One of rock’s most famous anecdotes goes like this: Mick Jagger shouted “Where’s my drummer?”, and Charlie Watts then punched the Rolling Stones singer in the face. Laconic comment Watts: “Never call me ‘your drummer’ again. You are MY SINGER!”
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As Jagger said in an interview about the Stones’ new album “Hackney Diamonds”, this story – which was also told in Keith Richards’ memoirs “Life” – was untrue. “That didn’t happen,” said the 80-year-old. “Keith came up with that. Charlie and Keith were both drunk and upset – but there were always so many people around us – there was no way we could get into a fight.”
In the interview with Mojo, Jagger also laughs at the anecdote that Charlie Watts smashed his head onto a tray of smoked salmon, so much so that Jagger almost fell out of a hotel window (however you imagine that connection). . “A table full of smoked salmon! That’s a good joke. How about we go one better? I turned into a smoked salmon and jumped out the window? Yes, that really happened.”
The brawl according to Keith Richards
The anecdote from Keith Richards’ 2010 autobiography “Life”: the one in which Charlie Watts almost threw Mick Jagger out of an Amsterdam window and Keith Richards’ wedding jacket was ultimately the reason why he didn’t fall into the depths.
“Don’t ever call me your drummer again!”
“There was one of those rare moments at the end of 1984 when Charlie lashed out – I’d only seen that a few times and it can be fatal; It takes a lot of balance and timing,” says Richards’ memoir. “He must have been pretty provoked for that. And the punch went in Mick’s direction.”
It was in Amsterdam, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were on their way back to their hotel room after being out all night. Richards gave his colleague his jacket for the way back. “I lent him the jacket I got married in,” a gesture that is said to have saved Jagger’s life.
At around five in the morning, the two reached the hotel, where Jagger immediately dialed Charlie Watts’ number. “I said don’t call him, not at this time. But he did and said, ‘Where’s my drummer?’ No Answer. So he put the phone down.”
That could have been the end of the story – perhaps if someone other than Charlie Watts had been on the other line.
“Mick and I were sitting there pretty pissed off… when about twenty minutes later someone knocked on the door. It was Charlie Watts.”
“I opened the door and he didn’t even look at me,” Watts came showered, shaved and wearing a Savile Row suit instead of his pajamas. “He just walked past me, towards Mick, stopped in front of him and said, ‘Don’t ever call me your drummer again.’ Then he grabbed him by the lapel of my jacket and gave him a right hook.” Rock history could have taken a different course from that point on.
“Mick fell onto the silver tray of smoked salmon on the table and began to slide towards the open window and with it the canal below. And I thought the hit wasn’t bad until I realized Mick was wearing my wedding jacket. And so I grabbed him before he fell into the Amsterdam Canal.”
According to Keith Richards’ story, Charlie Watts then angrily asked him why he had grabbed Jagger. Richards then simply replied: “My jacket, Charlie, that’s why!”
But the one blow wasn’t enough for Watts, Richards continues. “It took 24 hours to calm Charlie down. Twelve hours later he said, ‘Fuck it, I’m going to go down there and do it again.’ It takes a lot to get this guy so worked up.”