When Bill Wyman left the Rolling Stones shortly after Steel Wheels, I recall Jagger saying something heartless like, "It's just the bassist. We can hire another bassist."

I can't find that exact quote, but I did find this at, um, NightsWithAliceCooper.com:

Wyman, who retired from the band following its mammoth 115-date “Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle” world tour, admitted, “When I first left the Stones it took a few months to rebuild that relationship with them. It was quite stressful and they didn’t want me to leave. So they became bitchy. Instead of being nice and saying: 'Great 30 years. Cheers mate,' Mick (Jagger) would say the most absurd, stupid things, with that spoilt attitude he had. He’d say things like: 'Oh well, if anybody has to play bass I’ll do it. It can’t be that hard.'”

That's pretty close. I'm not saying Wyman is a musical genius (isn't "In Another Land" his? Interesting, but not a rock song), but he's well past good, and he and Watts were apparently good friends, not just because they made up the rhythm section. Pro tip: Laying a bass line in the groove isn't child's play. It's not Hendrix (though Hendrix did play bass -- and I'm not sure he thought it took much to play bass either), but it's not nothing.

Wyman and the Stones apparently made up, but I was worried initially that I'd see something similar for Watts when he died. "Oh well, we'll just hire another drummer."

Luckily that didn't happen, not exactly, and the group not only brought down their website to put up a tribute, but also released a video.

That said, if you look at the lyrics for "If You Can't Rock Me", the only mention of Charlie is arguably this line:

The band's on stage and it's one of those nights, oh yeah.
The drummer thinks that he is dynamite, oh yeah.

The rest is about (assumedly) the singer looking for, um, some satisfaction.

Seems to me there was a much better, nearly haunting, track from the same album that would've shown a little more introspection, "Time Waits For No One":

Yes, star-crossed in pleasure, the stream flows on by

Yes, as we're sated in leisure, we watch it fly, yes 

And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me
And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me 

Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman's face
Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste 

Time waits for no one, no favors has he
Time waits for no one, and he won't wait for me

That would've been a heck of a hat tip that even the Stones won't last forever, and would've marked that they aren't precisely the same Stones going forward.

Do I think the Stones should've cancelled their tour? I don't know. Watts was already off the bill for health. Seems they likely knew what was coming.

But I do I think the take home is that Mick is living his best life and isn't one to get, um, caught up in being overly sentimental or retrospective. The bread is buttered on one side, and that's his... and Keith's.

And though I really don't want to wade out in a pandemic to see them "one last time"¹, I'm tempted.

¹ I think this would mark the second or third time I've used that "this could be the last time" argument to excuse going to a concert, starting with that Steel Wheels tour. And yes, I'm finally old enough that I can't recall if I've seen them two or three times; Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon have kinda converged for me. I think I saw both, probably both in the same place, and they don't really distinguish themselves one from another in my memory now.

Labels: Other Stuff, Stones