“Outside of the band, you know, we used to hang out quite a lot and have interesting times,” Jagger said of Watts, who died at age 80 of an undisclosed illness on Aug. 24, 2021
Mick Jagger is remembering Charlie Watts on the one-year anniversary of his death.
In a video posted across social media platforms on Wednesday, Jagger paid tribute to the late Rolling Stones drummer with a slideshow featuring photos of Watts and soundtracked by the legendary rock band’s 1974 track “Till the Next Goodbye” and a voiceover message from the singer.
“I miss Charlie because he had a great sense of humor,” Jagger, 79, said about Watts, who died at age 80 on Aug. 24, 2021, following an undisclosed illness. “Outside of the band, you know, we used to hang out quite a lot and have interesting times. We loved sports. We’d go to football, we’d go to cricket games, and we had other interests apart from just music.”
He added, “But, of course, I really miss Charlie so much.”
“Thinking of Charlie today” Jagger captioned the post.
Earlier this summer, Rolling Stones wrapped its Sixty anniversary tour. The string of European concerts marked the second set of shows to go on without Watts on the drums following the No Filter Tour, which ended last year.
On both tours, Steve Jordan stepped in as drummer. In tribute to Watts, his longtime drum tech Don McAulay made a point to place his drum key in the same place Watts used to.
“Don McAulay – Charlie Watt’s drum tech for ten years pays tribute to Charlie for his birthday, placing his drum key where Charlie always would before each show. Happy birthday Charlie, we miss you,” the band wrote on Twitter, alongside a video of McAulay.
The surviving Stones have spoken openly about the pain of losing Watts, and Jagger even raised a drink to the drummer on stage in September 2021 as they played their first show without him.
“The thing he brought was this beautiful sense of swing and swerve that most bands wish they could have,” the singer told Rolling Stone that month. “We had some really nice conversations in the last couple of years about how all this happened with the band. It’s a huge loss to us all. It’s very, very hard.”
Richards, meanwhile, told CBS Sunday Morning in March 2021 that Watts’ death had come “as quite a shock” to the rockers.
“He had had a round with cancer a year or two before, and he’d beat that one. He just got hit with a double whammy,” Richards said. “Bless his soul.”
Luckily for fans, Watts’ music lives on, as the Stones told the Los Angeles Times in October 2021 that they’d recorded new music with him on drums before his death.
“Let me put it this way,” Richards said, “you haven’t heard the last of Charlie Watts.”
