Remembrance: Drummer Steve Ferrone On Charlie Watts' Enduring Legacy

Courtesy Steve Ferrone/ Jim Keltner – Funky Steve
No Sir Paul or Sir Mick Allowed: Drummers Steve Ferrone, Charlie Watts and Jim Keltner at CenterStaging in rehearsals for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Steve Ferrone’s resumé is lined with legends: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Average White Band, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Chaka Khan, Bee Gees and many, many others. The esteemed 71-year-old drummer’s career dates back to his pre-teen years growing up in Brighton, England, immersed in blues and coming upon The Rolling Stones and Charlie Watts. Here, the drum pro shares his remembrances of Charlie, frames his legacy and explains why the duo wouldn’t let Sir Paul McCartney or Sir Mick Jagger into their drummers-only photo.

Pollstar: What’s your earliest association with Charlie Watts?

Steve Ferrone: I was 12 years old and I’d just started playing; I played in a blues band and The Rolling Stones came along [laughter].

What was your blues band?

We were called The Web and my guys used to take me down to see all the Chicago blues guys. They had a revue that would pass through town. Then all of a sudden there were these English guys doing their versions of the blues and it was The Rolling Stones. The Beatles were more sort of Chuck Berry, more like a rock thing, but The Stones were more influenced by what I was seeing in these blues concerts like Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and John Lee Hooker, all those people.

Was this London?

Brighton. I used to go to a theatre called The Dome and they brought these concerts through, it was pretty cool. It used to be the stables of a palace and they made it into a theatre.

Charlie played Blues Incorporated before playing in The Rolling Stones, but I don’t think in the U.S. we had kids playing in blues bands.

It seemed most of the bands I was associated with, they were into the blues, even The Beatles to some degree had listened to the blues players but had more of a way of making it more contemporary the way that they played things. The Stones were more authentic as far as playing the blues. The Beatles were a lot tighter and crisper. The Stones were a little bit sloppy in their playing, but Charlie really had this great sound and a really great groove.

People talk about Charlie’s swing and jazz phrasing and even how he held his sticks.

He had what they called an orthodox grip on the drums, it wasn’t really the rock look, most rock drummers use matched grip.

He had finesse.

He had really great tone, too, Charlie had a really great, great sound. Sometimes when he was playing that eighth note with the right hand, he left that right hand off when he hit the snare drum, and it would just leave a space for that snare drum to ring out and ring true.

When did you first meet him?

David Wolff-Patrick / Redferns – Charlie Watts
Miss You: Charlie Watts performing at Le New Morning on Oct. 2, 2011, in Paris, France.

Probably around the ’70s when I was in the Average White Band; Mick and Charlie showed up at one of our gigs, I forget where it was. It might have been in England. I had a minute just sitting and talking with Charlie and I was amazed at how knowledgeable he was about very obscure musicians like New Orleans musicians and drummers. He was a little walking encyclopedia on musicology. He was a very well-read man. And always very dapper. And very polite.

Not really keeping with the Stones’ persona, even when he was young, he seemed like an old soul. He wasn’t a gadabout or frivolous.

Exactly. He never did come off as the wild raver that everybody else was, Charlie just had this way of sort of drifting through stuff and being very calm about it.

When you met in the ’70s, was he a fan of the Average White Band?

That was where I met him, at an Average White Band show. He took to calling me Funky Steve. I heard people say, “I saw Charlie the other day and he said to say hi to Funky Steve.” I got to see him a couple of times; when I went to Rolling Stones concerts, he always made a point to come out and say hi and have a little chat. He was a very nice man.

At one point, myself and Jim Keltner were rehearsing for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at CenterStaging, Paul McCartney was on one of the stages and The Rolling Stones were on another stage. Jim Keltner and I walked over and picked up Abe Laboriel Jr. and went over to the Stones’ stage and we got Charlie and we took a photograph of the four of us together. The funny thing was that Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger tried to come and get in the photograph with us, and we refused to let them stay in there with us. [laughter] We said, “No, no, no. This is drummers only.” So, they sulked off. [laughter]

That is the greatest story, although maybe sad because the photo with Mick and Paul probably would have been worth 500 times as much.

[Laughter] We didn’t really care about that. This is like, “This is the drummers’ photograph.” This had nothing to do with singers. We didn’t want any singers or bass players, whatever they could do themselves at the time. It was just the drummers’ photograph and that was it. [laughter]

Drummers sometimes get a bad rap as being unreliable or like in “Spinal Tap” they spontaneously combust. It’s such a physically demanding instrument and takes a lot of strength and energy and sometimes you get people like Keith Moon, Ringo or John Bonham, who can be very extroverted or wild, but Charlie seemed to defy that stereotype.

Well, most drummers are either wiry or they’re big. Vinnie Colaiuta is a wiry drummer. Me and Jim are bigger guys. John Robinson is a big guy. Jeff Porcaro was a smaller guy, wiry. With Charlie, I always felt that whenever I shook hands with him I was going to break his arm off. He was a very frail, delicate person. He had a touch, a really great sound he pulled out of the drum kit.

Also just responsible, not a wild man.

Well, for once, the drummer was the grownup. [laughter]. We have that reputation, I can’t imagine why…. [laughter].

I want to talk about his drumming, which had these hooks like on “Honky Tonk Women” or “Ruby Tuesday” or “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

I don’t know if Charlie really thought of it as being a hook or a lick. Charlie was very musical. He just played whatever sounded right for the song. He just had a way of figuring out, “Well, this beat would be good. This would sound good in this song.”

You could listen to just the drum track of a Stones song and ID the song.

Yeah, it’s musical. I was talking to Brian Bennett from The Shadows not so long ago. And Bennett said, “I always liked the way you played. You played for the song.” It’s kind of hard to explain what that is. Brian Bennett is that kind of player with The Shadows. He never played more than what the song needed. It wasn’t about what the drum part was. Whatever it was that he played, it would just fit in. I don’t think Charlie really had to sit down and think about the drum part so much as he was just there for the song, and he would just play it.

Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images – Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones
performs at a concert in England in 1973, sporting a new David Bowie-style feather cut.

It’s interesting, that later on when they did “Some Girls” and “Emotional Rescue” he’s doing disco beats that couldn’t be farther from where he started.

But when Charlie did it, it just had a Charlie feel about it. It was like, “OK, it’s Charlie playing a disco beat, but it wasn’t disco.” It had a different feel to it. Charlie obviously listened to a lot of music. And when you listen to stuff, you can’t help but be influenced by it.

The Stones are leading the way for older musicians, do you think you can be in your 80s and keep playing drums for a three- or four-hour concert?

Hell yeah. I intend to do it until I drop. What else am I going to do? [laughter]

What is Charlie Watts’ lasting legacy?

Steve Jordan was slated to replace Charlie on this tour and Steve’s a really great drummer. But I think it’s going to be one of those things like when Frank Sinatra passed away and they get guys like Michael Bublé. Frank Sinatra fans go and see these guys, and they’re great artists, there’s no doubt about it, but they kind of sit there and think about Frank Sinatra. I think that’s what’s going to happen now if The Rolling Stones continue to tour, people are going to love the songs, they’re going to love seeing Mick and Keith, and Ronnie and Bernard Fowler and Jordan up there playing and all the other guys in the band, but I think they’ll always think about Charlie. that’s going to be his legacy, is that he’ll always be the Rolling Stones’ drummer.