He was primarily a jazz and rhythm and blues player before he ventured on to the rock scene. He would've learnt great techniques and playing difficult time signatures with that grounding. Rock music tends to be straight forward 4/4 more often than not. One of my mate's was Watts painter and decorator. He said his apartment near Battersea bridge was like a shrine to jazz legend Charlie Parker.
Have you seen Clint Eastwood’s film Bird about Parker? It’s very good, but a bit depressing. I like some Stones stuff but am not a real aficionado. There is definitely some real musicality and knowledge about their peers in there.
No proof behind this theory, but I reckon young, upcoming bands draw on their experiences in the real world, struggling to make a living, relationship issues etc, and use this to focus their writing on passing messages out to their fans, who are generally going through the same pile of emotions. As the bands gain more and more success, they move away from their grass roots and start to inhabit a world where people just don't say "No" to them, get everything given to them and therefore don't have to try that hard anymore. They become complacent in their cocooned lives. The mega-stars are the ones most at fault over this. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of bands who are very successful and continue to experiment and create fantastic music, but the rawness fades with age, and the polished act loses some of the original lustre of the early material.
Great theory and definitely got some substance. Now I’ve got thinking about it…more and more bands come to mind in the early/great, later/****. COLDPLAY….I rest my case
Absolutely bonkers on stage - think he'd smoked more weed than the whole festival combined! Here he is coming on stage...
RIP That was either an incredibly aggressive cancer or diagnosed very late, in general the outlook for breast cancer is pretty good nowadays.
