Ian Stewart (musician)

Ian Stewart

Ian AR Stewart (18 July, 1938 – 12 December, 1985) was a Scottish keyboardist.

Stewart played piano in the original line-up of The Rolling Stones. He predates Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts as members of the band. Because the band's manager Andrew Loog Oldham did not think Stewart's looks were good enough for publicity purposes, Stewart officially "left the group" but continued until his death as their road manager and pianist. Whereas other of the band's members, chiefly Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, were known for their flashy apparel, for over thirty years the pianist kept the same style of shabby jeans and a highly unfashionable haircut. His presence added a down-to-earth depth of reality to the decadent rock and roll madness that the band purveyed. Because of his ambiguous role within the group, he is often referred to as "the Sixth Stone".

Role in Rolling Stones

Born in Pittenweem, Fife, Scotland, Stewart, or "Stu", played keyboards on most of the Stones' essential albums from the 1960s until the 1980s, though his work was often supplemented by such guests as session pianist Nicky Hopkins, soul musician Billy Preston, Phil Spector and Neil Young associate Jack Nitzsche, and Ian McLagan of The Faces. As the Stones' career progressed and their keyboardist stable increased, Stewart became far more selective of the material he contributed to, favoring blues and country rockers in major keys. Some of Stewart's most evocative work at the piano from the group's fabled 1968–1972 peak is featured in the songs "Let It Bleed", "Dead Flowers", "Sweet Virginia", and the covers of Chuck Berry's "Carol" and "Little Queenie" from the live Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!.

Stu's most enduring moment in Stones history occurred in 1969, when the band was recording at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama on a tour break shortly before the Altamont Free Concert disaster. Characteristically, Stewart refused to play on the ballad "Wild Horses" because he objected to the lilting minor key of the song. It was this staunch dedication to roots music forms, namely boogie-woogie jazz and early rhythm and blues (jump blues) that earned the pianist so much respect among his former bandmates. To quote Mick Jagger shortly after Stewart's untimely death, "I'm going to miss him a lot. He really helped this band swing on 'Honky-Tonk Women' and loads of others. Stu was the one guy we tried to please. We wanted his approval when we were writing or rehearsing a song. We'd want him to like it."

He often berated Brian Jones for his destructive behavior and was believed to be instrumental in having the guitarist removed from the band and replaced by Mick Taylor, who coincidentally was a prominent figure in the traditional blues and jazz circles Stewart frequented, having previously played with the legendary John Mayall. Stewart and Jones had been the musical leaders in the first incarnation of the Stones but distinct stylistic differences — the former's love of the jazzier boogie-woogie R&B of the 1940s, the latter's penchant for the electric blues of the 1950s — nearly led to the group breaking apart. It wasn't until the addition of Jagger and Richards, who came from a more soul/rock and roll background, that a compromise was reached.

Stewart took the news of his Oldham-engineered demotion without fuss or bother. He agreed to stay on, loading the gear into the battered pink VW bus and driving from Lowestoft to Aberystwyth in a day, for instance, or setting off for Germany with a broken starter motor before replacing frayed guitar strings or doggedly setting up Charlie’s drums the way he himself would play them. "I never ever swore at him," Watts says, with rueful amazement. In the later chapters in the band history, Stu was happy to be in the band's background and according to Jagger and Richards, he didn't want to rejoin at all, although he had been requested numerous times.

Later on, as Keith Richards and many of the band's associates became drug addicts in the early Seventies, Stewart withdrew from the band's musical affairs to a large extent, preferring to tend to his administrative duties. "I think he looked upon it as a load of silliness," Mick Taylor, who replaced Jones as the group’s lead guitarist, said. "I also think it was because he saw what had happened to Brian. I could tell from the expression on his face when things started to get a bit crazy during the making of Exile on Main Street. I think he found it very hard. We all did." For example, he only plays on three tracks on the epochal double album Exile On Main Street: the blues covers "Shake Your Hips" and "Stop Breaking Down" and "Sweet Virginia". (Interestingly, "Good Time Woman" was a Stewart showcase, though by the time the song transformed into the hit single "Tumbling Dice" Nicky Hopkins was manning the piano bench).

Other work

By and large, Stewart's best recorded contributions are with the Rolling Stones, however he did play many other sessions. He contributed to Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" from Led Zeppelin IV and "Boogie With Stu" from Physical Graffiti, two numbers in the traditional rock and roll vein, both featured Stu's intensely rhythmic boogie-woogie style; another notable non-Stones release for Stewart was Howlin' Wolf's 1971 London Sessions album, an all-star recording featuring Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Beatles hanger-on/Plastic Ono Band bassist Klaus Voorman, B-3 organ player Steve Winwood, and Stones bandmates Wyman and Watts in addition to Stewart.

There was also the commercially obscure back-to-the-roots fun band Rocket 88, a late-seventies early-eighties venture which included Charlie Watts, Alexis Korner (the founding father of the British blues/trad jazz scene in the early sixties), Cream frontman Jack Bruce on stand-up acoustic bass, and Stu and Bob Hall on piano, as well as a horn and brass section taken from a pool of what he called "British Jazz Legends", which included Colin Smith, John Picard, Dick Morrissey and Don Weller, among others. Though they only released one album, recorded live in Germany, Rocket 88 allowed Stewart to finally play the boogie-woogie music that he so loved and championed.

Death and posthumous recognition

Though Stewart's last contributions to a Rolling Stones-album were included on 1983's Undercover, he was still present during the problematic sessions for 1986's Dirty Work. In early December 1985, Stewart began having respiratory problems. On December 12, he went to a clinic to have the problem examined; however, he suffered a heart attack and died while in the waiting room. He was to meet with Keith Richards after the visit to discuss the plan behind the projected album that turned into Dirty Work.

The Stones paid tribute to their loyal road manager and piano player by playing a tribute gig for him with Rocket 88 in February 1986, and by including a 30-second boogie-woogie piano solo played by Ian Stewart on the fadeout of the Dirty Work album.

When the Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, they requested that Stewart's name be included as a member of the band.

Basis for fictional detective Rebus

According to a Sunday Herald article in March 2006, Ian Stewart was taken as the basis for a famous fictional detective:

...but Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin has revealed that John Rebus, the star of 15 novels set in the grimy underbelly of the nation's capital, may have more to do with the Rolling Stones than any detective could have surmised. The award-winning novelist admits during a new Radio 4 series exploring the relationships between crime writers and their favourite music that he took some of his inspiration for the unruly inspector from the "sixth Stone", Ian Stewart.

Rankin has subsequently written the lyrics to a song recorded by Aidan Moffat & The Best-Of's about Ian Stewart. The song is titled "The Sixth Stone" and is the first official release by the new band of Aidan Moffat, formerly of Arab Strap. It is included on Chemikal Underground's Ballads Of The Book compilation, which has Scottish authors and poets writing lyrics for contemporary Scottish bands.