On the recent issue of Classic Rock magazine (October 2023), Bryan Adams is the guest of honor, shaping the publications material with the greatest highlight being interviewing Rod Stewart. The Canadian rocker asks a lof of things in a chat with humor, sarcasm and loads of information. Here’s an excerpt about Rod’s begging in band.
Bryan Adams: «Rod, I know when I first started to become a singer, I know the moment when I felt like: “This is good. I’ve got a voice”. What was the moment for you that you thought: “Oh, I can sing”?
Rod Stewart: When I was a youngster, six or seven, we had huge family parties. My parents, my brothers, they all had voices, they could all sing. So I was surrounded by would-be singers. But in my beatnik days, down in Brighton Beach when I was about sixteen or seventeen, people would ask me to take my guitar out and play Woody Guthrie’s this and that. And I thought: “I must have something here.”
Bryan Adams: I love the story about you busking on a train platform. Is it true that you were discovered there?
Rod Stewart: RS: Yeah. You know Long John Baldry? Him and Cyril Davis were bringing the blues to Great Britain and trying to get Muddy Waters to come over. I’d just gone to see his band, and I was on theway home, on platform seven, but he [Baldry] was on platform six or whatever. I was playing a harmonica and singing by myself, doing an old Muddy Waters song, and he came over and said: [briefly puts on a posh accent] “Young, man, would you like to join the band as a backup singer?” So I did, and that’s what started it all. Thirty-five pounds a week, which was a fortune in those days. The average wage was twenty pounds a week.
Bryan Adams: Long John Baldry played near me in Vancouver years ago, but in a restaurant.
RS: I’ve still got his guitar. His ashes are inside, so if I rattle it round I can hear him. He’s still with me».
