Why Rod Stewart Mattered So Much to a Teen Boy in Care

Rod, I know what I should have done when I met you at Wembley in 1976. I should have walked into that rehearsal room carrying a bag full of your records. I should have asked you to stand up, hugged you, and said thank you.Because when I first encountered your music, I was thirteen years old and living in a children’s home. I was depressed. Darkness seemed to surround everything. Then you and The Faces came along and changed something inside me.You gave me identity. You gave me purpose. Most of all, you showed me there was another world beyond the one I knew.The moment happened in a sitting room at Burbank Children’s Home in Woking, Surrey, a county to the southwest of London. Someone had donated a pile of records. Among them was “Nod’s As Good As A Wink…To A Blind Horse.” I remember studying the sleeve before a huge poster fell out. That poster changed my life. It showed The Faces fooling around in hotel rooms, bars and swimming pools. There were girlfriends, roadies, laughter and chaos. There were drinks, cigarettes and all the signs of a life being fully lived. But what struck me wasn’t the excess. It was the joy. The Faces looked like a band of brothers. They looked like a family.Rod Stewart photographed by Allan Warren. Wikimedia CommonsAt that point in my life, fun was an alien concept. Everything felt heavy and serious. Yet that poster carried a message: there was another way to live. There was laughter somewhere. There was friendship. There was light.I stared at it for hours. Looking back, I see that poster as part of my healing. You had no idea who I was. You never knew that somewhere in a children’s home a lost kid was studying those photographs and imagining a better future.Then I played the record. I loved everything about it. Your voice. Ronnie Wood’s guitar. Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones. Together you created a sound full of swagger, warmth and possibility. The songs painted a world I desperately wanted to inhabit. A world of adventure, freedom, romance and working-class dreams.Around that same time, another important person entered my life. A beautiful soul took me under her wing. She played me Bob Dylan’s “Blood On The Tracks.” She introduced me to Kerouac. Like you, she opened a door into a wider world.She loved your music too, especially “Mandolin Wind.” We played it endlessly. Even now, when I hear that song, I am transported back to those moments. I remember her kindness and the way she helped me believe life could be bigger than my circumstances. Years later she died from a terrible illness. Whenever I hear “Mandolin Wind,” I smile first and then I cry. Your music carries both memories. Rod Stewart promoting his new album ‘Atlantic Crossing’ in 1975. Steve Morley/Redferns via Getty ImagesThe other thing I loved was the way The Faces looked. In the children’s home I had very little money. My friends wore Ben Sherman shirts, Sta-Prest trousers and Loake shoes. I longed to look like them.Then along came The Faces. You all looked magnificent. The jackets, scarves, waistcoats, colours and haircuts. You looked like the older brothers I wished I’d had.More than that, you looked like a family. That mattered enormously to a kid who spent much of his life wondering where he belonged. Your influence spread far beyond records and posters.One Saturday night in Woking, after a few drinks too many, I noticed a group of lads following me. I was convinced I was about to get a hiding. Then their leader sang a line from a Faces song. I sang back the next line. Within minutes we were walking together, singing Faces songs all the way up Goldsworth Road.Only music could turn fear into friendship that quickly. What I loved most about you was that you made life look exciting without making it look unattainable.The mansion, the clothes, the cars and the beautiful women were all part of the image. But there was always a twinkle in your eye. A sense of humour. A sense that if a working-class lad from North London could do it, maybe the rest of us had a chance too. For a boy growing up in care, that was an incredibly powerful message. Over time, though, something changed. I drifted away. New artists arrived. Tastes changed. I became a music journalist and, worst of all, I started judging you.I focused on the image rather than the music. I wrote one of those predictable pieces journalists write when they decide an artist’s best years are behind him. I regret that now. The truth is I had forgotten what your music had done for me. I had forgotten the poster. Forgotten the children’s home. Forgotten the hope.Rod Stewart and Brazil football player Pelé pictured in 1975. Steve Morley/Redferns via Getty ImagesRecently I went back and listened again. Some songs worked for me more than others, but two stopped me in my tracks: “Didn’t I,” and “Brighton Beach.” What struck me was that the thing I loved all those years ago was still there. The heart. The humanity. The restless spirit still searching for something. And suddenly I realised how wrong I had been. I had allowed the caricature to replace the man. The flash clothes, the fame and the headlines had distracted me from the fact that underneath it all was still someone who cared deeply about music. Someone whose work had once helped save a lonely kid.So this is really what I should have said when I met you. Thank you. Thank you for the records. Thank you for the poster. Thank you for the laughter, the freedom, the style, the songs and the dreams.Thank you for showing a boy in a children’s home that life could be bigger than the darkness surrounding him. Most of all, thank you for giving me shelter when I needed it. I should have told you that years ago.The thing is …You wore it well. You always did.A longer version of this article is available from Sorrentobooks.co.uk

Why Rod Stewart Mattered So Much to a Teen Boy in Care

Why Rod Stewart Mattered So Much to a Teen Boy in Care

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