I should have written this back in August of 2021 when it first happened. I did write something for a Facebook post and quite a bit of this is lifted verbatim from that post. But, for some reason, I find myself still affected by the death of Rolling Stones' drummer Charlie Watts.
I don't usually get bent out of shape over celebrity deaths as--at least at this point in time--I've never actually known any celebrities. I've had the privilege of meeting a few and I've shaken a couple of hands, but it's never been possible for me to spend enough time to get to know them as people. However, the older I get, I find that the deaths of certain entertainers tend to bother me if their work has had a lasting impact on me. I won't lie. Charlie's death hurts... even four months after the fact.
I've never felt that I could fully describe or explain what the Rolling Stones' music has meant to me. I first heard them at the tender age of twelve and it was not like anything I had ever heard before. Initially, their music got me exploring not just their own extensive musical catalogue (which has gotten more extensive in the intervening years), but other artists that became known during the 1960s, particularly anything I could find worth listening to in my parents' vinyl collection. I started to read anything I could find regarding those artists. I sought out the artists who influenced them. The Stones had started out in the early-1960s idolizing American blues musicians. Knowing this, I got turned on to the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and my blues idol, the one and only John Lee Hooker. The Stones' appreciation for country and reggae music led me down even more interesting musical paths. I even began exploring artists who cited the Stones and their contemporaries as influences which then broadened my appreciation of rock music as well. Today, I still read liner notes religiously, a habit I picked up somewhere in high school. I like to know who played what instrument for what song on what album for a particular artist in a certain year. I think I would have always turned out to be a music lover, but the Stones turned that love into a geeky passion--at a time when being a geek wasn't exactly cool (come to think of it, neither was being a twelve-year-old Stones fan in the 1980s).
It was through their music that I started paying attention to the individual instruments used within a song, particularly the drums. I frequently will play out the drum parts to some of my favourite songs on any hard surface that happens to be near while I'm listening (much to the annoyance of anyone who happens to be with me at the time). Charlie taught me what a drummer was supposed to do--keep time. He didn't play a lot of lengthy intricate solos, he didn't have a huge setup with twenty different drums and a large gong behind him. He played a simple jazz drummer's kit (Gretsch drums, specifically) and he played with the sensibility of a jazz drummer. He wasn't flashy, he just kept the beat. Somehow, that made his drumming seem flashier to me.
When I think of the concept of what God might look like (something I believe to be subjective), I don't think of the guy with the long flowing white beard that we've seen in so many Renaissance paintings. I don't even think of film depictions like George Burns or Morgan Freeman (both good choices, by the way). I think of a photograph of Charlie Watts that I first saw in a coffee table book I have about the Stones. It was taken by photographer Jill Furmanovsky at her London studio in the early 1990s. It's a black and white picture of his profile. When combined with the colour picture on the opposite page (from the same photoshoot), something in my head said that, at least for me, this is what God looks like--an incredibly snazzy dresser with a very dry sense of humour who also happens to be one hell of a drummer. Today, I actually refer to God as "Charlie"--it takes the formality out of it for me... but that's another story, hopefully, for a later posting.
I suppose this continued sense of loss has a lot to do with my late father. I get much of my taste in popular culture from him. He was the one who introduced me to the Stones when I was twelve. Obviously, he had been a fan long before I was even born. I claim that my appreciation of music transcends genre because of Dad--he played not just rock records growing up, but also classical and country music. He liked everything from Wagner and Beethoven to Merle Haggard and Leon Redbone. He also had a deep love of jazz and blues which I'm sure would have been passed to me with or without the Stones' influence.
In 1989, the Stones announced that they would be releasing a new album (Steel Wheels) and embarking on a North American tour--their first major tour in seven years. It was Dad who suggested that we should try to get tickets if they were playing anyplace close. Lo and behold, along with some church friends, Dad managed to get tickets for their concert in Louisville, Kentucky, scheduled for 19 September. (I still find it amusing that essentially a church group went to a Stones concert. It sounds like the setup for a bad joke. We may as well have walked into a bar.)
I was fifteen years old and it was my first concert. Prior to this, the only "famous" person I had ever seen was Rip Taylor in a stage performance of Peter Pan when I was in the third grade. This was something considerably different. It was the first time I ever felt like I was part of something bigger than myself--particularly when they played "You Can't Always Get What You Want," which is still my favourite song all these years later.
Along with the Chicago Cubs game I wrote about in a previous post some years ago ("What the 2016 World Series Means To Me"), this was one of those father/son moments that I'll always treasure. I was out until 2:00 in the morning on a school night with my dad at a rock concert. How many of you can say you did that when you were fifteen? I got my shoelaces soaked in beer (which I still have), ate my first White Castle hamburgers, and found out what marijuana smells like. (At one point, before the opening act even took the stage, Dad looked at me and said, "Do you smell that?" I said, "Yeah, what is that?" He said, "That's grass. Don't inhale. Let me do that.")
As the Righteous Brothers once sang, "If there's a rock and roll heaven, well you know they've got a hell of a band." Sadly, that band is getting bigger and bigger with each passing year. Even Bobby Hatfield is a member. But I do take comfort in the belief that my parents have a front row seat and Dad's probably hanging out backstage with a lot of them... possibly even picking up a few musical tricks of his own.
