Rod: The Autobiography (47 page)

I don’t know why it happened. No one pushed me. It was clean out of the blue. It felt like another piece of the pure luck with which I have been blessed in my life. (And trust me, there is not a day goes by that I don’t wake up and think how lucky I am.) But something clicked and I realised that I had things to write about again. A whole life’s worth of topics, in fact. The book you’ve just read.

Taking those new songs into the studio in 2012 and beginning to shape them up for an album release in 2013, I fell back in love with the whole process. I was living and breathing it again. It was like a rebirth, a root right back to the beginning. In fact, I’m not sure I had this much enthusiasm when I made those first albums of mine, in London, back in the early 1970s, as a kid with a rooster haircut, feeling his way forward by instinct and sheer nerve. But what is definitely true is that I haven’t felt so confident about a new set of recordings, as a writer and as a producer, since
Gasoline Alley
.

Of course, the album will come out, and then we’ll see. But whatever becomes of those recordings, hit or miss, is irrelevant really, beside what I understand to be the true moral of this episode, which is that sometimes when you think you’ve finished, it turns out that you haven’t.

Mind you, I’ll be absolutely gutted if the album is anything less than an international sensation.

This could be a photo of any of my kids when they were the same age. Clacton, circa 1950.

The Stewarts on holiday minus the sun. You will note my father wearing a tweed jacket, sweater, shirt and tie on the beach in June. Bless the British.

The family gathered except for brother Bob and his wife Charlotte, who were probably round the corner up to no good! Please observe a collection of thin ankles. From left to right: my brother Don, Don’s wife Pat, my sister Peggy (who sadly passed away too soon), my mum Elsie, me, my dad Bob, my sister Mary, Mary’s husband Fred.

Archway Road, 1945. The place of my birth.

Me and Dad going into a fifty-fifty. Thanks for the tartan pride, Dad.

My mate Kevin Cronnin, Sue Boffey (Sarah’s mother) and me, posing before boarding a third-class carriage to Brighton. Nice hair all round. Circa early sixties.

I love this picture of me and my two brothers turning out for Highgate Redwing. Please note my attention to fashion: short shorts - Italian style - and a Beatles haircut. The other two couldn’t give a damn.

My pals Kevin Cronnin (left), Clive Amore (right) and me proudly displaying our harmonica. My bouffant appears to have collapsed entirely. Duke of York pub, London, circa mid sixties.

My old pal Ewan Dawson and me outside my parents’ council house, posing with someone else’s car.

Eel Pie Island, where I made one of my first appearances, and where an unfortunate incident occurred with a beer mug.

The Dimensions, looking full of promise.