Charlie presenting Dad with the Zildjian Lifetime Achievement Award in London, 2008. I know that my late father, Ginger Baker, would want me to pay tribute to one of his two most-enduring friendships. Here is my personal account of a close, yet relatively little-known relationship. From my earliest recollections of the early 1960s, I knew the name of Charlie Watts. Apart from the fact that his mum knew my mum Liz’s aunt Pamela in Kingsbury, North London—where Charlie grew up—his proximity to where we lived in Neasden, and which was then the Bakerloo Line tube (now the Jubilee Line), meant Charlie was a frequent sighting. He was revered in our house. Charlie was forever credited with playing a major part in helping dad’s career on its upward trajectory. He had for some time very quietly admired dad’s playing in the smoky jazz clubs of late-1950s London, where many of the […]

October 2021 Issue