Martin Stone (guitarist)

Martin Stone (11 December 1946, Woking, Surrey – 9 November 2016, Versailles, France) was an English guitarist and rare book dealer. He was a longtime resident of Fingest in Buckinghamshire and, latterly, Paris.

Stone was a few years younger than his later musical partner Michael Moorcock but grew up in the same part of South London, knew the same book- and music-shops and had the same enthusiasms. Educated at Whitgift Grammar, he initially wanted to be a journalist and began as a cub reporter on The Croydon Advertiser, interviewing Jimmy Page when he was still a session musician. Stone's passion for the guitar led him to become a musician.

Stone played in many groups, including Junior's Blues Band, Stone's Masonry, Almost Presley, The Action, Savoy Brown Blues Band, Mighty Baby, Snakefinger, Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers, Les Soucoupes violentes, Southern Comfort, Pink Fairies, the The 101ers, Wreckless Eric, and the Gibson Girls.

He continued to play, backing Marianne Faithfull in her live performances, lead guitar in the French band Almost Presley and others.

He was given consideration as a possible replacement for Brian Jones in the Rolling Stone

By the 1980s Stone was earning much of his living as a bookseller, with an almost uncanny knack for finding 'lost' or famous books. He was a great fan of M. P. Shiel, who first inspired his passion for book collecting and later book-selling. he achieved international notoriety as a bookrunner. He was a major player in John Baxter's memoir A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict. He was the subject of a limited edition photographic book Martin Stone, Bookscout by the California rare bookseller Peter Howard of Serendipity Books. He appeared in the television documentary Without Walls: The Cardinal And The Corpse (Iain Sinclair / Chris Petit 1992). He was also known to be the basis for the character Nicholas Lane in Sinclair's novel White Chappell, Scarlett Tracings (1987).

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