Tom Keylock played a crucial part in the turbulent 1960s history of the Rolling Stones. Initially employed as a chauffeur, he swiftly became indispensable as the band’s most trusted all-round “fixer”.

Dubbed “Mr Get-It-Together” by the band’s principal guitarist Keith Richards, his duties expanded to include bodyguard, cook, road manager, procurer and much else besides.

Fiercely loyal in the defence of his employers’ interests, he was there when band members appeared in court on drugs charges, and — as he was a man of the world from an older generation — his youthful charges frequently sought his advice on relationships and other personal matters. When hanging around the recording studio waiting to drive the Stones home one night, he was even invited to sing in the backing chorus on their recording of Sympathy for the Devil.

Although he kept a low profile during most of this activity, he achieved notoriety when, after being detailed by the band’s management to keep a watch on the erratic Brian Jones following his departure from the Stones, he was one of the first to arrive on the scene after Jones’s death by drowning in his swimming pool in 1969.

Rumour and mystery still swirl around Jones’s demise, with Keylock’s role at the centre of much of the more lurid speculation. He subsequently acted as an adviser during the making of the film Stoned (2005), which depicted the events surrounding Jones’s death and was portrayed in the film by the actor David Morrissey.

Born in 1926 in North London, Keylock joined the Royal Army Service Corps and served at the Battle of Arnhem in 1944 and subsequently in Palestine. He was discharged in 1948 and returned to London, working as a driver and developing a shrewd toughness that was to hold him in good stead.

By 1965 he was running a car hire company in Wood Green, North London, when he received a booking to chauffeur two young men to Heathrow airport. The duo were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and they were so impressed by the dexterity with which Keylock dodged traffic, fans and photographers alike, that he was offered a full-time job on the spot.

He initially balked at the idea, and his wife, Joan, was even more appalled. But he was given a month to think about the offer and finally accepted after a further meeting with Jagger in which the singer asked him about his war experiences. As he subsequently explained to the biographer Christopher Sandford in his book Mick Jagger: Rebel Knight: “I’d had plastic surgery on me nose and on me face when I’d been in the Army. And I’d had this skin graft from the side of me leg and me backside on to me face. When I told Mick about it, he said, ‘So that’s why you talk so much shit’.”

The irreverent humour appealed to Keylock and he agreed to sign on. His employment was a typically astute move by Jagger. The Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, was no older than the band and although his early stewardship had been brilliant, it was as if Jagger intuitively realised that as the pressures and dangers grew with their increased celebrity, Keylock’s worldly-wise experience would prove invaluable. He began driving the group on their tour of Britain in the autumn of 1965 and his wider set of skills was soon in evidence. Bill Wyman, the Stones’ bass guitarist, recalls the tour arriving in Manchester and a military-style operation to get them from hotel to venue without being mobbed by fans, involving back stairways, fire escapes and decoy vehicles. Keylock relished such subterfuge and played a key part in organising the manoeuvres.

By 1966 he had become so highly regarded within the Stones camp that when Bob Dylan toured Britain and required a chauffeur and bodyguard, Richards suggested he should borrow Keylock. He did sterling service again, administering a “good kicking” to a waiter who, after delivering room service to Dylan at his hotel in Glasgow, decided to give him a lecture on how he was a “traitor” to folk music.

He also rescued Dylan when members of the Stones took exception to Dylan telling them that while he could easily have written Satisfaction, the Stones could never write a song as good as Mr Tambourine Man. One group member was allegedly about to take a swing at Dylan but Keylock hustled him out of the way before the incident could get any uglier.

Keylock can be seen in D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary film of Dylan’s 1966 tour, Eat the Document, in a bizarre scene in which he drives Dylan and John Lennon around the streets of London while they are high on drugs. The episode closes with Dylan asking Keylock to get him back to his hotel because he is about to be sick.