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 He was 80 years old.
"It is with immense sadness that we announce the
death of our beloved Charlie Watts. He passed
away peacefully in a London hospital earlier
today surrounded by his family," Watts'
spokesperson said in a statement.
Among the first British bands to properly crack
the American market and a symbol of 1960s
London, the Rolling Stones lineup of Watts, Mick
Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Bill
Wyman produced a string of hit records. The
Stones also went on to break records with
multimillion-pound grossing global tours.
Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr described
Watts as a "beautiful human being" and said he
was shocked by Watts' death.
"I knew he wasn't doing well, but it was a shock
to me," Starr, who joined the Beatles in August
1962, five months before Watts became a member
of the Rolling Stones, told the Wall Street
Journal in an interview after Watts' death.
Watts played drums on all of the group's 30
albums and on every tour. No cause of death was
given for his passing, but the announcement
followed an Aug. 4 statement by the band that
the drummer was pulling out of its rescheduled
No Filter U.S. tour because he needed time to
recuperate after an unspecified emergency
medical procedure.
Bandmates had expected Watts to rejoin the band.
"We really look forward to welcoming Charlie
back as soon as he is fully recovered," Jagger
tweeted on Aug. 4.
After the death of Watts was announced, Jagger
tweeted https://bit.ly/3B84Voz an image of the
joyful drummer while Keith Richards posted
https://bit.ly/38aJPcJ a photo of a drum set
without adding any words.
Disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, the No
Filter tour is scheduled to kick off on Sept. 26
in St. Louis. There was no word on Tuesday
whether it would go ahead.
The death of Watts brought tributes https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-watts-rollingstones-reactions/reactions-to-the-death-of-rolling-stones-drummer-charlie-watts-idUSKBN2FP1RD
from musicians ranging from Paul McCartney to
country singer Rosanne Cash.
"Charlie Watts was the ultimate drummer," Elton
John posted on Twitter. "The most stylish of
men, and such brilliant company.
McCartney sent condolences in a video message.
"I knew he was ill but I didn't know he was this
ill... It's a huge blow to them because Charlie
was a rock and a fantastic drummer."
Watts was born in 1941 during World War Two and
grew up in the Wembley area of northwest London,
attending Harrow school of Art before starting
work as a graphic artist with an advertising
agency.
Unlike his bandmates, Watts had been in a
successful group before agreeing to join the
Rolling Stones in 1963. He married Shirley Ann
Shepherd in 1964 and they remained together
until his death - the first regular member of
the band to pass away since Jones in 1969.
While holding down the day job, Watts played in
the evenings with Blues Incorporated led by
Alexis Korner, alongside future Cream bassist
Jack Bruce. He was replaced by future Cream
drummer Ginger Baker when he left.
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 He played his first gig with
the Stones at the Ealing Blues Club in West
London with the six piece band that included
pianist Ian Stewart, Wyman on bass and Jones on
guitar. Watts left the
hell-raising that defined the Stones in the
1960s and '70s to the other members, but
provided the heartbeat of the band, and with
Wyman was considered one of the great rock
rhythm sections.
Away from the Rolling Stones, Watts found the
time to play jazz with several groups including
a 32-piece band, the Charlie Watts Orchestra, as
well as to work with pianist Stewart in the band
Rocket 88 during the 1980s.
 In
the 1990s, the Charlie Watts Quintet released
several albums, including a tribute to jazz
great Charlie Parker. In 2004, the quintet
expanded to become Charlie Watts and the Tentet.
'DIDN'T SUIT ME AT ALL'
While his bandmates entertained groupies on an
epic scale, Watts indulged instead - he once
told a radio interviewer - in a compulsive habit
of sketching every new hotel room he occupied.
He did speak of a short period in the 1980s when
he tried to deal with a mid-life crisis by
bingeing on drink and drugs. "It was very short
for me. I just stopped, it didn’t suit me at
all," he told the Daily Mirror newspaper in
2012.
"I drank too much and took drugs. I went mad
really. But I stopped it all. It was very easy
for me."
In 2004, he was diagnosed with throat cancer
after having quit smoking in the late 1980s, and
underwent radiation therapy. The cancer went
into remission, and he returned to recording and
touring with the Stones.
Despite newspaper accounts of a drunken spat
with Jagger in the 1980s over whether the singer
or the drummer was more important to a group,
Watts was in a magnanimous mood when he spoke to
the Guardian newspaper in 2013.
"Mick is the show, really, we back him," he
said, adding however, "but Mick wouldn’t dance
well if the sound was bad."
Watts was always known as a keen shopper and a
snappy dresser. The Daily Telegraph once named
him one of the World's Best Dressed Men and in
2006 Vanity Fair inducted him into the
International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.
 "It's supposed to be sex and drugs and rock and
roll," he once said. "I'm not really like that."
(Reporting by Kate Holton and Stephen Addison;
additional reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing
by Robin Pomeroy, Bill Berkrot and Jonathan
Oatis)
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