Charlie Watts, the backbone of the Rolling Stones, has died aged 80. One of rock’s most celebrated drummers, his death was announced by the band’s publicist, who said that he “passed away peacefully in a London hospital” surrounded by his family.
He had undergone treatment for an unspecified medical condition that forced him to miss a forthcoming Rolling Stones tour of the US. With his customarily dry wit, he remarked earlier this month: “For once my timing has been a little off.”
Watts was a member of the British band from its earliest days in 1963. His first musical interest was jazz, not blues or R & B like bandmates Sir Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In contrast to their wilder personas, he had a calm playing style and gentlemanly temperament. During their infamy as “the bad boys of rock-and-roll” in the 1960s, delinquent “British Invasion” cousins to The Beatles, Watts maintained a cool aura of amused detachment.