How Elvin Jones’ Swirl and Kenny Clarke’s Ride Shaped Charlie Watts’ Rock Drumming on Stones Classics

The most interesting thing about Charlie Watts’ drumming on “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Gimme Shelter” is that he essentially played jazz ride cymbal patterns over rock grooves. Watts idolized Elvin Jones for his polyrhythmic, swirling attack on the kit — not the crash-happy bombast of most 60s rock drummers — and he copied Kenny Clarke’s approach to the ride cymbal, where the right hand acts as a steady, swinging timekeeper while the left hand and feet add accents. On “Sympathy for the Devil”, Watts locks into a hypnotic, almost Latin-tinged ride pattern that never rushes or breaks, drawing directly from Clarke’s bebop “spang-a-lang” but slowed to a snarling slide.

“Gimme Shelter” is a different case: Watts plays a more straight-ahead, tense eighth-note ride with occasional syncopated snare hits, but the feel is loose and behind the beat — a trick he learned from Elvin Jones’ ability to hover just behind the pulse. Where a rock drummer would have bashed the crash cymbal on every chorus, Watts keeps his right hand on the ride, letting the hi-hat and snare do the work. He once said he didn’t want to “play rock drumming” in the conventional sense; he wanted to swing rock,