Ian Stewart: The 'Sixth Stone' Who Was Too Ugly for the Stage but Too Essential to Ever Fire

Ian Stewart was there from the very beginning, co-founding the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones and Mick Jagger in 1962. But within months, manager Andrew Loog Oldham decided Stewart’s face didn’t fit the pop-star mold—he was too stocky, too plain, too “normal.” Oldham told him he couldn’t be in the official photos. So Stewart was quietly pushed off stage and out of the lineup, reduced to “road manager” and session pianist. The band never actually fired him, because the band didn’t exist without him.

Instead of quitting, Stewart just showed up for the next 23 years as the Stones’ de facto musical anchor. He played piano on nearly every classic track—“Honky Tonk Women,” “Brown Sugar,” “Start Me Up”—and ran the tour logistics, kept the gear working, and mediated band arguments. He was famously the one person Jagger and Keith Richards both trusted implicitly. They paid him a full share of touring income even though he wasn’t an official member, and when he died of a heart attack in 1985, the Stones were devastated. At the 1989 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, they insisted he be inducted with them, calling him “the true Stone.” The band has never had another permanent keyboardist since.