A letter, sent by Brian Jones to Charlie Watts to convince him to join The Rolling Stones, is to go up for auction in December.
It was written by Jones – at that stage very much the leader of the band – in 1962. The Stones at that time comprised Jones, Jagger, Richards, Dick Taylor – who later formed The Pretty Things – Ian Stewart on piano and an unnamed drummer, who Jones was decidedly unimpressed with: “Our present drummer is atrocious!” he wrote.
Addressed to ‘Mr. C. Watts’ at his childhood home in Wembley, Jones’s letter is most polite. It begins: “Dear Charlie, if you consider this letter rather impertinent, please excuse me.”
Charlie was at that time behind the kit for Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated – a steady gig – and Jones evidently had to sell the idea of the Stones to young Mr Watts: “We are looking for a good drummer. Already we consider our band far better than Alex’s – we are getting a very tightly-knit sound.”
Clearly Charlie took some convincing – it would be another seven months before he would commit to the Stones. By then Jones had recruited Bill Wyman on bass and Dick Taylor had returned to art college.
The newly-assembled line up played their first gig at Ealing Jazz Club in February 1963, recruited Andrew Loog Oldham as manager in May and signed to Decca shortly afterwards. Ahead lay fame and immortality.
The letter apparently ended up in the possession of Watts’s sister and is to be auctioned by Sotheby’s in December. It’s expected to fetch somewhere between $70,000 and $80,000 (£52,000-£60,000).
“Few documents bring us as close to the formation of a legendary band as this letter,” said Craig Inciardi, Sotheby’s music and pop culture specialist.
He continued: “Written just weeks before the Rolling Stones’ first performance and months before Charlie Watts officially joined the group, it captures the excitement and ambition of a band on the cusp of history. Having remained in the Watts family for more than six decades, it stands as an extraordinary first-hand record of the moment Brian Jones set out to recruit the drummer whose distinctive sound would help shape one of the most influential bands in rock history.”
If you so wish you can see the letter before it’s sold, at New York Sotheby’s from 2 to 8 December. The auction will be on 15 December.
