Charlie Watts et al. – "Night Train" (2019)

 Soon after learning that Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts had died on August 24, I decided to do a series of 2 or 3 lines posts looking back on his career.

I sent e-mails to a number of friends and acquaintances who I thought might have something interesting to say about Watts or the Stones that I might be able to turn into a post.  Any topic that was somewhat Stones-related would be fine, I told them, and it didn’t have to be long – even a few paragraphs would be enough.  I would take it from there.

Charlie Watts in 2019

Almost all of them agreed to send me something.  I didn’t nag them as the dates I had reserved for my tribute-to-Charlie series of posts approached – I didn’t want to be a noodge.

So how many guest contributions did I receive?  Exactly zero.  

In other words, nada . . . zilch . . . zip . . . diddly-squat . . . bupkis . . . bugger-all.  (I could go on, but you get the idea.)

No matter.  What I have to say is likely much more interesting than anything that my guest posters would have come up with.

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It’s common for rock ’n’ roll drummers to play a steady stream of eighth notes on the hi-hat and strike the snare drum on the “backbeats” – that is, on the second and fourth beats of each 4/4 measure.  (Most drummers will also hit the bass drum on the first and third beats.)

But Charlie Watts rarely hit the hi-hat and snare at the same time.  From the February 1990 issue of Modern Drummer magazine:

One thing [famous session drummer Jim] Keltner pointed out to Charlie was his habit of coming off the hi-hat with his right hand whenever he would hit a backbeat with his left. “I was never conscious of it until Jim mentioned it,” Charlie comments. “But I do it a lot. I’ve noticed it on videos, and it actually annoys me to see myself doing it. It really comes, I think, from coming down heavy on the backbeat. I don’t use that [matched] grip that Ringo uses. I did for a few years, because I thought it was popular.  But then I was told to go back to the other way by Ian Stewart, who used to set up my drums.  He virtually ordered me to go back to what he called ‘the proper way of playing'” Charlie laughs.  “So I went back to the military grip, and I really do prefer it, but because of the amount you ride on the hi-hat, I suppose I got into the habit of pulling the other stick out of the way to get a louder sound.”

Click here to see an interview of Keltner, who says the first drummer to use this technique was Levon Helm of The Band.

Jim Keltner and Charlie Watts

Click here to see a video of the Stones playing “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”  Note how Watts hits the hi-hat with his right hand, then pulls it back each time he hits the snare with his left hand.

Click here to watch a video of a drum instructor demonstrating Watts’s technique.  The drummer in the video speculates that Watts may have begun to play this way when the Stones got louder, and he needed to strike the snare louder to really accentuate the backbeats – which required him to pull his hi-hat hand back so he had space to raise his left hand higher to hit the snare drum harder.

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Watts used very different drumming techniques when he played jazz, of course.

Click here to watch a 2019 video of the 77-year-old Watts playing Duke Ellington’s “Night Train” along with saxophonist Scott Hamilton, pianist John Pearce, and bassist Dave Green – who was a childhood chum of Charlie.