Keith Richards has confirmed that The Rolling Stones’ touring drummer Steve Jordan will be on hand to help the long-running band finish their forthcoming new album.

Jordan has been filling in on drums for the Stones following the death of their longtime drummer Charlie Watts, who passed away in August last year.

Speaking on the latest episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, Richards clarified reports which previously claimed that Watts had finished work on the Stones’ next studio album before his death.

“We do have a lot of stuff of Charlie Watts still in the can,” he said. “We were half-way through making an album when he died…”

The guitarist added: “Of course, if we want to carry on recording, we’re gonna need drums, and it’s gonna be Steve Jordan.” You can listen to the full podcast with Richards below.

Richards also revealed on the podcast that he was initially reluctant to tour without Watts when the late drummer fell ill last year.

“I was in, ‘Oh, I cannot do this without Charlie’,” he recalled. “But Charlie said to me, ‘You can do it with Steve. He can take my seat anytime’. And he talked me into it.

“God damn, I loved that man.”

Richards’ comments follow on from a recent interview he gave to CBS Sunday Morning, where he revealed that he and frontman Mick Jagger have “eight or nine new pieces of material” which they are working on with Jordan.

“It’ll be interesting to find out the dynamics now that Steve’s in the band,” he added. “It’s sort of metamorphosing into something else. I was working with Mick last week, and Steve, and we came up with some, eight or nine new pieces of material. Which is overwhelming by our standards. Other times, [songwriting is] like a desert.”

Richards also told The Daily Star this week that he’d been “playing a lot of bass” on the new Stones material.

The Rolling Stones will perform in London and Liverpool this summer to celebrate their 60th anniversary – you can find tickets to the shows here.