The Rolling Stones weren't "allowed" final visit with Charlie Watts

10 October 2021, 13:00

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood have been sharing their memories of the late Stones drummer.

The Rolling Stones weren't able to have one final meeting with late drummer Charlie Watts before he died.

The musician passed away in August at the age of 80 and his bandmates admitted the news came a shock - they thought he was on the mend after undergoing a medical procedure, only to then experience a "complication or two".

Ronnie Wood was the last member of the band to see Charlie alive and told the Los Angeles Times: “We watched horse racing on TV and just shot the breeze. I could tell he was pretty tired and fed up with the whole deal.

"He said, ‘I was really hoping to be out of here by now,’ then after that there was a complication or two and I wasn’t allowed back. No one was.”

Sir Mick Jagger recalled how he and Charlie used old fashioned methods to stay in touch.

He said: He didn’t do email or text or FaceTime, so I’d phone him and we’d talk about football."

Meanwhile, Keith Richards admitted he still hasn't processed the loss of his bandmate of nearly 60 years.

He said: “I’m still trying to put it together in my head. I don’t think I can be very erudite on Charlie at the moment.”

But Keith added: "Charlie was one of the funniest guys I’ve ever known, and the most unlikely man to be famous. He hated that side of the job and used to savagely take the p*** out of it.”

The Stones have been working on a new studio album and confirmed Watts will feature on some of the tracks.

Richards said: "Let me put it this way. You haven’t heard the last of Charlie Watts.”

The band's No Filter tour of North America has picked up again after a pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Jagger says that the group had Charlie's blessing to continue without him.

"We felt — and Charlie felt — that we should do this tour. We’d already postponed it by a year, and Charlie said to me, ‘You need to go out there. All the crew that have been out of work — you’re not gonna put them out of work again.’

"So I think it was the right decision to keep going. The band still sounds great onstage, and everyone’s been really responsive at the couple of big shows we’ve done so far."