Out-Take - creator of beautiful books

The biggest thing about Stu was, whereas we were all trying to learn – and we’d hear Buddy Guy or Otis Rush and be in awe, and spend hours trying to work it out – Stu just managed to be able to listen to something and immediately play it.
Jimmy Page

When we went to Los Angeles, the first thing Brian did was buy a train set. He put it in the living room in the hotel, and then both he and Stu were on the floor watching these trains go by. They were really both passionate about this; it united them and I thought it was kind of fun to watch it.
Anita Pallenberg

He was a really nice guy but he had this amazing bullshit meter - if you were full of shit, he picked it up right away. He was straightforward, which in the music business is a rarity.
Jerry Pompili

Musical purity was very big with him. He could be bloody-minded about things and I think he enjoyed that. He was enigmatic and very dry, but he really knew that he could get away with anything so he was sort of unassailable.
John Porter

He used to put up the drum stand and everything else. He put everything up there for them. They were hopeless. They just performed and everybody loved them. One night I went to see them in London and I was calling out to a guy
Doris Richards

Stu was one of my very biggest heroes; I could have spent years with him. Keith said a great thing to me once in the studio. We were both looking at Stu with his golfing cardigan on and his slacks and Keith said, ‘You know, Stu probably decided in about 1955 what he was going to wear for the rest of his life, and that’s it.
Allan Rogan

He loved jazz and he loved Charlie, and so when I think of Stu, I think of him and Charlie and the jazz.
Jane Rose

I never had any run-ins or any problems with him, because he wasn’t a malicious person, he wasn’t self-seeking and he wasn’t trying to impress The Rolling Stones, which everyone else around The Rolling Stones was, one way or another.
Peter Rudge

There was never a case in the seven years that I knew him when we had an argument. There aren’t many people you meet that do their job so that you don’t have to be bothered with it at all. I was able to be busy with finances, all the other things and the craziness going on, while Stu just wanted to make sure that everything on that set and stage were right for them.
Ronnie Schneider

He had a very dry sense of humour; he was quite sort of rude in a way, quite blunt, but not offensively so. He used to call the boys ‘silly poofters’ and things like that, but not in a way that annoyed them or upset anybody.
Chrissie Shrimpton

He was a good golfer, enthusiastic, very competitive in a quiet sort of way. He had enormous shoulders so he could hit the ball a long way, and when he used to get the timing right, that chest of his used to send the ball enormous distances
Roger Slater

He had a parallel reality with the tour. He wasn’t formally part of the production; he didn’t consider himself subject to our sort of internal clock. He had his own clock and that was it – Stu Time. He showed up when he wanted and got what he needed done. It was very old rock’n’roll; the station wagon said it all, and I thought he was a bit eccentric. He was absolutely in control, this quiet, unassuming guy that I liked immediately.
Patrick Stansfield

I was only fourteen years old when my father died. To me he was, and still is, special.
Giles Stewart

Our home life was a very stable and supportive one. I do recall Mum always getting at Ian for looking ‘scruffy’ and saying that no matter how well she laundered his clothes as soon as he put them on they looked all creased again!
Roy Stewart

Stu was part of The Rolling Stones. I’m not sure that they would have stayed together if Stu hadn’t been there. I think they needed somebody like that. Stu brought to The Rolling Stones common sense.
Mick Taylor

On the Stones’ European Tour we were playing in Leeds, and we had a flat tyre going to the gig, naturally. When we finally get there I have to play first, so I run to the backstage area. We have no backstage passes so I tell the big guy at the gate, ‘Hey, you’ve got to let us in, we’re part of the show.’ ‘Can’t let you in unless you’ve got a pass’. Right… ‘I understand, we don’t have passes but this is Ian Stewart, the original piano player with The Rolling Stones. He’s been with them since 1962. Without him there wouldn’t be The Rolling Stones. He is The Rolling Stones, you understand me?’ The guy goes, ‘You can’t come in unless you’ve got a pass.’ Ian just calmly walks up and goes, ‘Excuse me, this is George Thorogood,’ and the guy goes, ‘Oh, come in.’ One of The Rolling Stones needed me to get into his own gig. So I ask you, that’s rich!
George Thorogood

We rehearsed Ready, Steady, Go! in the afternoon and then it went out ‘live’ at around 6pm so I would sit and chat to Stu and he always talked about music. He knew everything that was being imported and local. He always seemed older, but it was more his look than his actual age.
Vicki Wickham

Stu would sleep everywhere and anywhere, but he was always around.
Jo Wood

He didn’t get any rest. In those first two or three years we were working 300 days of the year, sometimes doing three or four things each day. Morning, photo sessions with the girlie magazines or interviews for Melody Maker, Disc and all that sort of stuff. In the afternoon we might go into the studios and cut three tracks for the album, and then in the evening we would get in the van and go to Southend to do two shows, and then come back. And the next morning it was something else… It just went on and on like that. You never ever got any rest.
Bill Wyman

There was a period, I guess, when he saw me as much as my Dad did, having known me from the year dot. I was taking piano lessons at school and I clearly remember being in Munich and watching Stu sitting at the piano in the studio while they were listening to the playbacks, and Stu coming over to me and asking how I was getting on with these lessons. And it mattered, the encouragement and interest.
Stephen Wyman