Charlie Watts says the Rolling Stones peaked when Mick Taylor was in the band
Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts gave a candid radio interview on BBC6 in which he said that the Rolling Stones were at their best from 1969 to 1974, when guitarist Mick Taylor was in the band.
Taylor had replaced Rolling Stones founding member Brian Jones, who died on July 3, 1969 — less than a month after Jones was fired from the Rolling Stones. Taylor quit the Rolling Stones at the end of 1974, and he was replaced by Ronnie Wood, who is still in the band today.
Part of this interview already aired in early December 2011. The rest of the interview aired on December 25, 2011.
A replay of the interview is available for a limited time on BBC's website.
Most of the allotted time (about 65 percent) for the program consists of playing an eclectic selection of music, from the Rolling Stones to the Beatles to Charlie Parker.
In the actual interview segments of the program, Watts reminisced about his earliest memories of appreciating music, how jazz icon Parker was one of his biggest influences, and what it was like to record music with the Rolling Stones in the 1960s and 1970s. Watts also mentioned what many diehard Rolling Stones fans already know: Watts' favorite music is jazz, not rock'n'roll.
Watts said:
"I've always been separate from rock'n'roll. Having said that, it doesn't mean to I wasn't debauched and whatever. It's never been a world, even now, I associate with particularly. It never interested me, rock'n'roll and groupies and all that.
"I've always found Duke Ellington and his orchestra much more attractive than 90 percent of the white groups that were very fashionable at the time I was playing. I was [in] a white group myself! I was never brought up on rock and roll ... I hated Elvis [Presley] when everyone thought he was the most wonderful thing in the world ... I wanted to be a black man in a club in New York. Don't ask me why!"
And this is what Watts had to say about when he thinks the Rolling Stones were at their best:
"A lot of that has to do with the songs. For me, that period with Mick Taylor at that age is probably the peak of the Rolling Stones band. Mick brought a quality to the Rolling Stones that they never, ever had before or since. I don't know why. I don't know how. Bands are a weird thing.
"Ronnie [Wood] brings another thing ... I think Keith [Richards] kind of prefers playing with Ronnie in that guitar way, you know, when they weave and that. But as an era, as a band, the songs ... they help you play a lot."
When Taylor was in the Rolling Stones, they recorded the albums "Let It Bleed," "Exile on Main Street," "Sticky Fingers," "Goats Head Soup" and "It's Only Rock'n'Roll." Hit songs from those albums included "Gimme Shelter," "Midnight Rambler," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Tumbling Dice," "Happy," "Brown Sugar," "Wild Horses," "Angie" and "It's Only Rock'n'Roll."
Watts also mentioned which other rock musicians he greatly admires:
"Having said all that about rock'n'roll, there are certain people and particularly players that I met and love that play what we call rock'n'roll. Jimmy Page is one of the greats. I think Led Zeppelin were a bloody good band. The Who are a fantastic band, if that's rock'n'roll. It's not Chuck Berry, if you know what I mean."
