Charlie Watts Stole the Trick The Rolling Stones Used Before Their 1975 Tour, According to Ronnie Wood
The Rolling Stones seemed to be a magnet for controversy during their heyday. John Lennon expected them to face backlash in the 1980s, but they angered some anxious journalists years before that decade. Charlie Watts stole the promotional trick The Rolling Stones used before their 1975 tour and left a trail of upset rock journos in their wake, according to Ronnie Wood.
Ronnie Wood officially debuted with the Stones in 1975
Wood and The Rolling Stones were no strangers to each other. Wood attended an early Stones gig and promised himself he’d one day join the band. Fast forward a few years, and Keith Richard lived in a guest house on his property, and Wood helped write a hit Stones song before he joined the band.
When Mick Taylor quit the band, Wood made the shortlist to audition as rhythm guitarist. Drummer Charlie Watts cracked a joke at Wood’s expense during the tryout. That seemed to indicate he was in the band, but the official call came many months later.
Wood joined The Rolling Stones before their 1975 North American summer tour and became an official member later that year. When they landed in New York City to prepare for the shows, it was Watts’ idea to steal the promotional trick the group used to spread the word.
Wood said Charlie Watts stole the trick The Rolling Stones used to promote their 1975 tour
The Rolling Stones’ 1975 tour kicked off in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on June 1 (Wood’s birthday). They arrived in New York City to rehearse and promote it several weeks earlier. Wood and the other band members stayed in luxury hotels near Central Park (The Plaza and The Pierre), but Wood writes in his autobiography Ronnie that Watts stole his trick to promote the tour from NYC jazz musicians:
“A few mornings later, we gathered at the Plaza, went out the rear door, sneaked into an ice cream van, and went downtown to the corner of 12th Street and 5th Avenue. A flatbed truck was waiting for us, all set up with amps and instruments. This was Charlie’s doing. He read somewhere that black jazz artists used to roll through Harlem playing on a flatbed, so he nicked the idea for us.”
Ronnie Wood
As the Stones rolled through Manhattan, they bypassed the restaurant where they promised to conduct interviews with journalists. That didn’t sit well with the writers, but the Stones didn’t care.
“We drove to the restaurant, as crowds gathered along the street and started following us, stopped just long enough to catch everyone’s attention inside, then kept right on going down 5th Avenue,” Wood writes in Ronnie. “Journalists raced after the flatbed, yelling at us, complaining that we’d promised them interviews. And the more they yelled at us, the more we yelled back, ‘F— you.’”
The guitarist had a good relationship with Watts and honored the drummer after his death
Watts’ August 24, 2021, death shocked the music world and left fans wondering what The Rolling Stones would do next. They did what they do best, hitting the road for a series of European concerts in the summer of 2022. Steve Jordan sat behind the kits in Watts’ place.
Support and condolences flooded in when the drummer died. It didn’t go unnoticed by Wood, who tweeted, “Thank you all for your condolences and kind tributes to Charlie. I feel the love you’ve been sending, it means so much,” a few weeks after Watts’ death.
The guitarist paid tribute to Watts by tweeting a video a week later, and he honored the drummer with a tweet that read, “Charlie, missing you every single day. Shirley, Seraphina and Charlotte, we hold you close in our hearts xxx,” a year later.
Before Charlie Watts stole the idea to promote The Rolling Stones’ 1975 tour, he made a lighthearted joke at Ronnie Wood’s expense during the guitarist’s tryout. Playing together in the same band for nearly 50 years helped them forge a close relationship that led to Wood paying tribute to the drummer after his 2021 death.
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