While his band members went through wild years and often changed partners, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts was married to a woman for his entire life – and so his band also relied on stability.
Like a metronome, he held the Rolling Stones together with his precise drumming. But Charlie Watts, who died on Tuesday at the age of 80, was also the haven of peace for the wild rock band. What was mainly due to his private life: While the other Stones had a varied life in relationships and had countless partnerships and affairs, there was only one woman in Watts’ life: Shirley Ann Shepherd, who was three years older.
The two met before the Stones celebrated their first successes, when the couple married in October 1964, the band had just released their second number 1 single “Little Red Rooster” in Great Britain, the big breakthrough in the USA still before.
Perhaps that is the reason for the stability of the relationship, which is little known in the music industry – Shirley already knew Charlie when he was still unknown. He never had to fear that she only loved him because of his fame.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards lived wild
When daughter Seraphina was born in March 1968, band colleague Mick Jagger was in a relationship with the married Marianne Faithfull, who also brought a child into the relationship. Three years later, Jagger married the model Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías in St. Tropez – after all, the marriage lasted almost a decade.
Keith Richards ‘life was even wilder in those years: at the time of Watts’ marriage he was still in a relationship with model Linda Keith, but then hitched the actress Anita Pallenberg to his bandmate Brian Jones – with whom he had three children. Which of course didn’t prevent him from having fun with other women – including the German model Uschi Obermaier – who, according to her autobiography, also had an affair with Mick Jagger.
From his marriage to the model Patti Hansen there are two more daughters, and Richards has five grandchildren in total. Jagger, on the other hand, has eight children, plus four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Charlie Watts lived a secluded life
The family life of Charlie and Shirley Watts, on the other hand, was much quieter: It stayed with one daughter, who in turn gave birth to a daughter. Charlotte is Charlie Watt’s only grandchild.
How wild the early years of the Rolling Stones were, bassist Bill Wyman explains in his biography “Stone Alone”. In a band meeting in 1965, the musicians boasted about their groupies: “I had 278 girls, Brian Jones 130, Mick around 30, Keith 6 and Charlie none.”
That was in 1965 – the worst years were still ahead of them. But if the gossip magazines and biographers are to be believed, Watts remained loyal to his Shirley all his life. The rock star life is said to have bored him, the family shied away from the glaring city life of metropolises like London or New York, instead moved to the town of Dolton in the south-west of England, where he bred Arabian stallions on a stud farm.
Maybe it was this down-to-earth attitude that kept the Rolling Stones from taking off. In future they will have to stay on the ground without Charlie Watts.
I am a 24-year-old writer and journalist who has been working in the news industry for the past two years. I write primarily about market news, so if you’re looking for insights into what’s going on in the stock market or economic indicators, you’ve come to the right place. I also dabble in writing articles on lifestyle trends and pop culture news.
