at Harrow Art College, then took a job in a West End advertising agency. Around this time, he started playing the drums for local acts, including Alexis Korner, and the Rolling Stones.
He also met his future wife, Shirley - an art student and sculptress. They married, and had one daughter, Seraphina, born in 1968. Still very much together, Charlie and Shirley now live on their 16th-century stud farm in Devon, along with numerous horses and rescued greyhounds. Seraphina adjusted very badly when the Watts first returned from tax exile in France and, by all accounts, became a bit of a wild child. She got expelled from Millfield public school for smoking pot, but has since calmed down, and become a mother.

'It's difficult to be a good father when you're away from home so much,' says Charlie sadly.
Recently, the Watts had to prosecute the husband-and-wife managers of their stud farm for fraudulent accounting. Apart from that, life Chez Charlie seems almost surreally idyllic. If the drummer reads at all, it's detective novels, or books on Hollywood in the 40s. His favourite music is jazz, or anything from Stevie Wonder to Stravinsky. The mood most likely to inspire him to put a record on is 'loneliness'.
'Not in a negative way,' says Charlie quickly. 'Just that feeling of being alone.' Solitude? 'Yes.'

When I ask Charlie if he would prefer to live in London to be more 'in the centre of things', he points out:
'It isn't the centre of things for me, and hasn't been for 30 years.'

Later, Charlie adds that London, along with America, is the place he feels least safe. Not that anywhere is totally safe these days for a rock star. The stabbing of Beatle George Harrison, last year, on his country estate in Henley- on-Thames, Oxfordshire, left Charlie very shaken. For those unfamiliar with the case, it was reported that Michael Abram broke into the house and stabbed Harrison, who fought him off with the help of his wife Olivia.
'But what George really went through was not in the papers,' says Charlie. 'I spoke to Ringo about a month after it happened and he told me exactly what went on, and it was horrific. George was stabbed about 40 times. It happened outside his bedroom on the landing. He would have been dead if he'd been lying in bed, he wouldn't have been able to fight. The papers did say that one wound punctured his lung, but a lot of the others were just as horrific. The man was slashing him everywhere. George's wife hit him again and again on the head with this brass lamp, but he just wouldn't stop. There was blood everywhere.'
Charlie shakes his head ruefully: 'I think George is still going through trauma,' he says. 'He's bound to - he's lived in that house for 30 years. It's just so shocking that it should happen to a guy who's so...' he gropes for the right word - 'inoffensive. George has never been nasty to anyone, he's only ever preached love and peace. He's not like John Lennon: he's never made statements or anything.' Charlie sighs, bemused. 'He's just a very nice guitar player.'

He doesn't say it but, going by the look on his face, Charlie obviously believes that anything that could happen to the bass player of the Beatles could also happen to the drummer of the Stones. Not that he's about to let it blight married bliss with Shirley. The Watts have long been considered to be among rock's most loving couples. While other Stones were busy going mad in the carnal and pharmaceutical sweetie shops of the 60s and 70s, Charlie was famous for retiring to his room to pine for his wife. Around this time, he developed a habit of drawing each bed he sleeps in on tour.
'It's a way of marking time,' he says. 'It's become such a fetish, I couldn't bear to miss one.'

Charlie's devotion to Mrs Watts doesn't show any sign of abating. Shirley told an interviewer not so long ago how Charlie still tells her he loves her every single day and never, ever criticises her. This is precisely the sort of story that makes even the most music-illiterate of people worship Charlie Watts. Was it love at first sight? Charlie considers for a moment, pushing back his silver hair.

'Well, it was obviously very sexual, and I suppose that's love as well. I just_' he hesitates, ' wanted her, I suppose. She was so funny and clever, and she had the most infectious laugh you'd ever heard. And I loved the world she was in, the world of art and sculpting. I just admired Shirley very, very much.' He smiles. 'I still do.'

Shirley was the main reason Charlie cites for coming back from the brink in the mid-80s when, inexplicably, he decided to go off the rails just as the other Stones were starting to calm down. Today, Charlie has a coffee, while I have a red wine. He hasn't drunk, smoked, or taken drugs for 15 years, and dismisses the period when he suddenly started overindulging as 'a mid-life thing, it must have been'. One thing's for sure, Charlie wasn't short of bad influences.
Many of his jazz heroes, including Charlie Parker, succumbed to drugs, and the Rolling Stones entourage was famously packed solid with 24/7 party people. Charlie's personal slide started with drinking too much.

'Probably a normal day's quota for most people, but too much for me. Then it became regular.'

From there, Charlie went on to booze, amphetamines and heroin. His daughter would look at him most mornings and declare he reminded her of Dracula. Shirley was in despair and on the verge of leaving. It lasted for about two years. That's quite a long time to be_ I hesitate, wondering how to politely finish the sentence.

'That out of it?' says Charlie helpfully. I tell him I could imagine him boozing, but I couldn't imagine him getting involved with heroin. 'Well, I did,' says Charlie. 'Very easily. And drugs are very hard to give up. For me, anyway. I didn't even take that many. I wasn't that badly affected, I wasn't a junkie, but giving up drugs was very, very hard. Much, much harder than the rest of it.'

The turning point came when he broke his ankle. 'I was drunk,' says Charlie. 'I slipped down the steps when I was in the cellar getting a bottle of wine. I happened to be booked for a jazz show at Ronnie Scott's in six weeks' time, and it really brought it home to me how far down I'd gone. I just stopped everything - drinking, smoking, taking drugs, everything, all at once. I just thought, enough is enough .'

The Stones have had other troubles in recent times. In 1998, they were universally castigated as 'greedy' for axeing the British leg of their last 'Bridges To Babylon' tour, to avoid an unexpected £10m tax bill brought about by a new budget. The Stones played the dates the following year, but the damage was done.

'We didn't cancel that tour,' says Charlie, exasperated. 'They moved the goalposts, and we moved them again.'
He's drily cynical about why people persist in wanting to see the Stones play live after all these years. 'Maybe they're hoping we'll fall over at long last. It would be an occasion, wouldn't it?'

There's also the fact that, offstage as well as on, the Stones continue to put on a good show. There was Mick Jagger's divorce from Jerry Hall, and his much-publicised love child with Brazilian model Luciana Morad.

'Mick's a very strict, very good father,' reveals Charlie. 'Very much "Do As I Say, Not As I Do".'

Then, a week or so after I talk with Charlie, Ron Wood is in the papers, having checked into the Priory for the usual 'tired and emotional' problems. However, when Charlie and I speak, all is calm in the Stones' camp, and the drummer talks warmly of his bandmates, commending Jagger's 'zest for life' and Wood's 'lovely, fun-loving' nature.

'Keith is the most interesting, the most different of us all, though,' says Charlie. 'He's a man of vision, and one of the few people who hasn't really changed over the years. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he's always Keith. He'll be in his room and all the stuff that makes him Keith will be there. The music's going, the wine's there, his guitar's there, and he'll be sitting in the middle of it all like some wonderful sultan. ' Charlie beams. 'It's fantastic. It's not a new thing, it's the way he's always been.'

And what about Brian Jones, I ask, do you ever think of him?
'No,' says Charlie quite sharply, and his face clouds over. 'Well, actually, yeah,' he says, after a second's pause.
'Of course I think about Brian. Now and again, I'll see something which reminds me of him and I'll remember the laughs we used to have. He was a bit fey, though,' says Charlie pointedly. 'And he could be very cruel, contrary to his angelic looks. He was a terror with girls. People could be dropped in the most awful way. I always used to wonder how he coped with the worry of it all, the babies and whatever. He obviously didn't even think of it. 'Brian had this horrible streak,' says Charlie. 'John Lennon had it, too. John could be one of the nicest, most hilarious people you'd ever meet, but he could also be a cruel bugger. He used this terrible rapier-like wit to kick people down. Obviously, a very talented man, but, to me, John was just like everybody I went to art school with - funny, flippant, but he'd walk over anybody who got in his way.' Charlie sighs. 'Not the nicest person in the world, and Brian was the same.'
What about the conspiracy theories that Brian was murdered? Charlie says: 'All that about Brian being knocked off is rubbish. I know a lot of people would have willingly knocked him off, but it didn't happen. Brian was just very weak. He was asthmatic, unhealthy. The stuff he took - uppers, downers, leapers, bleepers, whatever they were too strong for his body. He couldn't take it. And his swimming pool was about 70 degrees or something - it used to shimmer with heat. You'd drive down there on a spring morning and the heat would be rising off the top. And he got in there, and I suppose it was like getting into a warm bath, and he fell asleep. And_ that's how he died.'

Charlie's voice trails away. He suddenly looks very tired. Are you surprised, I ask, by the number of casualties there have been in and around the Stones' camp over the years?

'Surprised?' says Charlie wryly, looking me straight in the eye. 'I'm amazed there haven't been more.'

It's time for Charlie to leave. He has to go and record a Radio 2 interview with his old friend, jazz maestro George Melly. 'Good!' cries Charlie, with blatant relief, when I click the tape recorder off. I slip it quickly into my bag to save him the displeasure of looking at what is so obviously an instrument of torture.

'Are you coming along?' asks Charlie, smiling. 'George is hilarious. Very jazz !'

Charlie is right. Melly is hilarious and probably 'very jazz' too, whatever that means.
Charlie certainly seems to relax beautifully when he's with Melly - the pressure is off, and all he has to think about are his favourite jazz records. When we all go to the bar after the radio show, I initially sit slightly apart from Melly and Charlie, thinking they'll appreciate some privacy. Charlie will have none of it.
'Come and sit here!' he orders, thumping the table, all kind bossiness. I switch the tape recorder on a couple more times, when the conversation turns interesting, but Charlie looks so pained, it's soon banished to my bag for good. Then the change in Charlie Watts is quite amazing. He loses his haunted, wary look, and becomes playful, fun, delighted when Melly teases me, pretending to be entranced by my 'ideal' colouring:
'A raven bleeding to death in snow,' booms Melly.
'What do you think, Charlie?'
He just chuckles merrily, and gives me and the rest of the room a dazzling smile that is a wink, a grin, and a leap for joy combined.
I'm Charlie Watts, the smile seems to be saying - I'm perfectly relaxed, totally 'jazz'.

• Charlie Watts's album, Charlie Watts/Jim Keltner Project, is released on Monday by Virgin

Charlie - Télérama - Décembre 1998

"I hated the 60s and 70s"
By Frederic Lecomte Télérama,
December 2, 1998 (translated from French)

(snip short intro)

FL : For the last 10 years, you are the one who gets the biggest ovations each time Mick Jagger introduces the Stones members on stage. How do you explain this popularity ?

CW : It is because of the way Mick introduces me, isn't it ? (laughs) These ovations are a huge compliment, but I certainly won't try to explain this popularity. When you start thinking about those things, you get crazy.

FL : No Security is distinct from other live albums, as it includes some songs for the first time in a live version.

CW : So ? Mick and Keith wrote about five or six hundred songs since the Stones started. We naturally draw on this vast repertoire. In a concert, there is always a list of songs the audience always ask for. If you go to a Ringo Starr's concert, you inevitably wish to hear him sing Yellow Submarine... That being said, we regularly try to play songs we rarely play. Hence the presence of Sister Morphine, Memory Motel, or The Last Time.

FL : How would you define your position inside the Rolling Stones ?

CW :[long silence] My position ? Like any drummer : to settle the rythm, to keep musical cohesion between each instrument, and to provide a platfrom for the others.

FL : Many people consider you as the eminence grise of the group, the "wise" stone...

CW : Wide, I don't believe. Better say upright. But I never look at myself, and refuse to analyze the way people receive me. It has no importance.

FL : What is your relation with two personnalities as strong as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ?

CW : No one is closer to me, and I hope this feeling is mutual. Their personnalities are what they are. You must live inside their spheres, follow their directions.

FL : Do you like tours as much as you did 20 or 30 years ago ?

CW : I am unable to remember anything in the 60s or the 70s ! All those years spent on the road finally form a long and unique show. From our last tour, I remember only a neverending line of suitcases and a crowd of people telling me all the time where I have to go and what I have to do.

FL : And your very first concert with the Rolling Stones, at the Flamingo Jazz Club in London, on 01/14/63 ?


CW : No memory at all, except that I had played in this place before I was with the Rolling StoneS. To remember vaguely some event from the past, Keith, or formerly Bill Wyman, had to tell me about it. On the other hand, I remember very well our first english tour, in 1963, in cinemas and small theaters, when we shared the bill with the Everly Brothers, Bo Diddley and Little Richard. It was wonderful.

FL : For thirty years, you combined your drumming with Bill Wyman's bass. Did his leaving in 1993 change the rythm pattern of the group ?

CW : I miss him terribly, even if we are still in touch by phone. But on stage, Darryl Jones is such a gifted musician, and such a kind person that it is very easy for me to play and tour with him. If we had nowadays a bassist with a too strong personnality, it would be unbearable. On tour, you have to share each moment, 24 hours a day, to give a 2 hours show. And about determining if Darryl Jones is a better or worse bassist than Bill Wyman is to me a stupid issue. Each of dule Ellington's Orchestra lineup was unique and magic, but no individual musician was irreplaceable. The Rolling Stones are Mick and Keith. The strength and the essence of the group depend on their happiness and their longevity. It doesn't matter who plays bass or drums with them : as long as they will be together, the Stones will exist.

FL : What is the drums part you are the most proud of ?

CW : Maybe Not Fade Away, on the Stripped album. But it is hard to say, because I never listen to the Rolling Stones albums.

FL : In his book, Stone Alone, Bill Wyman says you are the only one in the group who never took any drugs in the 60s and who always remained faith full to your wife. What did motivate this attitude ?

CW : Having always loved my wife, unconditionnaly ! Actually, I hated the 60s and the 70s. I found the music awful in this era, and even if I was in the heart of the action, I never saw a revolution. Only the birth of my daughter made me happy. All these little girls screaming during our concerts, and the "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll" supposed way of life always seemed ridiculous and unhealthy to me. About dope, I caught back during the 80s, taking tons of powder. I was the first one surprised, my wife did not understand, but the most amazed was Keith Richards ! I had no taste for anything anymore, I was dispising myself. I had gone adrift at more than 40...

FL : Had you imagined having such a long career in music ?

CW : Not at all. Before being in the Stones, I used to back different artists as oportunities happened. In the very early 60s, Alexis Korner had asked me to play drums in the Blues Incorporated. Meeting him was determining : that day I joined my first group and met my wife ! Alexis was a true catalyst, habing a sixth sense for tracking down exceptionnal musicians, like Jack Bruce, for example, incredibly gifted bassist, singer, and composer. At that time, I had never heard the sound of a harmonica, and for me, Blues was when Charlie Parker was sad. And at that moment, Cyril Davies, a singer and harmonicist, arrives from Chicago and gets in the group. I had no idea about what was happening... The whole english musical scene was exploding thanks to Alexis Korner's visions. That was when a little guy left his Cheltenham countryside, a guitar under one arm and a bootleneck on a finger. His name is Brian jones and the first thing he does when he arrives in London going to see the Blues Incorporated in concert. This is how I met him. Around Alexis also was a guy named Mick Jagger, who sometimes climbed onstage to sing a song while his pal Keith Richards was watching...

FL : You say you don't like rock'n'roll, never listen to the Stones records... wouldn't you have prefered remaining an advertising designer ?

CW : No ! I always wanted to be a drummer, but I was convinced I would never be able to. My dream was to become Kenny Clarke and to play for the great masters of Jazz. But that's a different kettle of fish ! When I was 17, in 1958, I went to Paris to see my idol play with Bud Powell, a piano genius, and Pierre Michelot, a bassist who had played with Django Rheinhardt. This world was my universe, and I loved these musicians. In the Paris of the 1950s, jazz was not alusic reserved for black people, as it was in the USA, and this is why your capital was at that time the ultimate place for jazz musicians. I remember a very romantic ambiance, I remember meeting Kenny Clarke in St Germain des Pres, a flamboyant man who lived a true romance with Paris. Myself, I had the feeling to live in a Fred Astaire film.

FL : The Rolling Stones played blues, rock, rythm'n'blues, soul music, disco, reggae, but never any jazz. Did you ever suggest to try it ?

CW : No, I just advised Mick to invite Joshua Redman to come to play on Waiting
On A Friend during our last tour. I also suggested to invite Miles Davis on some of our song, but unfortunately, it didn't happen... The only jazz musician Mick invited on his own idea was Sonny Rollins, during the studio session, in Paris, for Waiting On A Friend, in 1980. Sincerely, I didn't think Rollins would accept. But he did it, and what's best, he loved it ! It had been enchanting to be able to play with the one who I think is the last giant of saxophone. As a simple listener, I always prefered Sonny Rollins to John Coltrane, whose success did shade many sax players.

FL : After always playing in gigantic places like the Stade de France, don't you sometimes have the impression to be more of a funfair beast in a giant rock"n"roll circus ?

CW : I feel more like a little mouse. It is a big show, and my most important part is to make so that Keith gets his share of applause. And those giant stadiums really are not made for music. All this, after all, is just comedy.

Thanks to Thierry who translated this text ! :) All rights reserved for respective copyright holders. Any content will be removed at the request of any copyright holder.

du fond de l'internet au fond de mon micro

Les Stones s'expriment autrement que par riffs et feulements interposés, et c'est parfois pas mal du tout. On en a une autre vision en tous cas, et je préfère encore leurs réponses évasives (mais en direct) aux propos qu'on leur prête, archi-déformés par la légende, le marketing et les projections et fantasmagories personnelles de tout un chacun...

Principalement issues de la presse anglo-saxonne, où ils sont interviewés parfois sur plusieurs jours (le journaliste passant quelques jours avec eux, s'il a un peu de chance), ces moments de rock ont été pêchés le plus souvent sur le web... Il sera temps de voir plus tard si on y met aussi quelques scan d'articles qu'on a sur papier...

Honneur à Charlie, qu'on a pas attendu de savoir malade pour aimer. Il parle peu à la presse, il déteste l'exercice, on le sait. J'ai deux interviews de lui, l'une de Télérama (c'est en anglais, c'est à dire que c'est une traduc de français traduit de l'anglais...), l'autre de The Observer. Toutes les deux de la même période, aux alentours de la fin d'un certain siècle.