He was a member of the coolest band in the world, yet he was never scared to be square. It’s one of life’s great ironies that those card-carrying rock and roll outlaws, the Rolling Stones, would have got nowhere without the “vision”, as Keith Richards puts it, of the unlikely looking Sixth Stone. The Fife-born Ian Stewart was not your usual skinny, pouting rock star but a stocky, Neanderthal-jawed, one-time ICI shipping clerk in cardigans, polo shirts and Hush Puppies who nailed down brilliant boogie-woogie piano and became the group’s musical conscience and reality check. Always known as Stu, he was one for golf rather than groupies, a real-ale enthusiast and a rhythm and blues purist with a jazz background and a no-nonsense, headmasterly air who joshingly put the other Stones in their place as “three-chord wonders”. The epitome of the musician’s musician, he played on every Stones album, with the exception of Beggars Banquet, from 1964 to the 1986 Dirty Work, released the year after his death.
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