A student of jazz drumming, Charlie Watts was headhunted by the Rolling Stones after bumping into them regularly in London’s rhythm and blues clubs. Once installed at the drum seat, he didn’t miss a beat in nearly sixty years with the band. He was there for the early shot at recognition; the Stones’s world conquest during the swinging sixties; and throughout the debauchery of the 1970s, typified by 1972’s Exile on Main St., considered one of the great albums of the century. By the 1980s, Watts was battling his own demons but emerged unscathed to enhance his unparalleled reputation even further over the ensuing decades. Watts went through band bust-ups, bereavements, and changes in personnel, managers, guitarists, and rhythm sections, but remained the rock at the heart of the Rolling Stones for nearly six decades.