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Mark Rozzo of Vanity Fair interviewed Steve Jordan about taking over the throne for the Stones ‘2021 tour in a very open interview. Below is an excerpt from that article/interview, follow the link at the bottom to read the full article.
“It’s a handy metaphor for Jordan’s career: You might not see him, but you feel him. In some ways, he is the ultimate musician’s musician, one of those names that come up whenever obsessives are talking about their favorite drummers.
Jordan’s career took off when he joined the Saturday Night Live band in 1977, just out of his teens, when it looked like he was barely old enough to shave. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd then tapped him to provide a pile-driving backbeat for the Blues Brothers.
Last summer, the call came from the Rolling Stones: the invitation to fill in for Charlie Watts on the band’s No Filter Tour. Watts had been sidelined with a health issue; in August, as the world knows, he died, at age 80. With the tour now underway (next stops: Nashville and L.A.), Jordan took a break to chat by phone with Vanity Fair about his long association with Keith Richards (solo albums going back to the 1980s), Mick Jagger’s supergalactic charisma, the everlasting brilliance of his friend Charlie Watts, and a certain band from Liverpool.
You’ve had a relationship with the Stones going back at least to the Dirty Work album, in 1986. Is that how you started working with Keith on his solo projects?
Well, that was our first working introduction. But I’d met Charlie when I was in the Saturday Night Live band. The Stones did the first show of the fourth season [October 7, 1978]. On that show, security was very high. There were a lot less backstage VIP passes for that week. Everybody obviously wanted to be around the band. It was coming off of [the album] Some Girls. That was a new chapter and a re-explosion, so to speak, of the band.
The Yankees were playing the Royals in the playoffs that night, which was the most important thing in life to me. [Jordan, who grew up in New York City, was a Yankees fan.] I didn’t really care what else was going on. So I just asked somebody to get me an autograph of the band. I didn’t want to try to hang out, meet the band. The Yankees were the priority! As it turns out, it was Charlie who got me the autographs. I ended up hanging out with Charlie in the dressing room and we watched the game together. I was explaining baseball to him. He said, “Oh, it’s like a combination of rounders and cricket!” That’s how we first met.
You go back over 40 years with Charlie? So how did your association with Dirty Work come about?
In 1985 I was in Paris doing a record with a Duran Duran offshoot called Arcadia, with Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes. We had a night off and the crew said, “We’re gonna hook up with some of the guys from the Stones.” Because they were recording at Pathé Marconi. And I said, “Could you get a message to Charlie? Just tell him I’m here and I say hello.” The message got to him, and he invited me to the studio. When I walked into Pathé Marconi, I went in the control room, and they were set up like they were playing live. I realized just then that that was the first time I’d really seen the Rolling Stones play live in person. My eyes started to well up. I couldn’t believe it, because there was nobody there. It was only, like, Ron Wood’s wife, Keith’s dad, the engineer [Dave Jerden]… and me.
It was incredible. And I took a lot of lessons from that night into my recording practice. So they all greeted me after they finished playing—and then Charlie asked me to play. I said to him, “Absolutely not. I will not play. I’m a Rolling Stones fan. As a fan, if you are alive and well and I play and you could have played, well, I’d shoot the guy who played.” So I said, “I’ll play percussion with you or something like that.” Sometimes I played a little high hat. Sometimes a little bass drum. Sometimes a shaker. And maracas, of course. Maracas are a very important part of the Rolling Stones sound!
So I would work with Arcadia during the day, and then the Stones would start at midnight and I would go with them until, like, eight in the morning. I learned a lot about the inner workings of the Stones.
What’s it like working with Keith? You’ve had a relationship with him that goes beyond playing drums. There’s so much collaboration and friendship there.
Very few people that I’ve ever worked with in my life are more committed to music than Keith Richards. He’s really committed to the music. That’s the most important thing about Keith. He loves the Rolling Stones, and everything revolves around that music.
There’s a sense that what made the Stones’ sound unique was that Keith led the rhythm section, creating the groove with his guitar, and that Charlie followed—the opposite of the way we assume things usually proceed.
The way that he and Keith locked in—that’s really the engine room of the Rolling Stones, the guitar and drums. Not the bass and drums or the bass and guitar. No, it’s Keith and the drums.
Beyond that, the Stones always had a very tight bond. First of all, they loved the same type of music. Their love for Chicago blues, in particular, is the backbone of the band. I mean, Mick loves Little Walter. We jam on Little Walter sometimes. I don’t think people really understand the deep level of love for blues and jazz that the band has, especially Charlie’s love for jazz. Which is the reason why he approached the music the way he did. But rock ‘n’ roll has swing, you know? The drummers who invented rock ‘n’ roll, like Earl Palmer and Fred Below, they were jazz drummers. Earl Palmer, all he wanted to do was be Max Roach! Benny Benjamin, Motown genius, comes from jazz. Al Jackson comes from jazz. They all did.”
Read the full article: HERE
