Rod Stewart Had to Be Locked in Hotel Room Until He Wrote Songs
Rod Stewart recalled being too “lazy” to write songs in the ‘70s because “there was too much shagging and drinking to do” during his time with the Faces.
In a new interview on Apple Music 1’s Time Crisis – coinciding with the release of his latest album The Tears of Hercules – the veteran singer said his first attempt to write with bandmate Ronnie Wood had been a complete failure.
“I'd never put pen to paper… until I joined the Jeff Beck Group,” Stewart recalled. “And then Jeff said we should start writing our own songs for one of the two Jeff Beck albums.” As a result he visited Wood’s home on a winter day. “We turned on the electric fire, which had three bars. And then his mum came in and said, ‘You can only use one because it's expensive.’ That was very cold. We had a notepad and a piece of paper and a pencil. And we tried to write a Jeff Beck song and nothing came out. And then we said, ‘Well, let's have a glass of wine. We had a bottle of wine between the two of us and still nothing came out.” They eventually came up with the track “Plynth (Water Down the Drain)” but he said it had been “a struggle.”
“The Faces used to lock me in a Holiday Inn room; used give me a bottle of wine, a tape recorder and bit of paper and they'd locked the door until I got the lyrics, because I was lazy,” Stewart continued. “In the ’70s there was too much shagging and drinking to do. Party! Because the Faces were the party band.”
Since those days, however, Stewart said he’d come to find the writing process “enjoyable." “I really love it," the rocker admitted. "I love the whole way we put albums together. I'm not saying everybody should do it this way, but I do mine over the laptop – I make alterations that way. And having spent probably 20 years in studios with no light and no sunshine, it's a relief to be able to do it that way. … I enjoy the songwriting process now more than I've done in my entire life.”