Out-Take - creator of beautiful books

I’d say that in 40 years of being in the music business he was the most remarkable individual I’ve met. Not because he was an exceptional talent, but because he was so unaffected by the circus that he was involved with. Keith Altham

The first time that I ever saw Stu was at the first night of the first gig that I ever did in England as an ‘Ikette’ with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. We were the opening act for the Stones’ tour of England back in 1966 at the Royal Albert Hall. It was the first time that we’d ever played in England, a long way from the Chitlin Circuit gigs that we were used to playing back in the States, and the first time that I’d ever seen The Rolling Stones in action. We had the stage well heated up for the Stones and all hell broke loose when they came on stage. Total pandemonium: bouncers throwing screaming girls off stage; the screams and excitement from the audience were so loud that they almost drowned out the electrifying rock’n’roll that the Stones were putting out; the energy was just incredible; total chaos; and there was Stu all over the place. P.P. Arnold

I don’t know if the Stones would be where they are today had Stu not been there from the off. He really did keep it all together. Brian, Mick, Keith, Charlie and Bill so admired and respected him and he certainly provided them with the stability they needed. If he felt they were getting too big for their boots, in his own unique deadpan way, with just one sentence, he would stop them down and bring them back to reality. Shirley Arnold

Stu was definitely the cornerstone of the whole of that Surrey/ Richmond thing. He was Mr Blues. Religiously, he actually made you feel guilty about thinking about liking any other kind of music. I was heading in that direction and he just put a massive boot up my arse. Jeff Beck

The Stones were doing something they thought their lives depended on. They weren’t solemn but they were very serious about it. And Stu in his uniqueness was part of that disparity, part of that heterogeneous collection. He was so different, with his Hush Puppies, his little golf shirts, his little khaki trousers, that in a way he validated the whole thing. Because if these guys, with their comic opera clothes, can incorporate a spirit like Stu, who is solidity, you know, he is reality, he is Mr Down to Earth – if Keith, with his cougar tooth dangling from his ear, can relate to Stu – there’s something real here. There’s something that‘s really valid in a personal sense as well as a musical sense. If Stu hadn‘t been there, it would have been completely different, because every single person, including me, would have been caught up in the bullshit of the moment. Stu wasn’t caught up in it at all, and if he’d done nothing else but just be there and be himself, he’d have improved the atmosphere tremendously. Stanley Booth

There was/is always a hierarchy around the band, people who move in their wake, who get their validation by their proximity. Stu floated outside of it. He was family. He’d perform on-stage one minute, then go and deal with a guitar problem. I think it was all the same to him. Georgia Bergman

I recall Stu as a beautiful human being who always tried to keep a smile on his face. When he had to say something that could be negative, he had that little smile – the Stu Smile, I called it. He had a very interesting sense of humour. Ollie Brown

I always reckoned Stu as a musician a lot; he was much more authentic than people like me, as we were always trying to steal the music. I think the Stones at that time were pretty much recreating things the same way that Cream did right at the beginning. Obviously the basis of the music was very similar for Stu and me. I remember playing kind of boogie piano as a kid at school, to make friends and influence girls, as that was what you had to do if you were a short Scotsman. Jack Bruce

Stu was an amazing man. He would get on that piano and tinkle them ivories, and the next minute he’d be piddling about backstage as if he’s a roadie – and he’s just been up there in front of 80,000 people. He never dressed up – wouldn’t have been doing all of that fancy stuff or pictures for the programme – and he would be as true to that today. Jim Callaghan

Stu didn’t hang around a lot when it got nuts at Nellcôte, but he was always very sweet and adorable to me. I kind of found myself gravitating towards him just for a little bit of normalcy to be honest. He had the heart of a rocker but he also had the soul of some gospel guy; he just had this tremendous empathy. He didn’t look like one of The Rolling Stones but he had it all going on inside. Gretchen Carpenter

The thing about Stu was that he was so damn likeable. He was always asking me questions as he was highly inquisitive, maybe more so than any of The Rolling Stones. That’s how I really got to know him. He was just so warm and friendly to me, and he had such a high respect for the Chess artists and the blues – he was almost like a true musicologist. He knew more detail about a lot of the Chess artists than I did. I knew them as people, as sort of apples and oranges in the family business, but he knew about every record they ever made and all these kinds of things. Marshall Chess

I met Stu mainly at the Bermondsey rehearsal studio. Stu was in charge of the place and it was his patch. It was mainly where they put their personal equipment, guitar amps, and tapes which I needed access to. Trevor Churchill

Alexis Korner, John Mayall, Chris Barber – these people were seriously spearheading the American movement in music, the jazz and blues movement, and Stu was probably the main man in the Stones; he probably taught them a lot, or guided their taste in terms of how to look back at it. I suppose he would have been almost like their spiritual guide, musically speaking. I know that they were really very firmly on the track already with the R&B thing – Jimmy Reed and Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. They didn’t need any education about that, but Stu would have been very instrumental in illustrating where that all came from, because he knew – he could trace its roots. Eric Clapton

Some of my most precious memories of Stu are from late at night during the load-out, when we would deliberately leave the piano on-stage till last and he would sit and play. Just fabulous. I would be standing there listening to him and in the end saying, ‘Stu, I’m sorry, we’ve got to take the piano now otherwise we can’t finish loading the truck. Brian Croft

I wouldn’t say that I found Stu particularly eccentric; he seemed to be an ordinary person in an extraordinary surrounding. He coped with everything in an extremely down-to-earth, matterof- fact way. He very much had the philosophy that he would deal with it in a normal way, to keep a lid on everything and to stop everything accelerating into complete madness. He was very pragmatic. He could see what needed to be done and basically would want to get on with it and do it with as little bullshit as possible. He had the capability of being a very sane and sensible voice in extraordinary situations and it’s one of the reasons I still miss him. Sherry Daly

Stu had a tremendous influence on the Stones and after his death he has continued to have one, but in a slightly different way. The Stones were part of Stu and that’s all there was to it. He gave them loyalty and told them the truth. Was he their conscience? He might have been, in death. Cynthia Dilane

Later on he liked taking a back seat as far as equipment went, although he still kept his finger on the pulse. He was very responsible but things changed. There are some similarities now: you’re still moving or still putting up a stage for the five of them – the same five people that Stu would do on his own, out of a van in the early days. One van with the equipment then, and now it takes 300 people. Everything has gone out of the window completely. The amount of luggage and people, the size of the plane, the stage. It has just kept on getting bigger and bigger. Alan Dunn