Speaking to Guitarist magazine, he said: "All I can say is I loved the man dearly and I miss him. I still have conversations with him (laughs)."
Sharing a single picture of himself with his arm round Watts, Richards writes: “Charlie Watts was my bed. I could lay on there, and I know that not only would I have a good sleep, but I’d wake up and it’d still be rocking. Miss you Charlie.”
“Charlie sounded like an American drummer,” said Richards. “He had that American feel. That’s what it was.”
He was not a flamboyant, risk-taking showman in the manner of the Who’s Keith Moon, nor an exponent of pummelling raw power along the lines of Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham, nor an expert in tricky time signatures like Rush’s Neal Peart. He certainly didn’t go in for the kind of elaborate equipment – gongs and double bass drums – that rock drummers frequently use to draw attention to themselves at the rear of the stage, preferring to stick with a 1957 kit that was tiny by modern standards.
Richards and Watts worked in tandem. All Richards would have to do is look at Watts to know they were on to the right groove. “I’d usually look at Charlie and he’d just give me a grin because its clicking,” said Richards, “and it’s almost like you don’t even want to touch the strings because they’re doing it themselves and they’re hot.”
Sheryl Crow said that the marriage between Keith and Charlie created its own instrument. “The space they gave each other,” she said, “the ways the instruments fell was like a tapestry.” (americansongwriter)
In an undisclosed location is where Watts housed a treasure trove of drum kits, ones belonging to some his all-time favorite drummers, including Tony Williams, and one Kenny Clark once gave to Max Roach and Joe Morello from his time in the Dave Brubeck Quartet. He even owned a Charlie Parker “Bird” horn case.
Watts often told Green that he some day wanted to open a drum museum.
The most legendary story about Watts – the possibly apocryphal one about him losing his temper when Mick Jagger referred to him as “my drummer”, punching him in the face and telling him he was, in fact, Watts’s singer – is legendary because it seemed so utterly out of character.
For many Rolling Stones fans, Charlie Watts is the band’s most mysterious and intriguing member. He’s a guy who prefers jazz to rock, yet has spent nearly 60 years playing in the world’s greatest rock & roll band. (When the Stones played Glastonbury in 2013, he said, “I don’t want to do it.
Everyone else does. I don’t like playing outdoors, and I certainly don’t like festivals.”) A well-dressed eccentric, he is known to draw a sketch of every single hotel room he stays in and owns cars despite being unable to drive. “He’s a very secretive man,”
