The Rolling Stones has been one of the fundamental sounds of our age and Charlie Watts kept the beat. I find it hard to think of one of these icons actually passing ...I always thought they had some kind of a deal ...

It is a mark of ones own passage through life when those artists of the music that made you you leave this mortal plane. I'm not sure whether I'm sorry for them or simply sad for the rotten realisation of inevitability that each departure reminds one of.

I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have lived with the Rolling Stones as my background music. I can recall my inculcation with their music with exact clarity. It was hearing the single Brown Sugar on my Sharp Tranny on the number 118 Bus on Fen Causeway in Cambridge in April 1971. I was thirteen years old and on my way home from school. I was not quite a musical virgin as Black Sabbath had already discovered me and David Bowie was waiting in the wings.

To this day Sticky Fingers has remained playable and various of its tracks have found a place as hindbrain markers for both joys and tragedies in my last fifty years. It has served as the background music to love lost and gained and family injured and healed.

The Sharp Transistor has been slightly upgraded to a shop full of high end audio, today is a good day to go through my Stones albums.