Steve Jordan, who stepped in for the late Charlie Watts on The Rolling Stones tour, says Watts’ death hit him hard

The music world was struck with sadness in August when Charlie Watts, long-time drummer for rock legends The Rolling Stones, died in hospital. The band were due to head out on their No Filter tour, but Watts was replaced on drums by Steve Jordan, who had played with the band before.

Rolling Stone magazine reached out to Jordan for comment on his own feelings about the band’s tour and Watts’ passing.

When asked where he first heard that he might be backing up Watts, Jordan replied:

“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.”

However, Watts passed away and Jordan was left to manage the whole tour instead of just filling in for a while. This is how Jordan felt when he heard of Watts’ passing:

“The morning that I got the news that he had passed was one of the worst days of my life. It still is. And then there was all this stuff I didn’t ask for. The week before Charlie passed, I had gotten information that he was doing better. That week, the rehearsals took on a different energy because we were upbeat about him recovering. The week before, we were like, ‘Charlie is going to be cool! This is great!’ The whole energy of the rehearsals were even more upbeat because he was feeling better. We were playing this stuff with less of a burden. “We’re going to do this, and play that, and Charlie is going to come back and everything will be great.”