Exclusive to Stu, the following are excerpts taken from private, face to face interviews with Mick Jagger in Paris, during the rehearsals and tour of the Rolling Stones Forty Licks Tour, 2002.
When he was playing the band swung a lot harder than when he wasn’t. But he knew his limitations and he didn’t like it when the rhythm wasn’t one of his.
I remember all of the early times rehearsing with Stu, as he would turn up in those shorts because he arrived on his bicycle. He was always playing the piano in the oddest sort of way and he had a curious body language. When he played the piano he changed from one Stu, who was a type of suburban office Stu, the kind of guy who had the nine-to-five job, into this incarnation as boogie-woogie Stu. He would sort of pump his legs and he would get lost in the music.
Stu played boogie-woogie wonderfully well and he had this terrific swing to his playing which is really what marks a good boogie-woogie player. Boogie-woogie doesn’t always fit over everything, but he had a knack of making it work. He also didn’t play minor chords within the normal sequences. He could play minors, but he didn’t change from major to minor with any great ease, so he would just leave them out really. For example, when we came to an A minor in a sequence he would just leave it out. That was his way of arranging it.
Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger on Stu
"When he was playing the band swung a lot harder than when he wasn’t."
Keith Richards on Stu
"During the 1970s I always had a feeling that Stu had incredible faith in me."
Charlie Watts on Stu
"Stu used to set my drums up the way he played them, not the way I wanted"
There are over 90 other contributors to Stu
There has been unprecidented press coverage of Stu