Charlie Watts Biography

For almost 60 years Charlie Watts was the drummer for the ageless rock band The Rolling Stones.

Watts was born in London and became fascinated with jazz stars like John Coltrane as he entered his teens.

He left school at age 16, studied at the Harrow School of Art, and began working at an ad agency while playing drums with various blues and rock bands around London.

In 1963 he joined a new band, The Rolling Stones, which included guitarists Brian Jones and Keith Richards, bassist Bill Wyman, and lead singer Mick Jagger.

It didn’t take long for the band to click: the next year they hit the charts with “It’s All Over Now.”

In 1965 they unleashed the megahit single “Satisfaction,” which had all of the band’s soon-to-be trademarks: brilliantly brash guitar lines, anti-establishment attitude, lyrics crooned by Jagger with lurid delight and Watt’s driving beat.

While Jagger and Richards provided the bad-boy antics, Charlie Watts settled in for a long run as the band’s bemused and rock-steady percussive force through hit albums like Beggars Banquet (1968), Sticky Fingers (1971), Exile on Main Street (1972), Some Girls (1978), Steel Wheels (1989), Bridges to Babylon (1997) and A Bigger Bang (2005).

In later years he returned to his jazz roots, leading a series of well-respected jazz bands and recording his own albums including Tribute to Charlie Parker (1992), Long Ago and Far Away (1996) and The Magic of Boogie Woogie (2010).