It’s ‘Stu,’ the rock behind the Stones

The $1,000 George Harrison memorial book that comes out this week is just the latest sample of an upsurge in rock-themed special-edition publishing.

It would be easy to blow the inheritance just to stock one short shelf of your library. You can spend about $950 for the David Bowie memoir “Moonage Daydream,” $860 for a Jimi Hendrix experience, $720 for a Queen celebration, $1,000 for an Ian Stewart tribute....

Ian Stewart?

What’s that name doing among this rock aristocracy, and why would a music fan want to drop a grand on “Stu,” a 432-page assemblage of words and photos about him?

The pricey books target collectors and connoisseurs, but the down-to-earth Scotsman, who died in 1985 of a heart attack at 47, might get a wry laugh at being memorialized with a limited edition (950 copies) work hand-bound in Nigerian goatskin and sporting a signed and numbered screen-print image of Stewart by Ron Wood.

He’d have to be touched, though, by the insights and affection in the comments of more than 80 people who knew him over the three decades he worked for the Rolling Stones as pianist and road manager. Besides the Stones, such artists as Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton weigh in with memories.

“Worked for the Stones” isn’t quite right. As Keith Richards puts it in his foreword, “The Rolling Stones are Ian Stewart’s band. He was the first one there in the beginning.... In a way you could say that Stu discovered the Rolling Stones, and then forged them. Then came the ultimate irony of not being one.”

It’s only rock ‘n’ roll

Stewart, a talented boogie-woogie pianist, was dismissed from the band in 1963 by flamboyant manager Andrew Loog Oldham because his stocky, unfashionable look didn’t fit Oldham’s vision for the group. Oldham’s account of the episode and its aftermath is one of the many memorably candid passages in “Stu.”

Remarkably, Stewart simply transformed himself into the Stones’ indispensable road manager, continuing to play piano on their records and on stage when the song was sufficiently blues- or R&B-rooted; for his tastes.

He wasn’t crazy about their pop forays and was singularly unimpressed with the jet-set trappings that came to surround his old mates.

Indifferent to glitz, glamour and groupies, he would often frustrate the musicians by booking hotels better situated for his morning round of golf than for their all-night partying.

“Stu” is packed with photos of Stewart at work and play with the Stones, as well as previously unpublished shots that he took over the years, but it’s the words that best bring to life the man who was always the Rolling Stones’ conscience and stabilizing force.

“Some of the things that I stick to now are only because of the way that Stu stuck to his guns,” Richards says near the end of the book, available from the publisher’s website, www.out-take.co.uk. “I want to keep these guys together. Stu started it, and I’ll finish it.”