The Perfect Life # 26 by Dr. Perfect

Out of Time

Since Charlie Watts passed away last month, I have really struggled to live my life. I realize this sounds crazy. The Stones are already on tour without him, and while that’s not right, the show must go on. The music must go on.

Charlie Watts was the best Stone. He was certainly the most English of them all. He kept maybe the least disciplined musicians in show business for 50 years.

What if his beat wasn’t just keeping the Stones together? What if he was keeping our universe together? What if there is only wrongness left for us all?

What can restart me, Dr. Perfect?

—————

I’ve long suspected Watts of tying the universe together through his drumming. Like the earth spinning on its axis, it’s one of those things we don’t entirely acknowledge or appreciate.

We can’t very well shunt the burden of our existence on a drummer of a rock band, but a post-Charlie Watts world is an undeniably scary place. I don’t know where we’ll be in the next few years.

If I could have only seen them one more time as a complete ensemble. I saw the Stones play Central Park in 1975, blitzed out of my mind on Italian ice. Brain freezes were all the rage.

Years later, I caught a Tampa show in the early 2000s. They sounded sharper than ever. Watts was on stage, smiling n the jumbotron, effortlessly drumming. They ended their set with “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” amid fireworks and an explosion of confetti. I never met the man, but at that moment, everything was right in the world.

Charlie is somewhere in a higher dimension, still keeping the beat, still letting all of us spend the night together. We’ll all just have to listen a little harder.

Dr. Perfect has slung advice across the globe for the last two decades due to his dedication to the uplift of the human condition.