Over the years, Watts built up a network of dealers who knew his tastes and would notify him first of anything they felt would be of interest.

Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Life, the Times, and the Rolling

He sketched every tour hotel room he occupied, and later advised on the Stones’ elaborate stage sets.Presentation copy of the first edition, inscribed by the author to Oscar Wilde’s son Vyvyan Holland: ‘for Vyvyan with best wishes from Evelyn’. I remember once when [Watts’s wife] Shirley was going up the stud farm, Charlie put on a beautiful Savile Row suit. Friday’s sales were dwarfed by the previous day’s bids, on which the gavel could be heard knocking on in-demand copies of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles and F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby. Below, Billboard is running an exclusive excerpt from Sexton’s book which details Watts’ role in turning the Stones into a carefully plotted touring juggernaut with iconic visuals, which changed the live music business in the late ’80s and beyond. There are lists of who guested at which shows and on which albums, praise for Charlie Watts’s unerring timing and ability to hold together a rowdy, loose-limbed band (bassist Bill Wyman gets rare praise for his part too) and some commentary on drum technique, but the impact and meaning of the Stones’ music stays unremarked.

Charlie Watts’s prized book and music Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts’s prized book and music

However, the ever-practical Watts quietly weaned himself off drugs even before his problem had become public knowledge, and concentrated on building a family life focused around horses and breeding sheepdogs at a country estate he had purchased in Devon. He also distracted himself from the squabbles and struggles of the Stones by putting together the Charlie Watts Big Band, which featured many top British jazz players. Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis were his musical idols, and his playing was inspired by jazz drummers such as Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes and Philly Joe Jones.To my Darling: To my Beloved, reward for braveing [sic] any and all miseries, I adore you”, signed ‘Bird’, with the original envelope addressed ‘To The Summation of Beauty’. There were moments when Watts’ drumming could be showy – as on his thunderous performance on 1966’s Paint It Black – but usually, Watts majored in less obvious skills: perfect timing, a swing to his playing rooted in the hours he’d spent drumming along to jazz records in his bedroom in the late 50s, a particular brilliance with shuffle patterns, an ability to provide a rock-solid footing regardless of whether they were venturing into psychedelia, disco, reggae or funk.