Charlie Watts Book Tops Best Seller List

A book about Charlie Watts, only released one-month ago, has become a best seller following the death of the Rolling Stones drummer last week.

‘Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters’ by Mike Edison was published on 1 August 2021.

According to the publisher, Edison’s book follows the career of Watts …

Across five decades, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts has had the best seat in the house. Charlie Watts, the anti-rock star—an urbane jazz fan with a dry wit and little taste for the limelight—was witness to the most savage years in rock history, and emerged a hero, a warrior poet. With his easy swing and often loping, uneven fills, he found nuance in a music that often had little room for it, and along with his greatest ally, Keith Richards, he gave the Stones their swaggering beat. While others battled their drums, Charlie played his modest kit with finesse and humility, and yet his relentless grooves on the nastiest hard-rock numbers of the era (“Gimme Shelter,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Brown Sugar,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” etc.) delivered a dangerous authenticity to a band that on their best nights should have been put in jail.

Watts passed away on 24 August 2021 at age 80. Only weeks earlier he had stepped down from the upcoming Rolling Stones No Filter tour. The tour will still go ahead with drummer Steve Jordan.

Further reading: The Rolling Stones pay tribute to Charlie Watts.

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