Remembering Acclaimed American Painter Chuck Close

DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University, in for Terry Gross. We're going to remember artist Chuck Close, who died last week at the age of 81. Regarded as one of the leading artists of his generation, he was known for his giant, larger-than-life hyper-realist renderings of faces. They were based on photographs he'd taken initially of his friends, who included Philip Glass and Lou Reed. Later, Bill Clinton was the subject of one of his paintings. Close's best-known portrait is of himself. Up close, his 9-foot paintings looked like a patchwork of abstract dots, circles or squiggles. But when viewed from a distance, the painting would coalesce into a face rendered with photographic precision.

In 1988, Chuck Close suffered a collapsed spinal artery, which at first left him paralyzed from the neck down. After a partial recovery, he was able to paint from his wheelchair, using brushes strapped to his hand. Four years ago, Close faced charges of sexual harassment, charges made by several women who had been in his studio. He apologized and acknowledged that he had spoken crudely to women about their body parts, claiming that this was in the context of evaluating them as possible subjects for a painting.

According to a New York Times obituary of Close, he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2013. Two years later, it was further diagnosed as frontotemporal dementia. His neurologist was quoted as saying that Close's inappropriate conduct could be attributed to that disease. Terry Gross spoke to Chuck Close in 1998, when the Museum of Modern Art in New York was showing a retrospective of his work.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Let's try to describe what's happening formally in your paintings. Your paintings are built not of, like, big elaborate brushstrokes, but of little dots or little circles. And it's the accumulation of all these dots or circles or squiggles, depending on the period that we're looking at, that kind of together add up to the larger structure of a face. But all the components are just really small dots or squiggles or bits of color.

CHUCK CLOSE: There's no there's no direct relationship between the photograph that I work from - the imagery that's embedded in that photograph - and the marks that occur on the canvas. It's a little bit like translating from one language to the next. If you were to translate it directly, it might not make any sense. You sort of have to understand it in one language and then deconstruct it and reconstruct it in the new format. And of course, paintings don't happen the same way a photograph happens. Photo - paintings are built. And my paintings are built incrementally, one unit at a time in a way that's not all that different from, say, the way a writer would work. That is, there's never any time that a writer is doing anything more than slamming one word up against the next and rejecting one word and slipping another one in and seeing how that works. And because I work incrementally, I do the same thing. I push little pieces of paint up against each other. And I work essentially from the top down, from left to right. And I build - I slowly build these paintings, construct them the way somebody might make a quilt or crochet or knit.

GROSS: I want to talk a little bit more about the faces themselves, the way you paint the faces themselves. You've said that you try to see the faces neutrally without opinion or subjectivity, without editorializing in any way about the face. And yet the face always reads in some way to me. I see the faces very subjectively, even though you as the painter didn't see them (laughter) subjectively. Talk with me about the approach that that you're taking to the subject matter of not kind of imposing any kind of feeling or point of view.

CLOSE: Well, it's not that I'm uninterested in the psychological reading of the paintings. I just don't want to lobby for one reading over all others, and to present them straightforwardly and flatfootedly without editorial comment, without cranking it up for extra psychological readings or without drawing big circles around things, saying make sure you see it this way, I sort of leave it to the viewer, to, you know, to read the image. And I believe that a person's face is a kind of roadmap to their life. And embedded in the imagery is a great deal of evidence, if you want to decode it. If a person has laughed his or her whole life, they'll have laugh lines. If they've frowned their whole lives, they have furrows in their brow. And it's not necessary for me to have them laughing or crying or anything in order to have people be able to read them.

GROSS: Your canvas is very large, and because you include every detail of a person's face, every line and wrinkle and pucker and pore, every flaw is included, or what we would consider a flaw is not only included, but it's kind of enlarged because the painting is so large. And that's part of what I find so fascinating. The faces are so real and recognizable. Looking at one of your faces in a painting, it's a lot like looking at yourself in the bathroom mirror with the kind of harsh lighting that you have there, and you see everything. So there's something so recognizable about the landscape of the faces, the way you paint them.

CLOSE: Well, yeah, I - we don't stand close enough to each other. We don't invade each other's space enough to really be able to see the intimate level of detail that I typically put in one of these paintings, because they're, in fact, usually 9 feet high. So if there's more information than you ever really wanted to know about someone, and it makes it perhaps a more intimate experience. I make these - try to make these big, aggressive, confrontational images that you can see from clear across the room. And you have one kind of relationship with it there and then another relationship at a middle viewing distance where you scan it, and you can't readily see the thing as a whole.

And then hopefully I've sucked the viewer right up to the canvas, where you can see the individual marks and the methodology, how it got there. But in a way, what I've tried to do is make something, rip it loose from the context in which we normally see it and make a kind of Brobdingnagian world, whereas the viewer behaves almost like one of Gulliver's Lilliputians crawling across the landscape of the face, not even necessarily always being aware of what it is that they're crawling across, stumbling across - stumbling on a beard hair and falling into a nostril. That makes it for a very active and very personal physical experience for the viewer, I think.

GROSS: You know, we think of classical painters as having wanted to paint models who were beautiful. But it's not, you know, classic beauty that interests you in faces.

CLOSE: Well, I, you know, I'm not looking for the grotesque or the ugly. I think...

GROSS: I think you're looking for the fact of the face.

CLOSE: Well, I'm looking for every man, every woman. I first painted my friends - usually, they're artists - because they were anonymous. And I didn't want, you know, Warhol was painting superstars and movie stars. And the history and traditions of portraiture have often been the wealthy, the famous, popes, presidents. And I wanted regular people that we didn't know. Unfortunately or fortunately for them, many of them managed to get famous on me. And they became much more recognizable, at least within the art community. And now I don't worry that much about trying to find anonymous people. And so many of my friends have become well-known, I just paint them as they come.

GROSS: I've read that you've had a learning disability that's affected your ability to actually recognize faces in real life.

CLOSE: Yeah. I think I was probably driven to do what I do because I do have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces. I have almost photographic vision for things that are two-dimensional, which is probably why I work from photographs instead of working from life. But I believe I was driven to painting the portrait at least partially by a desire to commit to memory and to really understand and scan the images of people that I care about because I do have this trouble recognizing faces. And, of course, I don't remember their names either. So...

GROSS: (Laughter).

CLOSE: ...I'm in big trouble.

GROSS: So one of the reasons why you paint from photographs is because you recognize faces better in two dimensions than in three. So it's easier for you to use a picture than a model. Are there other reasons why you work from photographs for your painting?

CLOSE: Yeah. When you paint from life for an extended period of time - and my paintings have taken as long as 12 or 14 months and routinely now take three or four months each - if you work from life, the subject gains weight and lose weight. The hair gets long, and they cut it off. And they're happy. They're sad. They're awake. They're asleep. And the painting becomes a kind of mean average of all the changes that the model went through, plus whatever feelings you have for them while they're occupying your space. I would hate to have this subject in my studio for a year.

So the paint - the photograph, gives me an opportunity to have a poem-like frozen moment of time, sort of cuts across time, a hundredth of a second. And there's something of the freshness and the immediacy of that hundredth of a second is still there hopefully in the finished painting, which I construct over a more novelistic time frame. And it allows me to just keep working and to always refer back to the original photograph to see whether I actually saw what I thought I saw.

GROSS: Now, tell us a little bit about the way you work with grids when you're painting a face from a photograph.

CLOSE: Well, the use of a grid as a scaling-up method goes back to ancient Egypt and was, of course, used in the Renaissance and used all along as a way to take a small drawing or a preparatory sketch and enlarge it by having smaller squares on the preparatory sketch and bigger ones on the painting. It's just a way to scale up an image. But at a - and all of my work from the 1960s on have been built with the use of a grid. I don't use a projector or anything like that to get an image on. But at a certain point, I decided to let the grid remain a visible part of the image.

Initially, I would get rid of the grid, so nobody knew that I used it. But at a certain point, I began to leave the incremental unit to show. And I found all kinds of ways from using my own fingerprints to gluing on little wads of pulp paper to any one of a number of ways of working incrementally and letting the individual unit show. One of the things I like about working that way is that there's nothing about the building block which says anything about what's going to be made from it.

GROSS: Exactly. Right exactly.

CLOSE: There's no mark that equals hair. There's no mark that equals skin or anything else. It's a little bit like an architect choosing a brick. The brick doesn't determine anything about what kind of building will be built from it. You stack up the bricks one way and you make a gas station, or you stack up the bricks another way and you can build a cathedral. Both of them will be very different experiences. But it wasn't the brick that determined the nature of that experience.

BIANCULLI: Artist Chuck Close speaking to Terry Gross in 1998 - more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1998 interview with artist Chuck Close. He died last week at age 81. His giant paintings of faces were made up of smaller units of squiggles, circles and other shapes.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: So what suits your personality about working in these smaller units, one dot at a time or one grid at a time?

CLOSE: Well, you know, actually, I'm a nervous wreck.

GROSS: (Laughter).

CLOSE: I'm a slob. I'm - I have no patience. And I'm rather lazy. All of those things would seem to guarantee that I would not make work like I make. But I felt I didn't want to just go with my nature and say, well, that's what I am. I can only make big, sloppy, nervous, quick paintings. I thought to construct a situation in which I couldn't behave that way was also to address my nature.

But I found that one of the nice things about working this way, working incrementally, is that I don't have to reinvent the wheel every single day. Today I did what I did yesterday. And tomorrow I'll do what I do today. You can pick it up and put it down. I don't have to wait for inspiration. There are no good days or bad days.

And I'm - every day essentially builds positively on what I did the day before. In some ways, I think it's rather like what used to be called women's work. That is quilting, crocheting, knitting or whatever. And the advantage of that way of working was that women could knit for a while, put it down, go feed the baby, come back and pick it up and knit a little more and then put it down and go out and weed the garden.

And it was - it allowed for a way to just keep working. If a belief in a process - for instance, how do you make a sweater? Oh, my God. I wouldn't know how to make a sweater. But if you believe in the process and you knit one and you purl two long enough, eventually, you get a sweater. And I think given my nature, it was very good for me to have a way to work in which I was able to add to what I already had and slowly construct the final image out of these little building blocks.

GROSS: What's amazing is if you were the kind of painter who did canvases with big virtuoso brush strokes, you would have never been able to keep up with that once you lost your movement. But because you work in these small kind of dots or circles or squiggles and use those as building blocks, you're still, with that paintbrush strapped to your hand, able to do more or less the same style of painting that you did before.

CLOSE: Right. I was lucky that the way I was working was ideally suited for the condition I found myself in. The one thing that I haven't been able to do - and it does bring me considerable upset - is that because I don't - my fingers don't move, I haven't found a way to really draw because drawing requires much more of the wrist and the movement of the fingers for a kind of nuanced kind of control. But painting, you really do with your whole arm anyhow, and you move with your shoulder and your elbow more than you do your wrist and fingers.

GROSS: How do you think your style or your vision has changed in the nine years that you've been paralyzed?

CLOSE: Well, I don't think there's been much change at all. The one area in which there might be some change is that I think there - because I have so many more eggs in this basket, there are so many things that I can't do that I used to enjoy doing, luckily, painting is - if I had to pick one thing that I could still do, it certainly would be painting. And luckily, that I can do. But I guess there is a slightly increased sense of celebration in the work, a more celebratory aspect to it, because I am so pleased to be able to still work. And I've - I enjoy the activity so much. And in fact, the days and hours that I paint fly by, and the times that I'm doing other things move at glacial speed. And those times drag on.

GROSS: Because you don't have much movement now at all and you have to paint with the brushes strapped onto your wrist, have you given a lot of thought to how much painting is something that happens in your mind and how much is something that happens with your hands?

CLOSE: Well, somebody told me in the hospital - and I don't remember who it is - that, oh, you'll be all right because you paint with your head and not with your hands. And I thought, oh, easy for you to say, you know?

(LAUGHTER)

CLOSE: And I thought, gee, that's like something that came out of a fortune cookie or something.

GROSS: (Laughter).

CLOSE: I was actually quite annoyed that they had this kind of throwaway answer for my very severe problem. But in fact, you know, they were right. Once you know what art looks like, you can figure out how to make some of it. And it's just a question of adaptation.

I would like to say, also, that part of my ability to get back to work is largely due to the fact that I am and have been for 30 years a very successful artist and have made a lot of money. And I can afford to equip myself with what's necessary to be able to get back to work. I can have a totally wheelchair-accessible studio. I can hire assistants who can get me where I want to go. And I still make the paintings entirely by myself. My assistants don't help me paint, but they help me with all the other things.

So if this were to happen to another artist who was not as recognized and celebrated as I was and not as financially successful as I was, no matter how much they might have wished to get back to work, it may have been an impossibility. So again, I think that I'm very lucky.

GROSS: Chuck Close, a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much for talking with us.

CLOSE: Thanks. Thanks very much.

BIANCULLI: Chuck Close speaking with Terry Gross in 1998. The pioneering artist died August 19 at age 81.

After a break, we remember war correspondent and war hero Joe Galloway, who died last week at age 79, and Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, who died Tuesday at age 80. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL RIESMAN'S "IN THE UPPER ROOM: DANCE II")
DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, in for Terry Gross. Former war correspondent Joe Galloway, the only civilian awarded a Medal of Valor by the Army for combat action in the Vietnam War, died last week at the age of 79. We're going to listen back to excerpts of two interviews with him.

As a 24-year-old UPI correspondent, Galloway was at the first major battle of the Vietnam War. He collaborated on the bestselling book about that battle called "We Were Soldiers Once... And Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed The War In Vietnam." He wrote it with the man who led that campaign, Lieutenant General Harold Moore. The book was also made into a film. Galloway later wrote for U.S. News and World Report and for Knight Ridder newspapers. He was critical of the runup to the Iraq War, which brought him to the notice of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

We're going to listen to part of our interview with Joe Galloway from 1992 about their book. General Moore led 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry into the Ia Drang Valley. They never expected to be surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Reinforcements came from both sides. The battle ended with 230 Americans dead, 240 wounded and 3,000 North Vietnamese dead. A note, please be aware - in about six minutes, there is a graphic depiction of a soldier injured in battle.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: Joe Galloway, I'm going to ask you to describe what it was like to be on the ground in the middle of a battle in which there was rocket fire, bombs, cannons, ground artillery.

JOE GALLOWAY: This was shocking. This was overwhelming noise. You couldn't hear yourself think. The second morning, the enemy launched a major attack on the southeast side of this little football-sized clearing. And all of a sudden, this thunderous attack erupts, and we're right behind the company that's being hit. And the machine gun fire and the rifle fire and the rocket grenades of the enemy that pass through that company are landing on us. Men next to me fell over with a bullet in the head. I was lying down as close to the ground as I could get, seemed like the right thing to do.

When I felt the toe of a combat boot in my ribs, and I sort of turned my head and tilted up and looked, and it was the battalion sergeant major, a man 6'3" tall, a big bear of a guy. And he bent over at the waist and sort of yelled down at me so I could just hear him. And what he said shocked me. He said, sonny, you can't take no pictures laying down there on the ground. And I thought about that for a minute. And I realized he's right. I can't do my job down here. And the other thing that crossed my mind is I think we're probably all going to be killed. And if that's the case, I'd just as soon take mine standing up anyway. So I got up and went about my business.

GROSS: What did you shoot?

GALLOWAY: I was carrying a Nikon camera and an M16 rifle.

GROSS: (Laughter).

GALLOWAY: And on occasion, I used them both.

GROSS: Did your pictures turn out from the battle?

GALLOWAY: The pictures were - for somebody who was as scared as I was, they weren't too bad.

GROSS: Now, this battle lasted four days and four nights. Did you get any sleep at all, either of you, during the length of the battle?

GALLOWAY: Sleep sort of leaves your mind. I had been on the perimeter with one of Colonel Moore's - his Bravo Company. And that was foxholes and alarms all night and 100% alert, so I got no sleep that night. And I got no sleep the next night. And I think it was on the last night we were in there, somewhere about 2:00 in the morning, it kind of caught up with me. And I remember leaning back against a tree. And the last thing I remember for about an hour and a half until the shooting started again was I remember that same fellow who booted me up onto my feet in the middle of the firestorm. I remember him kneeling down, the sergeant major, and putting a poncho liner over me and tucking me in like I was his son or his grandchild.

And I thought, what a tender gesture from such a tough man. And I did, I just conked out. I slept for a couple of hours. I woke - I was awakened by the renewed fighting and came up out of the poncho liner and went back to work. Some of that work, I would say, you're not so much a newsperson in those circumstances as you are of - another set of hands. A bit of - you can be of use. You can carry the wounded. You can bring water. You can carry ammunition. You can...

GROSS: Did you carry the wounded?

GALLOWAY: I did. I did. The one memory that will never leave my mind is what they call a friendly fire incident that occurred on the second day. And we were around the command post, and someone said, my God, look. And I looked up, and there were two canisters of napalm that had just been released by a U.S. Air Force F-100 jet. And they were coming directly at us. And there was - his wingman was behind him and alongside, and if the first set of napalm cans didn't get us, the second were surely going to. And I can remember Colonel Moore screaming, get him to pull up, pull up, pull up, and the - Charlie Hastings, the Air Force forward controller, on the radio screaming at that pilot.

The damage was done with the first two, but we could maybe stop the second plane from dropping his - and Charlie managed to do that - but the other two just, like, slow motion coming down at us. The officer next to me, he knew something I didn't know, that if you are caught in napalm, the one thing you need to do is protect your eyes. And he turns, and he put his face into my shoulder and protected his eyes while I just watched them come.

And they went just directly over our heads. And they struck in the middle of a couple of small foxholes where our engineer detachment were dug in in the grass. And the napalm engulfed them, and we could see them dancing in the fire. And as soon as that that napalm died down and we could run out into that smoldering grass, we did. And a man loomed up in the smoke, and he said, get this man by his feet. And I reached, and I caught his ankles. And when I did, the nylon of the the combat boots crumbled in my hands and the flesh came off. And I could feel the bones of his ankles in the palms of my hands. And you never, ever forget something like that. Those men lay for an hour or so in our little makeshift aid station right beside us, screaming in pain in spite of all the morphine in the world. This affects you. You're no longer that - you can't be a detached observer in those circumstances. You - this is - these are people who are giving their lives to save yours.

GROSS: I'd like to ask you if, during the battle, when you probably thought there was a good chance you would die, if you made any bargains with God or made any promises about what you would do if you did live?

GALLOWAY: I did not. I was very young at the time, just turned 24. I had thought about this myself. And I thought, this is a possibility, but I'd have no wife. I have no children. This is my life I'm risking. And it would cause some pain to my mother and father, but it's worth the risk. Now, I went to war again when I was 49 years old. And I rode with the tanks of the 24th Infantry Division into the Euphrates River Valley, deep in Iraq.

And that was different. I'm married. I have two young sons, 12 and 15. And all the way across that desert, I thought about them. And I thought about once again the young men who were riding with me. And I did do some talking to God on that ride. And what I said was, God, don't Send me back into another Ia Drang Valley. I've been there, and these kids don't need to see that.

BIANCULLI: Former war correspondent Joe Galloway, co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once... And Young," speaking to Terry Gross in 1992. After a break, we'll listen to another more recent interview with Joe Galloway. This is FRESH AIR.

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BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's listen now to an excerpt of Terry's 2003 interview with Joe Galloway, who died last week at age 79. Back in 2003, he was military affairs correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers and had helped train the Knight Ridder reporters who were embedded with the military during the Iraq War. In 1998, he received the Medal of Valor from the Army for his actions in the Vietnam War.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: I want to ask you about your experiences in Vietnam for a moment. You were the only civilian decorated during that war. What did you do to be decorated?

BIANCULLI: Well, I belatedly was given a Bronze Star with V, the only one the Army gave a civilian during the entire war, for rescuing a wounded soldier during the Battle of Landing Zone X-Ray, an event that, in fact, is portrayed in the in the movie "We Were Soldiers," which was released last year. A very shocking, friendly fire incident where a napalm canister exploded almost in the middle of the command post. And a young engineer specialist that I had talked to earlier was engulfed in the flames. And a medic and I both jumped up and ran toward him. And the medic was shot through the head and killed. And I got to him and helped bring him back to the medics. But he was so badly burned that he died the following day.

For years, I looked for his widow and baby daughter, who was born just a few days before he was killed, couldn't find them. But the movie brought them out and brought them to our reunion last Veterans Day. And I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to them for a long time. It was - I think it was a healing thing for both of us, for all of us.

GROSS: Some of the embedded reporters that you're working with, for them, this is their first war. Did they ask for your advice about whether they should whether they should come to the rescue or whether they should just kind of hang back and be the observer reporter?

GALLOWAY: You know, I wrote a three-page memo to all of them with basically commonsense advice on what to carry and how to conduct yourself and what you do if there's a sudden attack. And I concluded that by telling them, you know, it's OK to be a human first and as a reporter second. It's OK to lend a hand in an emergency to help carry the wounded, to bring water to the soldiers. Whatever seems the right thing to do, do it because your fate is inextricably bound up with theirs.

GROSS: You actually carried a gun during part of the Vietnam War. What led you to arm yourself?

GALLOWAY: Well, I - what led me to arm myself was experience. I had been inside the special forces camp at Plei Me in October 1965, when it was under siege from a regiment of North Vietnamese. It was a very close run thing, and we weren't sure that any of us were going to survive. The camp commander was a famous fellow, then-Major Charlie Beckwith, who later would go on to found the Delta Force and lead the abortive raid into the desert in Iran trying to rescue our hostages. And when I arrived there, Beckwith looked at me. And he said, you know, I have no vacancy for a reporter's son, but I need a corner machine gunner and you're it. And he put me on a machine gun and told me what to do and who to shoot. And I was given basically no choice. I had no ride out of there. And so I did as I was ordered.

And when I was leaving there, Major Beckwith said, you don't have a weapon. And I said, well, in spite of what you've made me do for the last three days, technically speaking, I'm a noncombatant. And he looked at me, and he shook his head. And he said, technically speaking, son, there's no such thing in these mountains. You need a rifle. Sergeant Major, get this man a rifle. And I had that rifle on my shoulder three weeks later when I went into Landing Zone X-Ray. And there, and only there during the rest of my time in Vietnam, did I use that weapon...

GROSS: What did you use it for?

GALLOWAY: ...And only in the direst of circumstances.

GROSS: What was the circumstance?

GALLOWAY: Well, we were seemingly about to be overrun by the enemy. And I thought that I had no choice for my own safety and survival - and the survival of those around me.

GROSS: So you shot?

GALLOWAY: I did.

GROSS: How would you feel - yeah.

GALLOWAY: And no apologies.

GROSS: Now, what about the embedded reporters that you're working with, would you want them to be there for urban warfare if it comes to that? Or do you think it's too dangerous and that they should get out?

GALLOWAY: No. I think if you have gone with the unit to the gates of the thing and they are going in, you should go with them. It'll be - you know, the risks increase very greatly. But you signed on knowing that there were risks. And you don't quit at the last minute and sit back and look through binoculars. I think you go on in with them.

GROSS: Thank you so much for talking with us.

GALLOWAY: Oh, a pleasure, Terry.

BIANCULLI: Former war correspondent and decorated war hero Joe Galloway speaking to Terry Gross in 2003. He died August 18 at age 79. After a break, we remember Charlie Watts. The longtime drummer for the Rolling Stones died Tuesday at age 80. This is FRESH AIR.

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DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Charlie Watts, who laid down the backbeat of the Rolling Stones for nearly 60 years, died Tuesday at age 80. Born during the war in 1941, he developed an early love for jazz and the music of Jelly Roll Morton, Ellington, Monk, Mingus and especially Charlie Parker. He went to art school, became a graphic designer, then joined the influential British band Blues Incorporated in 1961, and headed into what he thought would be a career as a jazz drummer. But in 1963, the Rolling Stones hired him away to become their drummer.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GET OFF MY CLOUD")

THE ROLLING STONES: (Singing) And I sit at home looking out the window, imagining the world has stopped. Then in flies a guy who's all dressed up just like the Union Jack, says I've won five pounds if I have this kind of detergent pack. I said, hey, you, get off of my cloud. Hey, you, get off of my cloud. Hey, you, get off of my cloud. Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd on my cloud, baby.

BIANCULLI: During his 58 years with the Stones, Watts never chased the rock 'n' roll life. And he was perfectly comfortable letting the other members of the band take the spotlight on stage and in the press. But he was happy to talk about his jazz quintet, which gave us the opportunity to interview him on FRESH AIR in 1991. He spoke with Marty Moss-Coane, who hosts her own show on WHYY called Radio Times. The occasion was his album "From One Charlie," his salute to Charlie Parker. Here's a taste.

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CHARLIE WATTS: When I first went to New York with the Stones, the first thing I did was to go to Birdland, and that was it. For me, I'd seen America. I mean, I didn't want to see anywhere else. That was it. We got the Birdland, and the rest of it was just waiting to go home.

MARTY MOSS-COANE: How would you compare the job of a drummer in a jazz band versus a rock and roll band?

WATTS: I - for me, they're the same. But that's me in my simplistic way. But then I - you know, I was brought up at a time where the jobs were the same. You know, there's no difference to playing with, I don't know, an R&B band, as they call it, to a jazz group, you know. There are subtleties and nuances that are there. But most of it - I mean, it's basically, physically the same. It's time. You have to keep time, and you have to keep certain things together, hopefully. And it's a sweat when you go on, and...

(LAUGHTER)

WATTS: ...A sigh of relief when you come off together at the end. So it's - to me, it's always been the same, really.

MOSS-COANE: I was thinking that you might listen or watch somehow differently. Of course, I've never played drum in either a jazz or a rock 'n' roll band. But is - do you find that you watch and listen differently, Charlie?

WATTS: No, not really. I mean, I watch Peter the same way I watch Mick, you know. The thing with playing with Mick is it's rather like playing with James Brown in the way you have to try - you just - you catch where he is every now and again, you know. And for where we are in a song, I have Keith for those marks.

MOSS-COANE: Well, you don't do drum solos either, right? I mean, is that - as that's all part of your desire to stay in the background?

WATTS: It's so - let's - I can't do them, actually.

MOSS-COANE: (Laughter).

WATTS: Actually, I never liked them. I'd never liked them as a young man. I've just finished a book by a guy called Burt Korall, a very good book called "Drummin' Men." And he was obviously fell in love when he was young with Gene Krupa. And I never liked Gene Krupa to - I like him now more than I did. But I never liked that sort of showman drumming. To me, I've always, like, preferred band drummers. You know, I'd much prefer Shadow Wilson and Kenny Clarke type of drumming. I mean, my favorite drummers are not great showmen or great soloists.

MOSS-COANE: When people talk about a Charlie Watts style of drumming, do you know what they're talking about?

WATTS: No. To me, that means they're lowest common denominator you could think of in a rhythm.

MOSS-COANE: You mean, the most basic kind of rhythm?

WATTS: Yeah. Yeah. But people think that's really something else. To me, it's total lack of technique. But I quite enjoy guys that play like that. I mean, one of my favorite drummers is Al Jackson. And to play like Al Jackson takes an awful lot of control and subtlety.

MOSS-COANE: Do you think you're a good drummer?

WATTS: Not particularly, no.

MOSS-COANE: But do you think you're with a good band, the Rolling Stones?

WATTS: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love - I'm with a good band, with this quintet. I hide behind those...

MOSS-COANE: Is that right? (Laughter).

WATTS: No, I don't mind - I love playing rhythm, but I don't like being the frontman. That's why, with that orchestra that I got together one time, it was not - I should have been more out the front like Buddy Rich or something, if one could ever be like that. But, I mean, and I'm not that sort of person, so I can't really - I'm not a very good band leader for a start. You have to be a certain type person to be a band leader.

MOSS-COANE: Do you tire ever of being a Rolling Stone?

WATTS: No, I'm not allowed to be tired.

MOSS-COANE: (Laughter) Is that right? This will go on forever?

WATTS: Keith - yeah. Keith would suit me up and tell you to get your act together, I think he would be. I mean, there's nothing more thrilling than going on a stage with all that chaos going on, there isn't. It's incredible to have lived through it. I mean, what I hated about it was when you got off the stage. I could never behave like a sensible human being. You know, it was always silly like running in baker's shops with hats on. And, I mean, I'd never liked all that. It's a fantastic thing to have lived through. And for me to see - as a balding old man telling you that it was quite a moment which - I mean, it's all gone as well. I don't really think about it, actually.

MOSS-COANE: Are you recognized?

WATTS: Who, me?

MOSS-COANE: Yeah.

WATTS: I don't know. As what? On the street?

MOSS-COANE: As who you are, on the street, yes (laughter).

WATTS: Yeah, yeah. I suppose - I don't know. Yeah, a lot of people say, hello. Or aren't you? Yeah.

MOSS-COANE: Do they keep their distance?

WATTS: No, I keep mine.

MOSS-COANE: (Laughter).

WATTS: I think. I don't know, really. I never think about it, you know.

BIANCULLI: Charlie Watts speaking with WHYY's Marty Moss-Coane in 1991. After 58 years with the Rolling Stones, the drummer died Tuesday at age 80. On Monday's show, actress Sandra Oh, who stars in the new Netflix comedy series "The Chair." She plays the first person of color and the first woman to chair the English department at a prestigious college. Oh also starred in the popular thriller series "Killing Eve" and in ABC's long-running medical series "Grey's Anatomy." I hope you'll join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL FRISELL'S "MESSIN' WITH THE KID")

BIANCULLI: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Al Banks. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Kayla Lattimore. Our producer of digital media is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross, I'm David Bianculli.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL FRISELL'S "MESSIN' WITH THE KID")

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