I loved playing with Keith and the band — I still do — but I wasn't interested in being a pop idol sitting there with girls screaming. It's not the world I come from. It's not what I wanted to be, and I still think it's silly.
Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, stylish and unflappable, seemed forever bemused by the antics of singer Mick Jagger, perhaps best illustrated in the band's 1981 video for "Start Me Up". Jagger refuses to half-ass his lip-synching performance, mugging and dancing and gyrating, while also making fun of the entire process. Shots of guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood (playing along, acting a bit like street toughs, yowling some background vocals) and bassist Bill Wyman (wearing his usual placid expression) are interspersed. And there is Watts, half-smirking behind his kit at what these nearly 40-year-old men are doing in front of him. He remains dead-panned for most of the song, but finally cracks a smile (at 2:47, after we see Jagger particularly rubber-faced, and again at 3:00), as though he simply cannot believe this is how he's earning his living.
1 comment:
A sad day.
He was by far the coolest Rolling Stone.
I saw them in 1990 at Wembley Stadium (Urban Jungle Tour).
I thought I'd better see them before they pack up touring for good. (Got that wrong).
There's been some great photos of just how dapper he was. The front page of today's Daily Mirror is staggering.
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