{"id":79333,"date":"2021-08-25T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-25T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=79333"},"modified":"2021-08-25T05:27:32","modified_gmt":"2021-08-25T10:27:32","slug":"the-big-beat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=79333","title":{"rendered":"The Big Beat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Charlie Watts, one of the most estimable drummers and reluctant superstars in rock and roll history, dead at age 80:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>A jazz aficionado at heart, Watts helped them become, with The Beatles, one of the bands who took rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll to the masses in the 60s with classics like (I Can&#8217;t Get No) Satisfaction, Jumpin&#8217; Jack Flash, Get Off My Cloud and Sympathy for the Devil.<\/p><p>Other tributes came from The Sex Pistols&#8217;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GlenMatlock\/status\/1430209683579617284\">Glen Matlock, who said<\/a>\u00a0he &#8220;kept the beat to the soundtrack of our lives&#8221;, while\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nilerodgers\/status\/1430210103580499974\">Nile Rodgers wrote<\/a>: &#8220;Thanks for all the great music.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>To me, Watts was always the prototype for the likes of Max Weinberg &#8211; the guy who keeps the insanity of a kinetic stage show firmly anchored. \u00a0Even during my years of ambivalence about the Stones (I was a Who and Kinks guy), Watts mastery of his craft stood out. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/rolling-stones-charlie-watts-died-c9551b21e2806b679bd0eeec0bb4ef2b\">Several crafts, really<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Jagger and Richards could only envy his indifference to stardom and relative contentment in his private life, when he was as happy tending to the horses on his estate in rural Devon, England, as he ever was on stage at a sold-out stadium.<\/p><p>Watts did on occasion have an impact beyond drumming. He worked with Jagger on the ever more spectacular stage designs for the group\u2019s tours. He also provided illustrations for the back cover of the acclaimed 1967 album \u201cBetween the Buttons\u201d and inadvertently gave the record its title. When he asked Stones manager Andrew Oldham what the album would be called, Oldham responded \u201cBetween the buttons,\u201d meaning undecided. Watts thought that \u201cBetween the Buttons\u201d was the actual name and included it in his artwork.<\/p><p>To the world, he was a rock star. But Watts often said that the actual experience was draining and unpleasant, and even frightening. \u201cGirls chasing you down the street, screaming&#8230;horrible!&#8230; I hated it,\u201d he told The Guardian newspaper in an interview. In another interview, he described the drumming life as a \u201ccross between being an athlete and a total nervous wreck.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>And it occurs to me that as that entire generation of rock stars &#8211; McCartney, Starr, Jagger, Richard, Ian Hunter, Ron Wood, and on and on &#8211; slide into their eighties, the carnage is going to get pretty intense, one of these days. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charlie Watts, one of the most estimable drummers and reluctant superstars in rock and roll history, dead at age 80: A jazz aficionado at heart, Watts helped them become, with The Beatles, one of the bands who took rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll to the masses in the 60s with classics like (I Can&#8217;t Get No) Satisfaction, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoriam","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79334,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79333\/revisions\/79334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}