Steve Jordan on Touring With the Stones: 'Like Being on a Rocket’

By editorial board on December 19, 2021

Jordan has been playing with Keith Richards for the past 35 years.

Thirty-five years ago, Steve Jordan got a call from Keith Richards asking him to play drums on a new version of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” that he was creating with Aretha Franklin. “I remembered Charlie Watts saying, ‘If you ever work outside of [the Rolling Stones], Steve Jordan’s your man.

Escerpt from Rolling Stone interview

Are you still unwinding from the tour?
Yeah. It takes a minute to decompress, for sure.

How did you feel when you walked offstage after Florida and it was all over?
We ran off the stage, into a car, and then got on a plane. It was like several stages of decompression, and we’re still decompressing. I spoke to Keith last night and we’re still decompressing. The Stones are like a thing unto themselves. Even the band members, when they talk about the Stones, it’s like they’re talking about something else. They’ll be like, “The Stones were doing this,” and I’m like, “You’re in the Stones!” It’s like this third person, or something.

When I first met Charlie, it was the first show of the fourth season of SNL. I was in the house band. There was extra security and everything because they were there. Everybody was trying to get close, but I wasn’t focused on that because the New York Yankees were playing the Kansas City Royals in the American League championship series. That was the only thing that meant anything to me

MICK JAGGER INTERVIEW by David Fricke for Mojo - to read the full interview click here

"I end up sitting in the dressing room with him (Charlie Watts) and showing him the ins and outs of baseball. He said, “Oh, this is kind of like a combination of cricket and rounders, isn’t it?” I’d heard about rounders. That’s where you run back and forth to the bases. And cricket involves a bat. It is a combination of those two games. I was like, “I guess it is.” Sitting next to Charlie Watts, watching the Yankees. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Charlie loved jazz and he loved blues. Of course, Ringo swung his butt off, and that’s why I love the way he plays. All those tracks are swinging. But the Beatles didn’t do a lot of blues stuff.

They did more R&B. When they covered stuff, they didn’t cover hardcore blues records the way the Stones did. They covered R&B/pop hits. That’s why they covered all those Motown records or Little Richard stuff or Chuck Berry. When they did “Roll Over Beethoven,” it was a very poppy version as opposed to when the Stones covered “Around and Around,” it was more a little hardcore sounding.

How did you first hear about the possibility of you stepping in for the tour this year?
I was almost the last person to know. I don’t want to get into the details. But I was surprised because, first of all, I didn’t know that Charlie was in the hospital. That was news to me, and troublesome news to me. But it was still the thing where Charlie was recovering, and so I was just going to fill in for maybe some rehearsals. Maybe I would play part of the show, and if they did the B-stage thing where it’s kind of acoustic, maybe Charlie would do that part.

To read the full interview click here

Keith Richards: 'We’ve rehearsed 80 to 90 songs. I’m not saying we just touched on them, jammed on them. We can actually play them. That’s a huge amount. Keith and I were saying, the reality is that we have to do at least twelve, 13 numbers that most everyone knows.'

Keith Richards seemingly confirmed that approach: “It's more that way,” he said. “We hit a very difficult point, to take this thing out. But we're gonna do it. Charlie was prepared for us to go ahead. We were expecting him to pick it up somewhere. Steve was, thankfully, going to be the pickup. But things ain't turned out that way.”

"Steve Jordan is a tower of strength as was Charlie Watts. Of course, I’ve been working with Steve for 30-odd years. It was Charlie that recommended Steve to me in the mid-Eighties: “Looks like we got some time off. If you’re going to do anything by yourself, there’s your man – Steve Jordan.” And here he is.

You don’t change the engine room overnight – which is, of course, what we’ve been working on. Steve and I have been working together on this since somewhere in July. At the time, he was just going to be sitting in for Charlie, which was already to Steve like “Wow!”

Steve brings with him a lot of knowledge about the Stones. He’ll say, “No, Charlie plays like this.” Steve is so meticulous, so aware of the seat he’s sitting in. Steve said this to me: Charlie played the drums. He didn’t hit them.

 

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