Charlie Watts was the rock of the Rolling Stones.
The Stones’ skinsman — who died “peacefully” at 80 in a London hospital Tuesday — was the foundation of the British band that was the foundation of rock and roll as we know it today.
“The heartbeat — both literally and figuratively — of that band came outward from Charlie Watts,” Alan Light, co-host of SiriusXM Volume’s “Debatable” show, told The Post.
“And I think you could see it when you would see them play live. It was when Keith [Richards, the Stones’ guitarist] would turn around, sometimes put his foot up on the drum riser, and he and Charlie would lock in. That was where the groove of that band could be found.”
That groove was the very heart of the Stones from 1963 until Watts’ death. “That’s what allowed Mick to go and do whatever he was gonna do, to become the frontman that he became,” said Light.
Watts once joked that teaming with Jagger led to “decades of seeing Mick’s bum running around in front of me.”
The steadiness of Watts keeping the Stones in the pocket came from a jazz sensibility that always made the band swing as well as rock.
“I have a picture of Charlie with a saxophone around his neck with his orchestra, with his jazz band,” legendary rock photographer Bob Gruen told The Post, noting that Watts even played the Blue Note.
“He always perceived himself as a jazz drummer,” added Light. “That was always his thing: ‘Those boys can be a rock and roll band. What I’m doing here comes out of listening to big-band records and Duke Ellington records and learning about the power and the nuance of rhythm.’ ”
It was Watts’ ability to not simply pound away that made him have the impact that he had as a drummer.
“He wasn’t a big, flashy player,” said Light. “He wasn’t the thunder of [Led Zeppelin’s] John Bonham, he wasn’t the sort of wild anarchy of [The Who’s] Keith Moon, but he kept the swing in that band in everything that he did.”
Watts’ unflashy, understated style extended beyond the music to his very manner. He reportedly kept more than 200 suits in his London apartment.
“I always thought of Charlie as a very classy guy and the perfect English gentleman,” said Gruen.
Gruen recalls Watts being the epitome of class in 1997 when the band was at a Chicago hotel opening a tour.
“The security man came out, and then Mick Jagger walked out, and there was another security man behind him. And a few minutes later, when everything was back to normal and there was no commotion at all, Charlie Watts strolled out with his wife, looking absolutely elegant, and strolled out the hotel to go for a walk with no hoopla,” said Gruen.
Still, he did have a period of life in which he struggled with drink and drugs, including heroin, which he reportedly quit cold turkey after a two-year stint in the ’80s. “It got so bad,” he later joked, “that even Keith Richards, bless him, told me to get it together.”
And Watts was famously pushed to his limits once by Jagger. In his autobiography “Life,” Richards wrote about an incident where a drunken Jagger antagonized Watts on the phone, going “Where’s my drummer?”
According to the book, Watts, who was in a hotel room just down the hall from Jagger, then proceeded to shave, put on one of his Savile Row suits and spray on some cologne before knocking on the door of his bandmate.
Then Watts walked past Richards, grabbed Jagger, gave him a right hook and said, “Never call me your drummer again.”
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