Brian Jones's 1962 Letter Recruiting Charlie Watts Heads to Sotheby's

A previously unknown letter from Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones asking Charlie Watts to join the band will sell at Sotheby's New York on December 15, with an estimate of $70,000 to $80,000. Jones wrote the handwritten letter in July 1962, six months before Watts actually said yes.

The letter and its envelope are part of Sotheby's Rock & Pop Sale. Jones mailed it days before the Rolling Stones played their first official gig at the Marquee Club in London.

Why was Jones looking for a drummer?

The band had a drumming problem. They rehearsed early on with Mick Avory, who later joined the Kinks, and gigged for several months with Tony Chapman. Neither stuck as a permanent solution.

Watts, meanwhile, was the drummer in Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, one of London's key R&B incubators. Jones pitched him directly.

"If you are not going to work with Alex in the future," Jones wrote, "and still wants to play R&B, 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. We are rehearsing on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. Anyway, if you have time, let me know what's happening. Cheers, Brian Jones."

Then came the postscript: "If you are interested, our present line-up is a 2 guitars, harp, piano, + drums. We are going to use a bass guitar eventually. Our present drummer is atrocious!"

The line-up breaks down cleanly. The two guitarists were Jones and Keith Richard; Ian Stewart played piano; Mick Jagger handled the harp, meaning harmonica. The "atrocious" drummer was most likely Chapman, though no one can be 100 percent certain because the band cycled through many drummers in this period.

What does the letter change for the band's history?

The story of Watts's recruitment has appeared in Rolling Stones books and documentaries for decades. What the letter adds is primary evidence, in Jones's own hand, of how early and how deliberately the founding members pursued Watts — and how central Jones was to the band's early success.

Watts initially turned Jones down. The Stones kept gigging with a rotating crew of drummers: Chapman, Steve Harris, Carlo Little and Colin Folwell. In January 1963, six months after the letter arrived, Watts finally joined. He stayed in the line-up until his death in 2021 — a 58-year run that made him one of rock's most steady and respected timekeepers.

Sotheby's sees the document as more than memorabilia. "There's something wonderfully personal about this letter," Craig Inciardi, Sotheby's music and pop culture specialist, said. "You can really hear Brian Jones' voice in it, particularly in that brilliantly blunt postscript, 'Our present drummer is atrocious!' It's funny, direct and full of personality, but there's also a real sense of how determined Mick, Keith and Brian were to get Charlie behind the drums. Knowing the extraordinary musical partnership that followed makes it all the more compelling to read today."

For collectors, the sale offers a rare artifact from the exact moment a band still shopping for a drummer set its sights on the man who would hold the seat for nearly six decades. The December 15 sale will show what a two-guitar, harp-and-pitch line-up's job application, written by a founder who died in 1969, is worth on the current market.