That’s Charlie Watts jumping for rock ’n’ roll joy on the cover of the Rolling Stones’ live album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, dressed in a white T-shirt, white pants, and an Uncle Sam hat. He’s brandishing two guitars over his head while a mule, trailing behind him, dutifully carries Watts’s drum set.
It’s one of the few exuberant images of Watts, who often preferred to stay quietly in the background, letting his instrument speak for him. He “went for the groove,” as Stewart Copeland, the drummer for the Police, once observed. “Most rock drummers are trying to kill something; they’re chopping wood. Jazz drummers instead tend to be very loose to get that jazz feel, and he had that quality.”
