![](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/f\/f7\/Rod_Stewart_86.jpg\/220px-Rod_Stewart_86.jpg\")
Despite being happily married to Penny Lancaster, the crooner has broken a 20-year song-writing silence with an album about divorce, the daughter he put up for adoption, and his 17-year-old first love <\/p>\n
Despite being happily married to Penny Lancaster, the crooner has broken a 20-year song-writing silence with an album about divorce, the daughter he put up for adoption, and his 17-year-old first love <\/p>\n
She was the art student who broke the teenage Rod Stewart\u2019s heart and placed their baby daughter, born out of wedlock, up for adoption.<\/p>\n
Now rock\u2019s great lothario has broken a 20-year song-writing silence by composing a heartfelt plea to the great lost love of his life.<\/p>\n
After claiming he would never write a new lyric again, Stewart, 68, has surprised the music industry by unveiling a revelatory new album.<\/p>\n
Time, released in May, includes songs about Stewart\u2019s formative years as a struggling singer, divorce (\u201cI know a little about the devastation it causes,\u201d he admits) and a tribute to the sexual powers of his third wife and mother of his eighth child, the model Penny Lancaster.<\/p>\n
The album\u2019s centrepiece is Brighton Beach, which describes the passionate romance between the 17 year-old beatnik Rod, \u201ca scruffy, teenage working class troubador\u201d and the art student girl he idolised, which was consumated \u201cunder the stars\u201d in 1963. \u201cYou were Greta Garbo, I was Jack Kerouac,\u201d he sings.<\/p>\n
But the girl\u2019s father didn\u2019t approve and one day Rod \u201cwoke to find you gone\u201d, his \u201cteenage heart scattered on the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifty years later, Stewart appeals to her in song: \u201cI swear to God, I could not have loved you anymore\u2026I sit here playing with my kids and wonder where you are in this world\u2026do you ever stop and think about me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about a real girl, her name is Susannah Boffey,\u201d Stewart told The Independent. \u201cShe was what I thought at 17 was my first love affair and she was the mother of my first child. She was adopted because we didn\u2019t have a pot to piss in in those days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart explained: \u201cThere was no consideration of marriage and it was a real blot on your character to get a girl pregnant in those days. I was frightened to tell my mum and dad so I told my brothers and they said \u2018we\u2019ll take care of you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Stewart\u2019s daughter, Sarah, was born in 1963 and spent several years moving between a series of children\u2019s homes and foster carers. At the age of five, she was adopted by a couple in East Sussex.<\/p>\n
Her mother, now Susannah Hourde, 68, who first met Stewart in a London nightclub in 1961, lives in Normandy, northern France.<\/p>\n
Has Stewart told her she is the subject of his new song? \u201cShe doesn\u2019t know and neither does Sarah but she will love it. I\u2019m very much in touch with Sarah now and we\u2019ve just begun to call each other father and daughter which was hard because I didn\u2019t change her nappies or take her to school. Her mum doesn\u2019t want much to do with us, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n
After enjoying huge success with his collections from the Great American Songbook, Stewart, who has sold 200 million records, admitted: \u201cMy assumption was that I was finished as a songwriter. I was trapped down all sorts of unhelpful mental alleys.\u201d Writing his autobiography unblocked the creative juices.<\/p>\n
Time includes “Sexual Religion”, which details Rod\u2019s first observation of Penny at the Dorchester hotel nightclub dancefloor. \u201cYou bring me to my knees\u2026I\u2019m hypnotised by your sexual religion,\u201d Stewart sings lustily.<\/p>\n
Ms Lancaster danced along to the thumping track at a playback of Time at the Abbey Road studios. She sat patiently through the single \u201cIt\u2019s Over\u201d, a recriminatory song about her husband\u2019s divorces. \u201cDivorce is the ruination of man,\u201d he says. \u201cI know a little about the devastation it causes. It\u2019s the heartbreak for the kids that does me in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does Rod see a connection between his confessional return and Bowie\u2019s comeback? \u201cHis album caught everybody by surprise. I wish him a lot of good luck and good health.\u201d And then, with a twinkle, Stewart pretends to bite on his right arm.<\/p>\n
Source: The Independent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Despite being happily married to Penny Lancaster, the crooner has broken a 20-year song-writing silence…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2805\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}