Charlie Watts of the British music group The Rolling Stones died Tuesday at a hospital in London. Watts played drums for the very successful band for almost sixty years. His publicist, Bernard Doherty, said the musician “passed away peacefully” surrounded by his family. Watts had announced he would not travel with the Stones in 2021 because of an undefined health issue. Watts was respected worldwide for his muscular style of drumming, which he combined with elements of jazz, a favorite music of the artist. He joined the band early in 1963, just a few months following its first public performance. Many of the most famous Stones songs, like Brown Sugar and Start Me Up, begin with a short guitar riff that is quickly joined by Watts' beats on the drums. Bill Wyman, the group’s bass player often described Watts’ skill as “fattening the sound.” The Stones began, Watts said, “as white blokes from England playing Black American music,” but quickly developed an identifiable sound all their own. Watts also did many independent musical projects throughout his years with the band. To the world, he was a rock star. But Watts often said that the experience was tiring, unpleasant, and even frightening. “Girls chasing you down the street, screaming...horrible!... I hated it,” he told The Guardian newspaper. In another media report, he described the drumming life as a “cross between being an athlete and a total nervous wreck.”