Keith Richards, Mick Jagger lead tributes to Charlie Watts

The Rolling Stones by Steven Klein

Charlie Watts’ passing was publicly announced yesterday.

The brief, understated tributes left by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger to Charlie Watts are the perfect eulogies to a man who, for six decades, had quietly pinned the success of The Rolling Stones together.

Finally solving a problem position in the pair’s fledgling blues band, Watts’ jazz style and unique backbeat would prove to be the much needed glue as that group moved from those sixties London clubs to the centre of the British invasion, and later the stadium rock boom of the 1970s, with upheaval, loss and even tragedy along the way; throughout it all, his expression always unmoved, his cynicism for fame and rock star cliche unchanged.

Keith Richards in particular need say no more, having spent most of his professional life telling anyone who would listen about the impact Watts had on the Stones and his own progression as a rock musician.

In his autobiography Life – whose index features more references to Watts than pretty much anyone else – Richards sums him up as being, ‘Up there with the very best’.

Never have those words rung truer.