The key to Led Zeppelin is that somebody is always playing a counter point. You can hear that. ~Jimmy Page
I know that Page was talking musically, but the phrase popped into my head as I began write a tribute to Charlie Watts who will celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary in October.
Through all those years of temptation, one guy stays true and faithful. That's sort of a "counter point" isn't it?
I always thought Charlie Watts' rock drumming was deceptively simple. It wasn't hard to copy. His jazz drumming is another story. You can tell he's an old school drummer by the way he holds his sticks: traditional grip.
Here's Johnny Depp narrating Keith Richards' version of the time Charlie Watts slugged Mick Jagger. [skip to 3min 43sec for the violent part, but watch the whole thing for context]:
Driving up the 5 freeway the other day, tapping out the drum part on the steering wheel on "It's only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)," I noticed the most remarkable thing about the song: The Ben Hur drum track! Watch this clip again:
Now check out this brief clip of the Stones' song I made; I counted out the syncopated snare beats to draw attention to them: Link
I had always assumed that Charlie Watts played drums on that track--wrong! It was Kenny Jones of The Faces, along with ex-bandmates Ronnie Wood and David Bowie! The incredible story is here. Here's what Charlie Watts says:
I didn't play drums on that, Kenny Jones did. I was in bed, sleeping at the time. They called Kenny Jones because he lived nearer to Richmond, it was done in a very beautiful house there that Ronnie used to own. Pete Townshend owns it now:
Keith Richards wrote about the making of the song in his autobiography, Life.
That's where I first heard "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll," in Ronnie's studio. It's Mick's song and he'd cut it with Bowie as a dub. Mick had gotten this idea and they started to rock on it. It was damn good. Shit, Mick, what are you doing it with Bowie for? Come on, we've got to steal that motherfucker back. And we did, without too much difficulty. Just the title by itself was so beautifully simple, even if it hadn't been a great song in its own right. I mean, come on. "It's only rock and roll but I like it."
You can hear traces of the original track embedded in the song. Listen here to the "quiet" part near the end--all the original players emerge: link
What about the Rolling Stones' big 50th anniversary tour? There are rumors that Keith Richards is fighting an unnamed illness. Here's what the man says:
'Basically, we’re just not ready,' says Richards. 'The Stones always really considered ’63 to be 50 years, because Charlie [Watts] didn’t actually join until January. We look upon 2012 as sort of the year of conception, but the birth is next year.' link
For reasons still not completely clear, The Kinks were banned from touring the US as a band from about 1965 to 1969. It had something to do with fighting too much and a labor dispute. Just imagine--4 years of not playing to sold out audiences in the US--all that unrealized concert revenue. Regret much?
Kinks fans have used this enforced isolation to describe why the band turned inwards and wrote particularly scathing material about British society in the mid to late 1960s. One of the songs, Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, was allegedly penned with Brian Jones in mind, though others have claimed the inspirational role. London was in full bloom in 1966 and it really doesn't matter who Ray Davies' Leopold Bloom really was.
Brian Jones, founding member of the (Rollin') Stones and charter member of the 27 Club, R.I.P.
