“Official”, says the subtitle of the biography of the “legendary drummer of the Rolling Stones”, and it is less of a sales argument than the strict truth. It is indeed the only duly approved book concerning Charlie Watts (1941-2021). The original British edition, published a year after the death of the celebrated, beloved and mourned musician, was more than authoritative: sovereignly validated, yes. We have set the seals, one could say. Forewords by Rollingstonian brothers Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, a “prelude” by Andrew Loog Oldham, the group’s manager in the 1960s, testimonies from his one and only companion, Shirley Ann Shepherd Watts, and their daughter , Seraphina: all the relatives participated. Honestly.
Understand by this that it is not a question of the putrid jumble of salacious revelations about a rockstar’s life lived too intensely not to smell bad: the fact is that a shit-searching investigator would have floundered, such is the course by Charlie Watts is characterized by good taste, healthy complicity, the straightest fidelity, wealth without display, elegance in everything, the rigor of a job well done and the crooked smile of a drummer with double happiness: tempo safe and light swing.
Not enough to fill 382 pages? But yes, in the singular way of this unique man. “Charlie,” summarizes journalist Paul Sexton, “was the global celebrity who hated attention and who once said he preferred the company of dogs to that of humans; the car enthusiast who didn’t drive; the horse lover who didn’t ride; the drummer who traveled the world for five and a half decades, all spent pining for home […] “, And so on. Fascinating exception, no?
Everything is here. In a world of hotel room wreckers and aerial orgies (see the documentary Cocksucker Blues), close to heroin addicts and their crowd of suppliers, Charlie Watts takes care… of his wardrobe. Former Stones bassist Bill Wyman’s description of his touring ritual is quite a bit more amusing than that of the wreck trips: “He always took a twin room or a small suite, and the second bed he used to spread out his clothes, as if for a military inspection. » Rock without bad creases: good manners are the greatest audacity, we understand by following Charlie, page after page.
So we visit with the joy of Sacha Guitry the display cases of the Watts collector: here artifacts from the Civil War, there first editions signed by Agatha Christie, or, in the music room, drums having belonged to the swing champions of Duke Ellington, the acetates of Gene Krupa and Billie Holiday, the 78s gleaned from all the capitals that the Stones’ tours gave him the opportunity to explore (with various accomplices, including Jools Holland) . The congruous part of the book? The stories about Mick, Keith and the others. They are elsewhere, spread out in a pile of other books… which all look the same.