10 ms·

Charlie Watts has died

350 points by coloneltcb 5y ago

fieryskiff11 5y ago
never heard of her
oblib 5y ago
Never thought I'd get to see the Stones, but I did a few years ago at the Desert Trip concerts. Honestly, I think I was lucky to catch them then. Same with all the bands that played there. Charlie was great and I was amazed by him. He was still banging on those drums as fast as ever and keeping the beat spot on. They were all happy to be there. Well, except maybe Dylan. Not sure if he's ever been "happy" but they were all having fun and thrilled to be there together. We all knew we're getting close to moving on. And we all felt like we did back then together. Each time one of them leaves the rest of us are all step closer. But, damn... our generation still rocked the house.
irrational 5y ago
How is this appropriate for Hacker News?
- batch12 5y ago
  How is it not?
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  The criterion is along the lines of something that may be of interest to hackers. Not necessarily as hackers, but to them in general. All communities either become conservative and lock in around a few norms and aggressively police them or become liberal and become about anything and everything. There is no healthy middle. I mean why should economics and housing and finance topics be of interests to hackers?
  - unethical_ban 5y ago
    It's kind of a community feel - I think HN has done a good job of flexing occasionally to allow non-tech news around cultural influences. The Rolling Stones are one of the most influential rock bands of the past half century and that is potentially worthy of discussion. I think housing and economy and finance are even more appropriate at times, especially when discussing topics that affect the average person - wonky, technical discussions that take a lot of thought and processing of second order effects.
- giarc 5y ago
  I'm always in favour of just letting the upvote/downvote buttons determine appropriateness.
- kirykl 5y ago
  Presumably the upvotes say it is of interest
  - cma 5y ago
    If we go by that alone, next up: bikini pics and tabloid news.
    - argvargc 5y ago
      How then would you explain that this has never happened here?
      - cma 5y ago
        A moderation and flagging system.
- 101008 5y ago
  The Rolling Stones are one of the greatest bands of all times. The passing of one of its original members (who, by the way, was part of the band for 58 years) it's a cultural event that it is worth discussing it.
  - guhidalg 5y ago
    Yea but it has nothing to do with hacking or technology, and if you think it does then please explain how this belongs.
    - 101008 5y ago
      From Guidelines: > anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosit I think something like this gratifies intellectual curiosit of a lot of people. But as someone else said, upvotes and downvotes will decide better than any rule.
    - swader999 5y ago
      Charlie originally was trained as a graphic artist before joining the band so maybe that will give you some Satisfaction?
    - lisper 5y ago
      > it has nothing to do with hacking or technology Don't be so sure. Music is intimately related to math, and the Stones were one of the most innovative [Edit: influential] musical groups in human history. There are probably hacking and tech connections that are not immediately obvious. Also, social phenomena are interesting from a technological point of view as well (there's a reason social media is a thing) and the Stones were definitely that.
      - fuzzfactor 5y ago
        > it has nothing to do with hacking or technology > please explain how this belongs. I see no reason to downvote, but in some businesses they have a thing called engineering. Recording engineers are their own breed and many of the rock & roll greats were not university-trained but through years of serious progress earned the title with far less likelihood than a student entering a traditional engineering college. When the Stones started they only used 4-track studio recording gear and of course it was analog based on vacuum tubes with magnetic tape. Fairly big sound they got. Today's digital engineers can be considered to have a vast array of tools which never existed then, and 32 channels plus. Even with all that and the best software money can buy, there are going to be some engineers who never come close to capturing the real sound of a 4-piece rock act no matter how much time they put into mixing it. Not compared to a hastily mixed cut from a legendary analog release. And state-of-the-art studios may not be able to record at all without the functioning or presence of software which is naturally expected but not one of the limitations or show-stoppers of the analog days. Rock & roll is just one example of how technology marches on but people themselves don't necessarily get more advanced at the same rate. Sometimes even slip backwards. But oh well, that's technology for you. Probably only of interest to engineers anyway.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > How is this appropriate for Hacker News? It's not another political or cultural flamewar? Also, these people have been around for so long, that I was starting to suspect they were actually immortal. > The news comes weeks after it was announced that Watts would miss the band's US tour dates to recover from an unspecified medical procedure.
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  > How is this appropriate for Hacker News? The energy from Charlie Watts’ drum sticks transmuted into more lines of code than you will ever be able to count.
- France_is_bacon 5y ago
  I wrote an app on the Rolling Stones a while back.
- EL_Loco 5y ago
  Stop this "why is this relevant for HN". If it's not, it'll leave the front page soon.
- heyheyheysome 5y ago
  He's white, so his death is newsworthy for HN. Contrast with say Kobe Bryant.
- glitcher 5y ago
  I for one am glad there is a wide variety of topics of interest posted and discussed here. If we were only pigeonholed into tech topics I would probably get bored of HN. I did prefer the original title which included the fact that Charlie Watts was the drummer for the Rolling Stones. I didn't know him by name, and adding more context to the title seemed helpful to me at least. In general I feel like HN suffers from title over-editing, but never from too much variety.
- gpas 5y ago
  https://fortune.com/2013/07/21/inside-rolling-stones-inc-fortune-2002/ https://fortune.com/2013/07/21/inside-rolling-stones-inc-for...
- argvargc 5y ago
  Because it stayed up long enough for you to see it.
riffic 5y ago
You know that xkcd post about people who've walked on the moon? same thing applies for 60s cultural icons. so it goes.
- milesskorpen 5y ago
  Reference: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/893:_65_Years https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/893:_65_Years
  - wyldfire 5y ago
    > The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
  - drivers99 5y ago
    Of interest is the updated graph (red line shows actual, which is sadly right on track): https://imgur.com/G7DbbBi https://imgur.com/G7DbbBi
- toyg 5y ago
  I understand and agree, although some are somewhat preposterous and only ever made sense in context. I finally watched Easy Rider recently, and sure, the freedom, riding with no protection, sleeping wherever - but it's such a mediocre, badly-woven film. Same for quite a few Stones songs and a lot of other '60s/70s stuff - except Jimi Hendrix, that man was an alien.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Could it be that they just had a different agenda for their art than you do, and that the context and agendas changed over time? I find it more interesting to try to understand their time, to try to learn what their view of art was, what the norms were, what the context, was, and why - rather than try to judge their work by my standards, as if the changes of time have made my way superior.
wombatmobile 5y ago
“I don't need to hear Bill to go through a song. I need to hear Keith to go through a song. I know Bill will be playing what I'm playing anyway. I need to hear Keith because it's all there: the time, the chord changes, and all the licks you have to follow.” — Charlie Watts
linksnapzz 5y ago
A demonstration of the Charlie Watts method for handling interpersonal conflict on a high-performing team of specialists: "One anecdote relates that in the mid-1980s, an intoxicated Jagger phoned Watts's hotel room in the middle of the night, asking, "Where's my drummer?" Watts reportedly got up, shaved, dressed in a suit, put on a tie and freshly shined shoes, descended the stairs, and punched Jagger in the face, saying: "Don't ever call me your drummer again. You're my fucking singer!"
- lisper 5y ago
  > punched Jagger in the face That seems a wee bit excessive to me. [UPDATE, since this has gotten a zillion replies and a zillion downvotes]: The point I was intending to make was not that Watts's response was inappropriate under the circumstances (though I think that is also the case), but rather that "Charlie Watts method for handling interpersonal conflict on a high-performing team of specialists" is not one that ought to be held up as an example to be generally emulated.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    It's important to set boundaries and expectations in a long term business relationship, with the approach tailored to like minded practitioners.
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    I just finished reading pages from Charlie Munger about the importance of putting disincentives to undesirable behaviour. What one finds excessive is, of course, cultural. The pages ended remembering the tribe of two millennia ago who killed the last warrior to show at the assembly, or the use of George Washington to hang farm-boy deserters forty feet high as an example.
    - choeger 5y ago
      Somehow I doubt that this tribe had a lot of successful wars...
    - 5y ago
marban 5y ago
The biggest prize I ever won were on-stage tickets for the RS some twenty years ago and it turned out to be my greatest concert experience ever since. RIP. https://imgur.com/a/kt1VB7n https://imgur.com/a/kt1VB7n
beermonster 5y ago
RIP. I shall play some Stones tonight!
ajay-b 5y ago
Im speechless. Of all the things the others did and took, damn. Just a horrible shame.
goatherders 5y ago
This one hurts. One of my favorite parts of his style was he often didn't hit the high hat on 4 of a 4/4 beat. It's hard to hear it but I always thought that was an interesting choice. Whether he did it because that's how he learned to play or to deliberately leave some room for other sounds on the downbeat, it was interesting to me.
- mgkimsal 5y ago
  I first noticed that watching... the ... 81 tour film (album was 'Still Life' IIRC), I think, when I was first really digging in (well, it was ... probably 1990 when I was watching it, but that was still relatively 'recent'). I've watched for it in most videos and live perf since then and yep, didn't seem to change much. Unsure if it was a jazz-flavored thing or what, but distinctive.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  sometimes those simple removals make all the salt
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mgarciaisaia 5y ago
  Here's an interview in which he says he didn't ever noticed it - and some other guy (whom I'm too ignorant to identify) - explains how Charlie came up with that. https://youtu.be/CrAQQZi1Jf4 https://youtu.be/CrAQQZi1Jf4
  - goatherders 5y ago
    Steve Albini, apparently
krylon 5y ago
I am not big Stones fan (I have nothing against them, either, they are a legend!), but I always liked his style. Rest In Peace.
mgkimsal 5y ago
It's hard to talk too much about Charlie specifically, as in... he was a generally private person, and didn't do half the interviews the others did, but I remember a moderately 'techie' Stones connection from way back... The Stones were a pretty early adopter of some tech, and were 'streaming' back in 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone 'A November 1994 Rolling Stones concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas with 50,000 fans was the "first major cyberspace multicast concert."'
oger 5y ago
Charlie Watts was not only a great rock musician but (unbeknownst to many) a gifted jazz player and a gentleman. Rest in peace.
l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago
There's going to be a lot of people who rose to fame in the 60's fame-boom who are going to drop like flies soon.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
“Charlie’s good tonight, isn’t he?” One of my favorite parts from one of my favorite albums, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out by The Rolling Stones. Wherever you are Charlie, keep being good. https://youtube.com/watch?v=jtno1O7NIGQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=jtno1O7NIGQ
icare_1er 5y ago
Saw him at Pizza Express in London, playing with his boogie-woogie mates... will miss that chap. I fear the rest of the Stones will soon follow. RIP Charlie.
gdubs 5y ago
I learned to drum listening to Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones albums my dad set up for me in the garage. Watts is one of those great drummers who a lot of people miss because on the surface he seems simple. But, he’s hands down one of the greatest rock and roll drummers, up there with Ringo, Bonham.

350 points by coloneltcb 5y ago

never heard of her

Never thought I'd get to see the Stones, but I did a few years ago at the Desert Trip concerts. Honestly, I think I was lucky to catch them then. Same with all the bands that played there. Charlie was great and I was amazed by him. He was still banging on those drums as fast as ever and keeping the beat spot on. They were all happy to be there. Well, except maybe Dylan. Not sure if he's ever been "happy" but they were all having fun and thrilled to be there together. We all knew we're getting close to moving on. And we all felt like we did back then together. Each time one of them leaves the rest of us are all step closer. But, damn... our generation still rocked the house.

irrational 5y ago

How is this appropriate for Hacker News?

batch12 5y ago
How is it not?
Pet_Ant 5y ago
The criterion is along the lines of something that may be of interest to hackers. Not necessarily as hackers, but to them in general. All communities either become conservative and lock in around a few norms and aggressively police them or become liberal and become about anything and everything. There is no healthy middle. I mean why should economics and housing and finance topics be of interests to hackers?
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  It's kind of a community feel - I think HN has done a good job of flexing occasionally to allow non-tech news around cultural influences. The Rolling Stones are one of the most influential rock bands of the past half century and that is potentially worthy of discussion. I think housing and economy and finance are even more appropriate at times, especially when discussing topics that affect the average person - wonky, technical discussions that take a lot of thought and processing of second order effects.
giarc 5y ago
I'm always in favour of just letting the upvote/downvote buttons determine appropriateness.
kirykl 5y ago
Presumably the upvotes say it is of interest
- cma 5y ago
  If we go by that alone, next up: bikini pics and tabloid news.
  - argvargc 5y ago
    How then would you explain that this has never happened here?
    - cma 5y ago
      A moderation and flagging system.
101008 5y ago
The Rolling Stones are one of the greatest bands of all times. The passing of one of its original members (who, by the way, was part of the band for 58 years) it's a cultural event that it is worth discussing it.
- guhidalg 5y ago
  Yea but it has nothing to do with hacking or technology, and if you think it does then please explain how this belongs.
  - 101008 5y ago
    From Guidelines: > anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosit I think something like this gratifies intellectual curiosit of a lot of people. But as someone else said, upvotes and downvotes will decide better than any rule.
  - swader999 5y ago
    Charlie originally was trained as a graphic artist before joining the band so maybe that will give you some Satisfaction?
  - lisper 5y ago
    > it has nothing to do with hacking or technology Don't be so sure. Music is intimately related to math, and the Stones were one of the most innovative [Edit: influential] musical groups in human history. There are probably hacking and tech connections that are not immediately obvious. Also, social phenomena are interesting from a technological point of view as well (there's a reason social media is a thing) and the Stones were definitely that.
    - fuzzfactor 5y ago
      > it has nothing to do with hacking or technology > please explain how this belongs. I see no reason to downvote, but in some businesses they have a thing called engineering. Recording engineers are their own breed and many of the rock & roll greats were not university-trained but through years of serious progress earned the title with far less likelihood than a student entering a traditional engineering college. When the Stones started they only used 4-track studio recording gear and of course it was analog based on vacuum tubes with magnetic tape. Fairly big sound they got. Today's digital engineers can be considered to have a vast array of tools which never existed then, and 32 channels plus. Even with all that and the best software money can buy, there are going to be some engineers who never come close to capturing the real sound of a 4-piece rock act no matter how much time they put into mixing it. Not compared to a hastily mixed cut from a legendary analog release. And state-of-the-art studios may not be able to record at all without the functioning or presence of software which is naturally expected but not one of the limitations or show-stoppers of the analog days. Rock & roll is just one example of how technology marches on but people themselves don't necessarily get more advanced at the same rate. Sometimes even slip backwards. But oh well, that's technology for you. Probably only of interest to engineers anyway.
tablespoon 5y ago
> How is this appropriate for Hacker News? It's not another political or cultural flamewar? Also, these people have been around for so long, that I was starting to suspect they were actually immortal. > The news comes weeks after it was announced that Watts would miss the band's US tour dates to recover from an unspecified medical procedure.
wombatmobile 5y ago
> How is this appropriate for Hacker News? The energy from Charlie Watts’ drum sticks transmuted into more lines of code than you will ever be able to count.
France_is_bacon 5y ago
I wrote an app on the Rolling Stones a while back.
EL_Loco 5y ago
Stop this "why is this relevant for HN". If it's not, it'll leave the front page soon.
heyheyheysome 5y ago
He's white, so his death is newsworthy for HN. Contrast with say Kobe Bryant.
glitcher 5y ago
I for one am glad there is a wide variety of topics of interest posted and discussed here. If we were only pigeonholed into tech topics I would probably get bored of HN. I did prefer the original title which included the fact that Charlie Watts was the drummer for the Rolling Stones. I didn't know him by name, and adding more context to the title seemed helpful to me at least. In general I feel like HN suffers from title over-editing, but never from too much variety.
gpas 5y ago
https://fortune.com/2013/07/21/inside-rolling-stones-inc-fortune-2002/ https://fortune.com/2013/07/21/inside-rolling-stones-inc-for...
argvargc 5y ago
Because it stayed up long enough for you to see it.

riffic 5y ago

You know that xkcd post about people who've walked on the moon? same thing applies for 60s cultural icons. so it goes.

milesskorpen 5y ago
Reference: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/893:_65_Years https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/893:_65_Years
- wyldfire 5y ago
  > The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
- drivers99 5y ago
  Of interest is the updated graph (red line shows actual, which is sadly right on track): https://imgur.com/G7DbbBi https://imgur.com/G7DbbBi
toyg 5y ago
I understand and agree, although some are somewhat preposterous and only ever made sense in context. I finally watched Easy Rider recently, and sure, the freedom, riding with no protection, sleeping wherever - but it's such a mediocre, badly-woven film. Same for quite a few Stones songs and a lot of other '60s/70s stuff - except Jimi Hendrix, that man was an alien.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Could it be that they just had a different agenda for their art than you do, and that the context and agendas changed over time? I find it more interesting to try to understand their time, to try to learn what their view of art was, what the norms were, what the context, was, and why - rather than try to judge their work by my standards, as if the changes of time have made my way superior.

wombatmobile 5y ago

“I don't need to hear Bill to go through a song. I need to hear Keith to go through a song. I know Bill will be playing what I'm playing anyway. I need to hear Keith because it's all there: the time, the chord changes, and all the licks you have to follow.” — Charlie Watts

linksnapzz 5y ago

A demonstration of the Charlie Watts method for handling interpersonal conflict on a high-performing team of specialists: "One anecdote relates that in the mid-1980s, an intoxicated Jagger phoned Watts's hotel room in the middle of the night, asking, "Where's my drummer?" Watts reportedly got up, shaved, dressed in a suit, put on a tie and freshly shined shoes, descended the stairs, and punched Jagger in the face, saying: "Don't ever call me your drummer again. You're my fucking singer!"

lisper 5y ago
> punched Jagger in the face That seems a wee bit excessive to me. [UPDATE, since this has gotten a zillion replies and a zillion downvotes]: The point I was intending to make was not that Watts's response was inappropriate under the circumstances (though I think that is also the case), but rather that "Charlie Watts method for handling interpersonal conflict on a high-performing team of specialists" is not one that ought to be held up as an example to be generally emulated.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  It's important to set boundaries and expectations in a long term business relationship, with the approach tailored to like minded practitioners.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  I just finished reading pages from Charlie Munger about the importance of putting disincentives to undesirable behaviour. What one finds excessive is, of course, cultural. The pages ended remembering the tribe of two millennia ago who killed the last warrior to show at the assembly, or the use of George Washington to hang farm-boy deserters forty feet high as an example.
  - choeger 5y ago
    Somehow I doubt that this tribe had a lot of successful wars...
  - 5y ago

marban 5y ago

The biggest prize I ever won were on-stage tickets for the RS some twenty years ago and it turned out to be my greatest concert experience ever since. RIP. https://imgur.com/a/kt1VB7n https://imgur.com/a/kt1VB7n

beermonster 5y ago

RIP. I shall play some Stones tonight!

ajay-b 5y ago

Im speechless. Of all the things the others did and took, damn. Just a horrible shame.

goatherders 5y ago

This one hurts. One of my favorite parts of his style was he often didn't hit the high hat on 4 of a 4/4 beat. It's hard to hear it but I always thought that was an interesting choice. Whether he did it because that's how he learned to play or to deliberately leave some room for other sounds on the downbeat, it was interesting to me.

mgkimsal 5y ago
I first noticed that watching... the ... 81 tour film (album was 'Still Life' IIRC), I think, when I was first really digging in (well, it was ... probably 1990 when I was watching it, but that was still relatively 'recent'). I've watched for it in most videos and live perf since then and yep, didn't seem to change much. Unsure if it was a jazz-flavored thing or what, but distinctive.
agumonkey 5y ago
sometimes those simple removals make all the salt
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mgarciaisaia 5y ago
Here's an interview in which he says he didn't ever noticed it - and some other guy (whom I'm too ignorant to identify) - explains how Charlie came up with that. https://youtu.be/CrAQQZi1Jf4 https://youtu.be/CrAQQZi1Jf4
- goatherders 5y ago
  Steve Albini, apparently

krylon 5y ago

I am not big Stones fan (I have nothing against them, either, they are a legend!), but I always liked his style. Rest In Peace.

mgkimsal 5y ago

It's hard to talk too much about Charlie specifically, as in... he was a generally private person, and didn't do half the interviews the others did, but I remember a moderately 'techie' Stones connection from way back... The Stones were a pretty early adopter of some tech, and were 'streaming' back in 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbone 'A November 1994 Rolling Stones concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas with 50,000 fans was the "first major cyberspace multicast concert."'

oger 5y ago

Charlie Watts was not only a great rock musician but (unbeknownst to many) a gifted jazz player and a gentleman. Rest in peace.

l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago

There's going to be a lot of people who rose to fame in the 60's fame-boom who are going to drop like flies soon.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

“Charlie’s good tonight, isn’t he?” One of my favorite parts from one of my favorite albums, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out by The Rolling Stones. Wherever you are Charlie, keep being good. https://youtube.com/watch?v=jtno1O7NIGQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=jtno1O7NIGQ

icare_1er 5y ago

Saw him at Pizza Express in London, playing with his boogie-woogie mates... will miss that chap. I fear the rest of the Stones will soon follow. RIP Charlie.

gdubs 5y ago

I learned to drum listening to Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones albums my dad set up for me in the garage. Watts is one of those great drummers who a lot of people miss because on the surface he seems simple. But, he’s hands down one of the greatest rock and roll drummers, up there with Ringo, Bonham.