Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} WHO THE HELL IS STEW ALBERT by Stewart Edward Albert Stew Albert - Stew Albert. Stewart Edward "Stew" Albert (4. december 1939 - 30. januar 2006) var et tidligt medlem af Yippierne , en anti-Vietnamkrigspolitisk aktivist og en vigtig skikkelse i - bevægelsen i 1960'erne. Født i Sheepshead Bay- sektionen i , , til en medarbejder i , havde han et relativt konventionelt politisk liv i sin ungdom, skønt han var blandt dem, der protesterede mod henrettelsen af Caryl Chessman . Han dimitterede fra , hvor han studerede politik og filosofi og arbejdede et stykke tid for City of New York velfærdsafdeling. I 1965 forlod han New York til , hvor han mødte digteren i . Inden for få dage var han frivillig i i Berkeley, Californien . Det var der, han mødte og , med hvem han medstifter Youth International Party eller Yippies. Han mødte også og andre - medlemmer der og blev en politisk aktivist på fuld tid. Rubin sagde engang, at Albert var en bedre underviser end de fleste professorer. Blandt de mange aktiviteter, han deltog i med Yippierne, var at smide penge fra balkonen på , Pentagon's eksorsisme og præsidentkampagnen fra 1968 af en gris ved navn . Han blev arresteret ved forstyrrelserne uden for Den Demokratiske Nationale Konvention i 1968 og blev udnævnt som en uindikeret medsammensvorne i - sagen. Hans kone, Albert, hævdede ifølge hans New York Times nekrolog, at dette var fordi han arbejdede som korrespondent for . Senere ville han arbejde tæt sammen med underjordiske avis og boede på Tribe's kommune, når han ikke rejste til politiske engagementer. I 1970 løb han for lensmand i Alameda County, Californien , i hævn for "at få mine bolde sprøjtet med varme, smertefulde kemikalier som en velkomst-til-fængsels sundhedsforanstaltning" efter at blive arresteret i 1969. Selvom han tabte til den siddende, Frank Madigan , Albert fik 65.000 stemmer i et ironisk twist i et løb med sheriffen, der havde overvåget sin tidligere fængsling under Vietnam Day-komiteens anti-draft protester i Oakland centrum . Efter hjalp med at flygte fra et fængsel i Californien, hvor han var blevet fængslet for at have LSD , hjalp Albert med at arrangere, at Leary blev hos i Algeriet . I 1971 blev han indkaldt til flere store juryer, der undersøgte den politiske bombning af det amerikanske Capitol af Weather Underground i marts 1971, samt en sammensværgelse af Piggy Bank Six for at bombe flere grene af First National City Bank på året før. . Han blev ikke anklaget i begge tilfælde. I begyndelsen af ​1970'erne sagsøgte han og hans kone FBI for at have plantet en ulovlig aflytning i hans hus. De vandt en forlig på $ 20.000, og i 1978 blev to FBI-tilsynsmænd fyret for denne handling. I 1984 flyttede han og hans kone til Portland, Oregon . De medredigerede en antologi, The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade , der samlede materiale, der stammer fra borgerrettighedsbevægelsen , studerende for et demokratisk samfund , antikrigsbevægelsen , modkulturen og kvindebevægelsen . Hans erindringsbog, Who the Hell is Stew Albert? , blev udgivet af Red Hen Press i 2005. Han ledede Yippie Reading Room, indtil han døde af leverkræft forårsaget af hepatitis i 2006. To dage før sin død skrev han på sin blog: "Min politik har ikke ændret sig." I 2000-filmen stjæler denne film! Albert spilles af Donal Logue . Stirring the Pot: Remembering Stew Albert — 1939-2006. Stew Albert had one of his smart, funny ideas when he was thinking about a name for his memoir. “My Sixties,” he said was going to call it. He was in his late fifties when we kicked this one around and I thought the irony was sublime. He knew the book wouldn’t be out until he had turned the numerical corner. Stew didn’t call his book “My Sixties” — the title is still out there, if someone with a lifetime of movement cred wants to grab it. Instead, he called it Who The Hell Is Stew Albert? Who indeed? The title is a quote from Howard Stern, who once responded with that question when one of his on-air gang started talking about Stew as if everyone in the world knew who he was. Stern didn’t, but that was his loss: it always seemed to me that Stew knew everyone and everyone knew Stew. Nobody was more devoted to the idea of the Sixties. If you want to see what I mean, visit his Web site. He worked hard to translate Sixties values to a new generation of political activists. He kept in touch with a wide array of movement veterans, loyal and engaged, blogging his thoughts and poems every day — right up until his penultimate day. Younger activists adored him. He died January 30th. Stew had the look, but it wasn’t the look of a Jewish kid from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, which is what he was. He was big, barrel-chested, with curly blond hair and piercing blue eyes. Losing Stew — he was 66 when he fell to liver cancer — creates a huge personal, political, and emotional hole for me, as I know it does for so many others, especially his wife Judy “Gumbo” Clavir Albert and his daughter Jessica Pearl. The Alberts’ post 1960s peregrinations — Bay Area, Hudson Valley, back to the west coast — finally landed them in Portland, Oregon, where they have lived for many years. Years of fighting various ailments kept Stew close to home, and close to his computer where he became one of the most successful Sixties radicals I know at moving to online activism (most of my emails were answered within minutes). Whenever we met, we spent hours catching up on the latest gossip about the doings of various old Panthers, Yippies, and Weathermen. And then we would plot and scheme, mostly about how to support the young activists that our mutual optimism always believed would emerge to lead a new generation of resistance to racism, environmental catastrophe, and Bush’s oil wars. How I met Stew says something about who he was. That is, I don’t remember how I met him. I remember the first time I met the other Yippie founders: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and . But Stew just appeared in my life one day, and he never left. To one degree or another, the founding Yippies were all nuts. It was their strength, their weakness, their charisma, and their charm. For Abbie, in particular, it was also his doom. Stew was different. He always had a strategy and a plan. He managed the campaign of Pigasus the Pig for president in 1968 and ran for sheriff of Alameda County in 1970 (he lost, but carried the city of Berkeley). More than anyone, he helped Abbie and Jerry give definition to the Yippie movement. It has gone years without comment, but without his ability to broker their competitive egos and channel their ideas into strategy, what is passing into history as the Yippie story would have been different, definitely diminished and possibly disregarded. The Sixties were filled with political tendencies: anarchism, communism, socialism, the working-class, armed revolution, Panthers, Weathermen, Maoism. It wasn’t easy to find one’s way and keep one’s head. The lineup may be different today, but it’s not any easier. In this political stew, Stew Albert was a cultural radical with a political ideology. We bonded because I was a political radical struggling to blend New Left ideology with the cultural power of young people. We found ourselves speaking the same language, and stayed friends to the end. Along the way we had some adventures. When the Weathermen helped Timothy Leary escape from a California prison and make his way to an uncertain reception at Panther Eldridge Cleaver’s expatriate compound in Algeria, Stew went over to help with the introduction. Long before today’s Bush-era wiretaps, Stew and Judy were being watched and tailed by the FBI. After the Weather Underground bombed the US Capitol in 1971 to protest the , they famously declared: “We didn’t do it, but we dug it.” Throughout their lives, Stew and Judy were always standup — courageous and uncompromising. And they always did a great job telling the stories: there is no better text for those who are interested than The Sixties Papers, Documents of a Rebellious Decade , which they edited and published in 1984. We last spoke New Year’s day. That was just after his email arrived letting his many friends know that doctors had just found the cancer and that it was bad. His daily blog told the unfolding story of his fading hopes for a cure, his joyful, if tiring, visits with friends. Daughter Jessica came home from law school to be with him, and his happiness grew having her near. Two days before the end, he blogged to the world that “my politics have not changed.” No deathbed conversions or regrets for a life lived radically and well, in constant resistance to a government and political system he abhorred. As Stew slipped away, he posted his final words — “It’s still me. It’s still me.” A memorial service in Portland used music to tell Stew’s story. It began with Mr. Tambourine Man , included his good friend ’s I Ain’t Marching Anymore , and ended with the emotional minyan joining in on Paul Robeson’s Joe Hill . Recent memorials to remember Stew and support Judy and Jessica took place in New York City, Boston, and Berkeley. His life is still there on the Web — pay him a visit. It would give him eternal pleasure to know he still has friends stopping by. WHEREAS, Stew Albert was a prisoner at Santa Rita for his role in People’s Park, was released and became a candidate for Sheriff of Alameda County in 1970, receiving 65,000 votes, carrying Berkeley by 10,000 votes, and. WHEREAS, Stew Albert was a co-founder of the Yippies and a friend of Jerry Rubin and a friend of Abby Hoffman and a friend of Eldridge Cleaver and a friend of John Lennon and a friend of thousands who identified with the Movement, and. WHEREAS, Stew Albert was a target of J. Edgar Hoover and a target of Richard Nixon and a target of the FBI and the victor in a lawsuit against their harassment and an irrepressible critic of the unjust and the idiotic to the moment he died, addressing the power that rules us now, and. WHEREAS, Stew Albert kept faith with the Movement and kept its spirit alive in his soul every day and served as the Movement’s living historian and the Movement’s living history lesson and the Movement’s connection to new generation after new generation, and. WHEREAS, Stew Albert was a gentle man, a husband who loved his wife Judy, a father who loved his daughter Jessica, a friend who loved his friends, not just the old friends, but also the new friends and the friends he hadn’t met yet, and. WHEREAS, Stew Albert will be deeply missed; now. THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Oakland City Council proclaims Wednesday, February 1, 2006, the day of his memorial service, “Stew Albert Day” in the City of Oakland, in recognition of his contributions, his humor and his good sense, his decency and his faith in what can be, what must be and what will be. Jeff Jones was a leader of Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground. He is a political consultant and environmental activist based in Albany, New York. Stew Albert -- original Yippie at heart of 1960s idealism. Stew Albert, a prominent anti-Vietnam War activist, an early supporter of the Black Panthers and a founder of the Yippie radical protest group, died Monday at age 66 in Portland, Ore. The cause was cancer. Mr. Albert was a catalytic figure in the Bay Area's emerging New Left political movement of the 1960s, helping to combine white anti-war activists with black power advocates and hippies. In 1967, Mr. Albert and fellow radicals Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman formed the Youth International Party, melding serious protest with outrageous street theater satire to stage events that became icons of the era. They ran a real pig named Pigasus for president in 1968, showered dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in a protest against greed, and tried to levitate the Pentagon to exorcise what they called its "evil spirits." Todd Gitlin, a professor of sociology at Columbia University who has written extensively on the Sixties, described Mr. Albert as a thoughtful man who embodied the humor and insouciance of the New Left. "He was an original," Gitlin said. Stewart Edward Albert was born Dec. 4, 1939, in Brooklyn, N.Y. His father was a city clerk who kept a pail of sand in the front hall to put out fires in case Japan bombed their house. As Mr. Albert wrote in his wry 2004 autobiography, "His was the unspectacular childhood of a not especially promising kid." After graduating from Pace College in New York City, Mr. Albert worked briefly as a clerk. But in 1965, lured by the legend of bohemian writer Jack Kerouac, he rode a bus cross-country to City Lights book store in North Beach. Within days, Mr. Albert had smoked marijuana with beat poet Allen Ginsberg and was working for the Vietnam Day Committee in Berkeley, where he slept on the floor and helped organize some of nation's first mass protests against the war. He became close with Rubin, a co-founder of the committee, and immersed himself in the counterculture, experimenting with the still-legal psychedelic drug LSD. Increasingly, his protests bent toward events calculated to generate surreal images and media myth. Reflecting on the incident in which he showered dollars on the lunging stock traders, Mr. Albert later wrote that he was delighted at finding "a new way to demonstrate, a theatrical turn of politics that invaded sacrosanct places and turned them into a stage set full of props for our use." Bobby Seale, a founding chairman of the Black Panther Party who met Mr. Albert in 1969 and became a lifelong friend of his, said he was among the earliest white supporters of the Black Panther Party. Mr. Albert was arrested several times during protests. He was named but not charged in the so-called Chicago Eight case, in which Rubin, Hoffman, Seale and were indicted for conspiring to incite a riot during protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The case ended with no convictions. Extra. New: Celebrating Stew Albert (December 4, 1939 – January 30, 2006) Stewart Edward "Stew" Albert was a Brooklyn-born, Berkeley-bred anti-war political activist, poet and publisher in the 1960s. Stew made the trek to San Francisco in 1965 and, within days of running into poet Allen Ginsberg at the City Lights Bookstore, he was working with the Vietnam Day Committee. (The VDC went on to host a historic Teach-In on the Berkeley campus with speeches from and Ken Kesey and songs by Phil Ochs). It was in Berkeley that Stew met Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman — and joined them in co-founding the Youth International Party (aka the “Yippies”). Stew was to be found in the midst of all the major Yippie pranks, from tossing money off the New York Stock Exchange balcony to the attempted “Exorcism of the Pentagon” and the Yippies’ 1968 Presidential campaign that saw a pig nominated to serve as the country’s Commander-in-Chief. Stew was busted outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention while covering the event for the Berkeley Barb (the country’s first “underground” newspaper) and named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Chicago Seven case. When the unpaid staff of the Barb went out on strike, Stew became editor of the rival Berkeley Tribe , which soon had a circulation of 53,000 copies. In 1970, Stew ran for Alameda Country Sheriff and came in second. Back in his outlaw mode, it was Stew who abetted an international fugitive when he arranged for Eldridge Cleaver to offer a Tunisian sanctuary to Timothy Leary after the latter’s escape from a California prison. In the early 1970s, Stew and his wife, Judy Gumbo Albert, successfully sued the FBI for planting an illegal wiretap in their home and won a $20,000 settlement. Two FBI supervisors were subsequently fired for the crime. In 1984, Stew and Judy co-edited The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade , a compendium of writings from the , Students for a Democratic Society, the anti-war movement, the counterculture, and the women's movement. In 2006, two days before he died of liver cancer, Stew posted one final, rebellious declaration on his blog: "My politics haven't changed." His memoir, Who the Hell is Stew Albert?, is available from Red Hen Press. For more on Stew’s life, see Richard Brenneman’s 2006 memorial in the Berkeley Daily Planet : http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2006- 02-03/article/23349?headline=Stew-Albert-Activist-1939-2006-By-RICHARD-BRENNEMAN&status=301. Judy Gumbo Remembers Her Partner, Stew. Stew’s wife and partner, Judy Gumbo Albert, is completing a book called Yippie Girl — an insider’s memoir of love and friendship among the Yippies and other romantic revolutionaries of the late 1960s. You can contact her at: www.yippiegirl.com. Judy recently posted a collection of unpublished poems in her husband’s memory, along with this message to friends and colleagues: I can't believe Stew's been gone for five years, but it's true. This Sunday, January 30, 2011, is the fifth anniversary of his passing. In our house we celebrated Stew's birthday as if it was a national holiday. Stew wrote a lot of political poems. He also wrote family poems to Jessica and me. I’d cry every time he'd give me one. To commemorate his life, I put these never-before-published poems up on my website. Here's the link: — Judy Gumbo Albert. Some Poems from Stew Albert. Seig Howdy. not just mad Marxist-Lenninist scientists. using the name in fear and loathing. Ordinary liberals and libertarians. looking over their shoulders. nervously describing secret courts and prisons. torturous no Constitution terms of confinement. Of a punishing bullying government. propaganda media thugs scandalizing. even the mildest critics in Bush Town. Of fixed and future elections. billion dollar brain washing extravaganzas. once called political campaigns. The conquest of Iraq. signals an ultra right-wing conquest of America. Powell shuffles or is purged. Along with all those gay gun control Dixie Chick pro-choice Republicans. Every one always knew it could happen here. Not by violence. but by money and the manipulation of minds. Emperor George has one last task before he’s untouchable. Convince millions of Americans. that the economy tanked in the toilet. because liberals opposed giving billionaires. everyone’s spare change. He sells that one. and the goose step. becomes compulsory morning exercise. It Was 20 Years Ago – Today. Marriage May Day May Day. We have our secret celebration, our own love. a private nation of family sandwiches, a daughter, a cat, stuffed utopian animals, trips, questions, peaceful pleasures. Marriage May Day May Day. So much has been lost. Man overboard. May Day May Day. We found each other 20 years ago on a glistening afternoon. a hillside of memories and unforgotten friends. Amidst chaos and cowardice, remembering, creating out of love and friendship. a soulful union of hope. May Pole. Happy May Day Comrades. It’s my wedding anniversary. I met Judy in 1968 on the Berkeley campus. It was Stop the Draft Week and she was new in town. We married on May 1, 1977. Our marriage outlasted our movement. If only our communal consciousness and idealistic wisdom. had been as enduring as the love of a man and a woman. I thought I could count on you, Comrades. but you got absorbed into the great American vacuum cleaner. Judy makes it possible. to hope that Dubya will walk naked and ashamed. If we could stick together bound by love, irony and kindness, then anything good must still be possible. Yes You May Day. May Day is Married Day. ‘cause Comrade Judy and I got married 28 years ago. on this ancient red-letter day. She was eight months pregnant. under a sun shining Woodstock wedding of tie-dye chuppa. with friends and family cheering. Bill Kunstler cracking jokes. secret police skulking for underground Abbie. by blocking roads and reading licenses. Loving lovers always be trumping lying liars. that’s the story till now. Except last year was spent in chemotherapeutic hell. accompanied by Dubya’s stealing a second term. A very bad year for good people. But roses are budding, the garden awakens, the struggle renews, the senior marrieds now ride off into western sunset. for bright month of legendary beauty. Everybody must get renewed by love. Jessica is 25. I told Judy moments after you began the journey. “She has the eyes.” Penetrating power that looks at you and knows. On your 25th birthday. those same eyes, undiminished and stronger. still look intensely. Know that you are loved, cherished, respected beyond measure. A sweet warrior celebrates a new chapter. She is strong. She is ready. (December 4, 2002) Yippie Café * The empty chairs and tables. At the Yippie Café. To Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Phil Ochs and all the others. In dreams they come for me. And say they love me, miss me, want me. OK, someday I’ll be coming. But not just yet. I’ve got a few more poems up my sleeve. And a few more Bushies to burn. * “ Stew wrote this poem on his 63rd birthday…. I put it on his memorial card.” — Judy. We know it’s only rock’n’roll but we loved him: The Rolling Stones salute founding member Ian Stewart before awards honour. The rockers took time to film a personal video tribute before piano player Ian Stewart is honoured at a prestigious music awards ceremony this week. Guitarist Keith Richards said the debt the band owed Stewart – known as Stu – was immeasurable. He said: “We are only here because of Ian Stewart. Without him, the band would never have existed. “He hooked with Brian and then Mick and I sort of waltzed in and it became The Rolling Stones.” Sadly Ian, who came from Pitten-weem in Fife, passed away in 1985 aged 47, but will receive a special hall of fame award at the SSE Scottish Music Awards on Saturday. Presented by music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins (Scotland), the award will be accepted by his wife, Cynthia and son, Giles at the star- studded ceremony at Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket. And the Stones – Mick Jagger, Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts – will be there in spirit – and on video. They will recall their days on the road and in the studio with the supremely talented musician, who insisted he was the lost Laird of Pittenweem. Ian had been there from the start, forming the rhythm and blues band in 1962, with guitarist Brian Jones. They recruited Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman but, Ian was dropped from the line-up by their then manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. He felt that six members were too many for a pop group and that his burly look was the wrong image to appeal to female fans. So Ian became their road manager, played piano on stage with them and was integral to their sound on many of their biggest hits and classic albums, Cynthia said: “Andrew thought his face didn’t fit in the Stones. But Stu said to me, ‘I’m going to stay on because where else will I be able to tour the world and play golf?’ “That’s exactly what he did. As their road manager he sorted out tour contracts and arranged to stay in hotels near his favourite golf courses.” But that played havoc with the Stones’ love lives when hordes of screaming girls used to chase them during the 1960s. Richards said: “So we’re 15 miles out of town and we’re ready to rock and roll… ‘What the hell are we doing here, Stu?’” Richards said. “He’d say, ‘Best place for you … away from the crowd’. Meanwhile, you’d find out it was because there was a golf course… ha ha!” In a previous tribute, Jagger said: “I felt he was a very close friend of mine. He means a lot to the history of the band and his musical influences on us endures. “The core musical component of the band is still the same as it was when Stu was a key member. You feel that you are still playing his music and his influence is very strong.” Ian’s no-nonsense, straight talking approach endeared him to the band. He famously refused to play piano on their classic 1968 album, Beggar’s Banquet because he didn’t rate the songs. Drummer Charlie Watts said: “He liked straight ahead things. If he didn’t want to play something, he wouldn’t play it. “But what he liked and what he played was unique and admired by a lot of piano players.” Guitarist Ronnie Wood recalled how Ian was very supportive when he joined the group in 1975. “He was always encouraging to me throughout my opening days with the Stones and in all of the rehearsing I had to do and swotting up,” he said. Cynthia says her late husband would have been thrilled at the special Hall of Fame award. She said: “Stu would have loved the fact this award came from the Scottish music industry more than you will ever know. “He was a Scot to his true heart. Everything about Stu started in Scotland. He was born in his grandparents’ home at Kirklatch Farm and as a child learned to play by ear on an old upright piano there. “This is the one award we know Stu would have absolutely loved.” In 1965, Cynthia was set up on a date with Ian by Glyn Johns, record producer of The Who and Led Zeppelin. “Stu was so Scottish – an extremely unemotional person – but I have to say it was love at first sight,” recalled Cynthia. “We got engaged soon afterwards then married in St. Andrew’s Church in Surrey on January 2, 1967. “We had a reception for our family and the Stones threw a party for 300 people later that night.” Cynthia and Ian were happily married for 18 years. But when Giles was born normal married life proved difficult. Ian was at the band’s side throughout their controversial career during historic events including their drugs busts and the concert at Altamont when a fan was stabbed to death by Hell’s Angels. When the band was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, they insisted he was included in the honour. Cynthia said: “Stu was an unusual character and not a terribly good husband simply because he was never there. He was an absent father through no fault of his own.” In 1971, the Stones became tax exiles while recording their classic album, Exile On Main Street. Cynthia said: “In those days, I didn’t fly, which was my fault. “So when Giles was born in ’71, I stayed home to look after him. In that year, when the Stones left the UK, Giles saw very little of his father. But when he did come home, he was very into watching his son grow up. “Stu was a very modest man. He was extremely solid and very un-showbizzy. I definitely think that was all to do with his Scottish-ness. “If he didn’t like something, you couldn’t change him. And I know the Stones respected Stu for that.” In 1985, Ian returned from a recording session with the band in the Bahamas. He was ill and diagnosed to be suffering from sarcoidosis, a form of lung disease. Ian visited his doctor but became unwell in the surgery waiting room and died of a massive heart attack, aged 47. Richards, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page were just three of the top musicians who paid their respects at his funeral. Cynthia and Giles remain rightly proud of Stu. She said: “It was incredibly exciting to watch my husband go all around the world with the biggest rock ‘n’ roll band in the business. I don’t think any of us realised just how enormous the Stones were. “To us, they were just … the boys. “When Honky Tonk Women or Brown Sugar come on the radio, I always turn the volume right up so I can hear his piano. “Giles is also very proud of his father. He has a room in his house devoted to Stu, full of records and photographs. I baby sit for Giles’ four little ones. “In a room of their house, where I sit after the kids are asleep, there is a painting of Stu by artist, Peter Blake. “I look at it and it makes me think of all the lovely times we had together. I miss him terribly.” This is Ian’s band… we’re still working for him. Keith Richards insists Ian Stewart was the founder and driving force of the Stones and, in his autobiography Life, remembers meeting him for the first time. “I went to the Bricklayers Arms, a seedy pub in Soho, for the first time for the first rehearsal for what turned out to be the Stones. “I think it was May of ‘62, a summer evening. Just off Wardour Street. I get there, I’ve got my guitar with me. “And as I get there, the pub’s just opened. Typical brassy blond old barmaid, not many customers, stale beer. She sees the guitar and says, “Upstairs.” And I can hear this boogie-woogie piano, this unbelievable Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons stuff. “I’m suddenly transported in a way. I feel like a musician and I haven’t even got there! I could have been in the middle of Chicago, in the middle of the Mississippi. I’ve got to go up there and meet this man who’s playing this, and I’ve got to play with him. And if I don’t measure up, it’s over. That was my feeling as I walk up those stairs, creak, creak, creak. In a way I walk up those stairs and come down a different person. “Ian Stewart was the only one in the room, with this horsehair sofa that was split, horsehairs hanging out. He’s got on a pair of Tyrolean leather shorts. He’s playing an upright piano and he’s got his back to me because he’s looking out of the window where he’s got his bike chained to a meter. All the while this Leroy Carr stuff is rumbling off his fingers… “Ian Stewart, I’m still working for him. To me, the Rolling Stones is his band.” Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer. 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