Rolling Stones Drummer Charlie Watts Misses A Show For The First Time After Nearly 60 Years On The Job---Get Well, Charlie!

Rear Admiral8/05/2021 1:10 PM

Stanley Bielecki/ASP. Getty Images.

Not much gets a stir outta me on Twitter anymore. For a brief time, a celeb trending often meant he or she shit the bed but now it's, like, an Olympian getting compared to an '80s movie character a celeb played or some stupid shit. However, when I saw Pittsburgh radio stud and Chiclets guest Mark Madden Tweet this out, my heart sank more than a little…

A quick Twitter search got the answer and a thankful sigh from a proverbial lifelong diehard…

“With rehearsals starting in a couple of weeks it’s very disappointing to say the least, but it’s also fair to say no one saw this coming,” a spokesperson for Watts said in a statement.
Watts, 80, said in a statement he did not want his recovery to further delay the tour, which is set to visit several U.S. cities including Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
“For once my timing has been a little off. I am working hard to get fully fit but I have today accepted on the advice of the experts that this will take a while,” Watts said.
Watts successfully underwent treatment for throat cancer in 2004. He will be replaced by understudy Steve Jordan, who has played with Keith Richards for years.

First off, I'm so glad Charlie is alright and that he should recover fine. That's the most important thing (total speculation by putting 2 & 2 together: docs found something during a pre-tour physical that couldn't wait). If you've ever been to a Stones show, then you know that the fabled drummer typically gets the loudest cheers during band intros. His low-key, well-dressed, cool grandfather vibe along with his proficiency on the skins in the best band ever just makes him an easy guy to love. And we Stones fans do.

Second, I mean, Christ. The guy is 80 fucking years old and has spent the last 58 in the band who put the "sex and drugs and rock and roll" into the saying "sex and drugs and rock and roll". And Charlie Watts, who has shared backbeat duties with just two bassists in that time, has not missed a show since he became a Rolling Stone in 1963.

What a goddamn professional. Not that he was a saint (he was strung out for a stretch in the '70s) but when you think of hell-raising Rolling Stones in the band's near 60-year history, the beloved drummer is probably no higher than #5. He's never once in six decades been too sick or too waffled or too whatever to perform, not to mention his consistently impeccable playing over that time. Charlie's managed to not get pinched (at least where it affected the band), caught in any sort of scandal, or otherwise ever embarrassed the band (to my knowledge). In fact, he's more like an elegant and classy paterfamilias of the Stones clan, always quick with a razor-sharp dig.

For fans who are planning on catching them on this tour, his replacement Jordan has been a member of Keith's sidepiece, the X-Pensive Winos, since its 1987 inception and has worked with the Stones for decades. He sounds like a guy who knows his way around the catalog and how to play it. Mammoth shoes to fill but at the end of the day, it is a blues-based rock band and everybody knows what to do. Safe to say you'll still have a blast. Jeffrey Wright signs off of the move…

These will be the first Stones shows ever to feature just the Glimmer Twins---Mick and Keef---out of all of the original members. Guitarist and fan fave (though aren't they all now?) Ron Wood joined them in 1975, replacing Mick Taylor. Taylor left after helping shepherd the band through not only its creative peak but perhaps the greatest creative peak in rock history when the Stones rattled off "Beggar's Banquet", "Let It Bleed", "Sticky Fingers", and "Exile On Main Street" in a row. He revealed in the brilliant Stones doc CROSSFIRE HURRICANE that he left the best rock band on the planet because he needed to get off heroin.

Original bassist Bill Wyman left the band after the '89-'90 tour and Darryl Jones has done the slappin' since. With two Black Americans currently forming the rhythm section of the Rolling Stones, it feels like things coming full circle a little bit for the band. After all, the genesis of the Rolling Stones---that day at the train station when Mick and Keith ran into each other---was the shared love of Black American bluesmen from two young Brits.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to swing any dates on this tour yet so I'll be playing it by ear. Either way, I just hope Charlie is fine.

GET WELL, BROTHER.