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The Rolling Stones · S1 E4
The Sixth Stone
Ian Stewart plays piano better than anyone in the room. Andrew Loog Oldham will remove him from the lineup because six members don't fit on a poster. Stewart stays as road manager and plays on every album until his death in 1985
There are six Rolling Stones in the spring of 1963, and the best musician among them plays piano. Within weeks, a teenager named Andrew Loog Oldham will erase him from every photograph.
The Rolling Stones, Beast of Burden. The title says everything about Ian Stewart's role in the band. He carried the equipment, drove the van, tuned the guitars, and played piano on the records, all without a single photo credit or a name on the sleeve.
The Founding Stone
Ian Andrew Robert Stewart is a boogie-woogie pianist from Pittenweem, Scotland, and he was in the Rolling Stones before almost anyone else. He answered Brian Jones's ad in Jazz News, showed up with more musical ability than anyone in the room, and became the founding member alongside Brian.
Sources
Wyman, Bill. "Stone Alone." Viking, 1990.
Richards, Keith. "Life." Little, Brown and Company, 2010.
“Ian Stewart was the Rolling Stones.”
— Charlie Watts, in Loewenstein, Dora and Dodd, Philip. "According to the Rolling Stones." Chronicle Books, 2003
TAP TO REVEAL: Why exactly was Ian Stewart removed from the Rolling Stones' official lineup?
Beast of Burden -- The Rolling Stones (1978)
From Some Girls, recorded at Pathe Marconi Studios in Paris. Keith Richards wrote the riff as a love letter to simplicity: no overdubs, no tricks, just a clean guitar tone and a vocal that sounds like exhaustion and devotion at the same time. Listen for how sparse the arrangement is. Every note serves the groove and nothing is wasted.
Sources
Richards, Keith. "Life." Little, Brown and Company, 2010.
Loewenstein, Dora and Dodd, Philip. "According to the Rolling Stones." Chronicle Books, 2003.
Down the Road Apiece -- The Rolling Stones
From The Rolling Stones No. 2 (1965), a boogie-woogie piano workout written by Don Raye. This is Stu's territory: driving, relentless, eight-to-the-bar piano that sounds like a freight train leaving the station. If you want to hear what Ian Stewart lived for, this is it.
Ian Stewart: The File
What did Ian Stewart famously refuse to do in the recording studio?
The Stones have a pianist who refuses to leave and a new manager who thinks he can make them bigger than The Beatles. The venue where it all clicks is a pub in Richmond called the Station Hotel, and every Sunday night the crowd gets bigger and more dangerous.
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