Post by Gazza on Feb 17th, 2010 at 4:02pm
Exclusive Interview with Rolling Stones Drummer Charlie Watts
The reclusive skinsman on personal style, drunken injuries, and the need to bogart Mick's cell phone.
By Jeff Gordinier
March 2010 Issue
Details: The Rolling Stones' 1972 epic Exile on Main St. is getting the special-reissue treatment this spring. Do you think the album would sound the way it does if it hadn't been recorded during an infamous blur of debauched days on the French Riviera?
Charlie Watts: They weren't very debauched for me. I mean, I was just there. I don't know, man—that's like saying would Charlie Parker be as great as he was without heroin or drink? I don't know. Would he be a better player if he'd never gone to nightclubs in Kansas City as a boy and wanted that life? I don't know.
Details: I've always felt as though Exile represents the actual sound of the rock-and-roll lifestyle being taken to the extreme.
Charlie Watts: You're talking to the wrong person for that. It was around me all the time, but I was not really that involved in that side of it, you know? I mean, I lived with Keith, but I used to sit and play and then I'd go to bed.
Details: Do you mind if I ask what you're listening to there at home? It sounds like Bach . . .
Charlie Watts: It is. At my age, I put the radio on most of the time, and it's on a station called Radio 3, which is terribly boring. They have opera from the Met on Saturday, which I make sure I miss, because I can't stand opera. But generally I have this station on. I didn't know you could hear it. Sorry.
Details: Oh, I don't mind. It's a lovely backdrop for our conversation . . .
Charlie Watts: Yeah. About debauchery.
Details: Speaking of which, I came across a mention of your going to catch a London performance by the great jazz singer and trumpet player Chet Baker in the 1980s. Obviously Baker was alive at that point, but probably only barely so.
Charlie Watts: He died soon after that. I saw him at Ronnie Scott's two nights running. He was bloody awful the first night, and fantastic the second. With live music, it can be like that. Sometimes it can be fascinating to see people in their awful state. There is a thing about musicians who are, shall we say, not very well. You know, it's seeing people who are really on the edge of it. And if it works, it's quite fascinating, really.
Details: How did you keep that deterioration from happening in your life? You've been married to the same woman for 45 years, and you've been a model of dignified restraint for decades.
Charlie Watts: I had a pretty bad midlife crisis I went through. But I have a phobia of needles, so I could not exactly be a junkie. Even now, I am awful if I have to have injections. So I could not sit and do it to myself, like I've seen other people do. I mean, I have taken drugs that were a waste of money, because I didn't do it properly and I wasn't interested, either. But you know, that's growing up, isn't it?
Details: What brought about your midlife crisis?
Charlie Watts: I don't know. Who knows—I think that's why they call it that, don't they? I suddenly went—I had a panic that I was missing everything, which was unlike me. And the more unlike me I got, the more unlike me I got, if you follow what I mean. And drugs can do that very quickly to you. Drinking can. And when you do both, particularly drugs, you become somebody else. Ask any husband or wife of a drug addict. If you're a dabbler, like I was, you become another person very quickly.
Details: What brought the crisis to a close?
Charlie Watts: I was booked to appear at Ronnie Scott's and I broke my ankle drunk and I just said, "That's it." I stopped everything—drinking, smoking, everything.
Details: Details is a men's style magazine, so . . .
Charlie Watts: Well, you have a tough time now. There isn't a great deal of style going around in this day and age.
Details: What happened to it?
Charlie Watts: I think people can't be bothered. If you really want to get into it, you need the time, you need a certain amount of money, and you have to be bothered. I don't mean dressing up. Just a T-shirt and a pair of jeans are fabulous, if it's the right T-shirt and the right pair of jeans. But it's certainly not a thing that people bother with now—you've only got to look at 90 percent of film stars. I mean, they look dreadful when they're not on the red carpet.
Details: I get the impression that you're a man who might have a favorite tailor on Savile Row.
Charlie Watts: I've two. I've one I've been going to for—well, he's dead now, but Mick introduced me to Tommy Nutter. Two people that used to work there, I stayed with, at Chittleborough & Morgan in Savile Row, and Huntsman in Savile Row. I love going into any tailors—my tailors, particularly, because I know them—and I spend the morning talking about nothing and looking at fabric, and then I choose something to be made up.
Details: How many suits do you estimate you have?
Charlie Watts: I have no idea. I have an awful lot. I do. It's one of the luxuries of my days, choosing what to wear. Sometimes it's nice, and sometimes my wife will say, "I'm not going out with you in that." But it's one of the joys that I'll have. I have a lot of shoes, and I'll choose a pair of shoes—for me, it's fun. Now most people can't be bothered, you see. But I suppose that was true in the thirties—not everyone was Fred Astaire, were they?
Details: Sadly, no. When you wake up in the morning, do you devote time to, say, shining your shoes?
Charlie Watts: My shoemaker tells me I don't polish them enough.
Details: You have a shoemaker?
Charlie Watts: In London. It's the name of a very beautiful shoemaker, George Cleverly, and he's no longer with us, but his apprentices have started a shop. Do you come to London? It's on Royal Arcade, off of Bond Street. Lovely.
Details: How crucial was visual style to the impact of the Stones?
Charlie Watts: Keith has had a style of his own all his life. I suppose everybody looks good at 40—there was a period there where he used to look fantastic in the maddest stuff. It was a terrible period for me, because I hated all those Afghani belts and all that, but they looked great on Keith. He used to look like an Afghan warrior. And Mick's great at getting his stuff together on stage. He has the most incredible outfits—he's like Nijinsky.
Details: When the Rolling Stones recruited you in the early 1960s, you were working as a graphic designer at an advertising agency. What was your work like there?
Charlie Watts: I was very lucky because I went to a very good agency that just employed some of the best, best American designers. A guy who was with us, who was a big influence—and I still see him now in New York—is a man called Bob Gill. Bob brought all these people over, and it was so exciting working with him. It's still exciting to see him now. We would go to lectures with another guy that came over, Robert Brownjohn, he's the one who did—I forgot the name of the record. You know, the one with the cake on it . . .
Details: Let It Bleed.
Charlie Watts: Yeah. He did the cover of that. That's Brownjohn. Brownjohn was a fantastically hip American—we all wanted to be like this and play in jazz clubs. And Bob was another one, and he brought over a crowd of New Yorkers with him. I used to work in the bullpen, they called it. I used to do lettering and things like that. I very quickly realized what a bloody lie it all was—so I just sort of slowly got disillusioned. Not with Bob or with graphic design. I loved that. But I didn't like advertising, and I'm still not very good at self-promotion.
Details: It could be said that you've spent decades sitting in a place where you've got a view of Mick Jagger's ass.
Charlie Watts: Yeah, I have. He's fantastic live, isn't he? He's incredible with an audience. For me there's only ever been three people who were that good live. James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Mick. They're mesmerizing. I mean, Mick—people look at him. They always have done, even when we were kids. They always looked at him. Especially on stage. I would hate it.
Details: You would hate it?
Charlie Watts: Oh, yeah. I don't mind doing something up there. But standing there like that, no, I hate it. That's why he loves to get me to—you know when I walk to the front to say something? Oh, Mick loves that, because he knows I hate it.
Details: He's torturing you.
Charlie Watts: Yeah. And he knows that. It's awful.
Details: I was doing some research on YouTube . . .
Charlie Watts: Oh, don't do that. I don't have a—what do you call it?—machine thing . . .
Details: A computer?
Charlie Watts: No. I don't have a mobile phone, either.
Details: Why not?
Charlie Watts: Well, (a) I don't need one. And (b) I've got no interest, really. I mean, I must admit I'm a bit of a charlatan when it comes to the mobile, because I'll often say—to Mick, for example—"Can I borrow your phone?" But I don't actually possess one of my own. Nor does Keith, by the way, who doesn't use a telephone at all. Very rarely.
Details: How does anyone find him?
Charlie Watts: He very rarely rings anyone. He faxes people. He writes the best faxes in the world, but he's not a telephone man.
Details: Why are they the best faxes in the world?
Charlie Watts: Oh, they're incredible. He says everything in about two lines.
Details: He's just funny?
Charlie Watts: Oh, yeah. He has an incredible sense of how to turn a phrase. He's absolutely brilliant. He has this amazing quick one-liner thing—and is an amazingly perceptive guy as well.
Details: You seem to get along well with those guys, and yet there are ongoing rumors that you're thinking of leaving the Stones . . .
Charlie Watts: I've always thought of leaving.
Details: You've always thought of leaving?
Charlie Watts: No—I don't know where they came from. I don't know why they picked on me. And why would I want to leave? We're not doing anything. [Laughs] What am I leaving? Do you know what I mean?
Details: Are you ever tempted to bolt?
Charlie Watts: No. It's a bit late for all that. I mean, we're going to stop anyway, one day, do you know what I mean? It's the sort of thing I should've done 30 years ago, if I meant to. But I never meant to. And why would I leave a thing that I've worked nearly all my life to help create?
Details: Maybe the rumors emerge because you're so private and press-shy.
Charlie Watts: For years I never spoke to anyone in the press or anything. Years.
Details: Really?
Charlie Watts: Oh, yeah. Because I got fed up with it in the mid-sixties, I think. I never did this. For years. And then I became aware of the load that Mick and Keith were doing—you know, to promote records or anything we were doing. And I realized I was being a bit selfish.
Details: Well, I'm honored that you're speaking to me. I hope it hasn't been too unpleasant.
Charlie Watts: No, no, it hasn't! It's been long, though.
http://www.details.com/celebrities-entertainment/about/men-of-the-moment
The reclusive skinsman on personal style, drunken injuries, and the need to bogart Mick's cell phone.
By Jeff Gordinier
March 2010 Issue
Details: The Rolling Stones' 1972 epic Exile on Main St. is getting the special-reissue treatment this spring. Do you think the album would sound the way it does if it hadn't been recorded during an infamous blur of debauched days on the French Riviera?
Charlie Watts: They weren't very debauched for me. I mean, I was just there. I don't know, man—that's like saying would Charlie Parker be as great as he was without heroin or drink? I don't know. Would he be a better player if he'd never gone to nightclubs in Kansas City as a boy and wanted that life? I don't know.
Details: I've always felt as though Exile represents the actual sound of the rock-and-roll lifestyle being taken to the extreme.
Charlie Watts: You're talking to the wrong person for that. It was around me all the time, but I was not really that involved in that side of it, you know? I mean, I lived with Keith, but I used to sit and play and then I'd go to bed.
Details: Do you mind if I ask what you're listening to there at home? It sounds like Bach . . .
Charlie Watts: It is. At my age, I put the radio on most of the time, and it's on a station called Radio 3, which is terribly boring. They have opera from the Met on Saturday, which I make sure I miss, because I can't stand opera. But generally I have this station on. I didn't know you could hear it. Sorry.
Details: Oh, I don't mind. It's a lovely backdrop for our conversation . . .
Charlie Watts: Yeah. About debauchery.
Details: Speaking of which, I came across a mention of your going to catch a London performance by the great jazz singer and trumpet player Chet Baker in the 1980s. Obviously Baker was alive at that point, but probably only barely so.
Charlie Watts: He died soon after that. I saw him at Ronnie Scott's two nights running. He was bloody awful the first night, and fantastic the second. With live music, it can be like that. Sometimes it can be fascinating to see people in their awful state. There is a thing about musicians who are, shall we say, not very well. You know, it's seeing people who are really on the edge of it. And if it works, it's quite fascinating, really.
Details: How did you keep that deterioration from happening in your life? You've been married to the same woman for 45 years, and you've been a model of dignified restraint for decades.
Charlie Watts: I had a pretty bad midlife crisis I went through. But I have a phobia of needles, so I could not exactly be a junkie. Even now, I am awful if I have to have injections. So I could not sit and do it to myself, like I've seen other people do. I mean, I have taken drugs that were a waste of money, because I didn't do it properly and I wasn't interested, either. But you know, that's growing up, isn't it?
Details: What brought about your midlife crisis?
Charlie Watts: I don't know. Who knows—I think that's why they call it that, don't they? I suddenly went—I had a panic that I was missing everything, which was unlike me. And the more unlike me I got, the more unlike me I got, if you follow what I mean. And drugs can do that very quickly to you. Drinking can. And when you do both, particularly drugs, you become somebody else. Ask any husband or wife of a drug addict. If you're a dabbler, like I was, you become another person very quickly.
Details: What brought the crisis to a close?
Charlie Watts: I was booked to appear at Ronnie Scott's and I broke my ankle drunk and I just said, "That's it." I stopped everything—drinking, smoking, everything.
Details: Details is a men's style magazine, so . . .
Charlie Watts: Well, you have a tough time now. There isn't a great deal of style going around in this day and age.
Details: What happened to it?
Charlie Watts: I think people can't be bothered. If you really want to get into it, you need the time, you need a certain amount of money, and you have to be bothered. I don't mean dressing up. Just a T-shirt and a pair of jeans are fabulous, if it's the right T-shirt and the right pair of jeans. But it's certainly not a thing that people bother with now—you've only got to look at 90 percent of film stars. I mean, they look dreadful when they're not on the red carpet.
Details: I get the impression that you're a man who might have a favorite tailor on Savile Row.
Charlie Watts: I've two. I've one I've been going to for—well, he's dead now, but Mick introduced me to Tommy Nutter. Two people that used to work there, I stayed with, at Chittleborough & Morgan in Savile Row, and Huntsman in Savile Row. I love going into any tailors—my tailors, particularly, because I know them—and I spend the morning talking about nothing and looking at fabric, and then I choose something to be made up.
Details: How many suits do you estimate you have?
Charlie Watts: I have no idea. I have an awful lot. I do. It's one of the luxuries of my days, choosing what to wear. Sometimes it's nice, and sometimes my wife will say, "I'm not going out with you in that." But it's one of the joys that I'll have. I have a lot of shoes, and I'll choose a pair of shoes—for me, it's fun. Now most people can't be bothered, you see. But I suppose that was true in the thirties—not everyone was Fred Astaire, were they?
Details: Sadly, no. When you wake up in the morning, do you devote time to, say, shining your shoes?
Charlie Watts: My shoemaker tells me I don't polish them enough.
Details: You have a shoemaker?
Charlie Watts: In London. It's the name of a very beautiful shoemaker, George Cleverly, and he's no longer with us, but his apprentices have started a shop. Do you come to London? It's on Royal Arcade, off of Bond Street. Lovely.
Details: How crucial was visual style to the impact of the Stones?
Charlie Watts: Keith has had a style of his own all his life. I suppose everybody looks good at 40—there was a period there where he used to look fantastic in the maddest stuff. It was a terrible period for me, because I hated all those Afghani belts and all that, but they looked great on Keith. He used to look like an Afghan warrior. And Mick's great at getting his stuff together on stage. He has the most incredible outfits—he's like Nijinsky.
Details: When the Rolling Stones recruited you in the early 1960s, you were working as a graphic designer at an advertising agency. What was your work like there?
Charlie Watts: I was very lucky because I went to a very good agency that just employed some of the best, best American designers. A guy who was with us, who was a big influence—and I still see him now in New York—is a man called Bob Gill. Bob brought all these people over, and it was so exciting working with him. It's still exciting to see him now. We would go to lectures with another guy that came over, Robert Brownjohn, he's the one who did—I forgot the name of the record. You know, the one with the cake on it . . .
Details: Let It Bleed.
Charlie Watts: Yeah. He did the cover of that. That's Brownjohn. Brownjohn was a fantastically hip American—we all wanted to be like this and play in jazz clubs. And Bob was another one, and he brought over a crowd of New Yorkers with him. I used to work in the bullpen, they called it. I used to do lettering and things like that. I very quickly realized what a bloody lie it all was—so I just sort of slowly got disillusioned. Not with Bob or with graphic design. I loved that. But I didn't like advertising, and I'm still not very good at self-promotion.
Details: It could be said that you've spent decades sitting in a place where you've got a view of Mick Jagger's ass.
Charlie Watts: Yeah, I have. He's fantastic live, isn't he? He's incredible with an audience. For me there's only ever been three people who were that good live. James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Mick. They're mesmerizing. I mean, Mick—people look at him. They always have done, even when we were kids. They always looked at him. Especially on stage. I would hate it.
Details: You would hate it?
Charlie Watts: Oh, yeah. I don't mind doing something up there. But standing there like that, no, I hate it. That's why he loves to get me to—you know when I walk to the front to say something? Oh, Mick loves that, because he knows I hate it.
Details: He's torturing you.
Charlie Watts: Yeah. And he knows that. It's awful.
Details: I was doing some research on YouTube . . .
Charlie Watts: Oh, don't do that. I don't have a—what do you call it?—machine thing . . .
Details: A computer?
Charlie Watts: No. I don't have a mobile phone, either.
Details: Why not?
Charlie Watts: Well, (a) I don't need one. And (b) I've got no interest, really. I mean, I must admit I'm a bit of a charlatan when it comes to the mobile, because I'll often say—to Mick, for example—"Can I borrow your phone?" But I don't actually possess one of my own. Nor does Keith, by the way, who doesn't use a telephone at all. Very rarely.
Details: How does anyone find him?
Charlie Watts: He very rarely rings anyone. He faxes people. He writes the best faxes in the world, but he's not a telephone man.
Details: Why are they the best faxes in the world?
Charlie Watts: Oh, they're incredible. He says everything in about two lines.
Details: He's just funny?
Charlie Watts: Oh, yeah. He has an incredible sense of how to turn a phrase. He's absolutely brilliant. He has this amazing quick one-liner thing—and is an amazingly perceptive guy as well.
Details: You seem to get along well with those guys, and yet there are ongoing rumors that you're thinking of leaving the Stones . . .
Charlie Watts: I've always thought of leaving.
Details: You've always thought of leaving?
Charlie Watts: No—I don't know where they came from. I don't know why they picked on me. And why would I want to leave? We're not doing anything. [Laughs] What am I leaving? Do you know what I mean?
Details: Are you ever tempted to bolt?
Charlie Watts: No. It's a bit late for all that. I mean, we're going to stop anyway, one day, do you know what I mean? It's the sort of thing I should've done 30 years ago, if I meant to. But I never meant to. And why would I leave a thing that I've worked nearly all my life to help create?
Details: Maybe the rumors emerge because you're so private and press-shy.
Charlie Watts: For years I never spoke to anyone in the press or anything. Years.
Details: Really?
Charlie Watts: Oh, yeah. Because I got fed up with it in the mid-sixties, I think. I never did this. For years. And then I became aware of the load that Mick and Keith were doing—you know, to promote records or anything we were doing. And I realized I was being a bit selfish.
Details: Well, I'm honored that you're speaking to me. I hope it hasn't been too unpleasant.
Charlie Watts: No, no, it hasn't! It's been long, though.
http://www.details.com/celebrities-entertainment/about/men-of-the-moment
