The late Charlie Watts often complained about the length of Rolling Stones' tours.
Charlie once said, "For me that's the only problem. It's the only way you can do it properly, is to do it for a long time, And, as I say, that's what we do. But they are a long time. You can never see the end of them."
Watts also wasn't pleased that most Rolling Stones shows were two hours or more, and he blamed Led Zeppelin's for that.
From official biography, Charlie’s Good Tonight, Watts said, "I blame Led Zeppelin for the two-hour-long show… We jumped in a few years from doing 20 minutes, all the hits and off -- the Apollo Revue, we’ll call it -- we went from doing club dates, which are two sets a night, which was great fun…to doing, thanks to Led Zeppelin, this two-hour long show...”
He added, "If you’re Jimmy Page, you can do that, and [John] Bonham’s 20-minute drum solo. It wasn’t about that with us; it was a different thing. I don’t like doing drum solos, period. I don’t hear things like that. When Zep…used to do that -- what are we, early '70s, I suppose -- that was hard work physically, because the monitors weren’t so good.”
Finally Charlie said, “But now the sound equipment is so sophisticated. The hardest thing with a drummer on those big stages is to be heard. Now, it’s done for you, virtually. The amplification is there, so I just play naturally, at the volume I feel like playing, in this little cage I live in, and they adjust the volume of it.”
Charlie Watts passed away on August 24th, 2021 from cancer at age 80. The biography Charlie's Good Tonight will be released on Tuesday.
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[Source: Classic Hits Today}