Recently speaking to Classic Rock, Rod Stewart shared the musician whose ashes reside within his guitar while looking back on the early days of his career over fifty years.
The rocker got his major breakthrough when he was recruited as a vocalist by Long John Baldry for his band, The Hoochie Coochie Men, in the mid-’60s. Stewart reflected on his first encounter with Baldry and said:
“I’d just gone to see his band, and I was on the way 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, ‘Young, man, would you like to join the band as a backup singer?’”
The singer went on to disclose the rest of the story that brought him to the Hoochie Coochie Men and revealed that he has a guitar containing the ashes of the late musician, explaining:
“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. I’ve still got his guitar. His ashes are inside, so if I rattle it around, I can hear him. He’s still with me.”
Stewart and Baldry maintained their friendship until the latter’s passing in 2005. During an interview with the Guardian in 2021, Stewart replied to the readers’ questions, including the one asking about the importance of Baldry in his career. The vocalist noted:
“He was everything. Absolutely everything. He not only got me started … He found me drunk, singing on Twickenham railway station, playing harmonica. I’d just been to see his show. He came over, and he was a bit like Stephen Fry. Well-spoken.”
The singer then revealed in the same Guardian conversation that being only 16 or 17 years old, he initially hesitated to join Baldry’s band but agreed after his mother’s approval, provided he was home by 11 o’clock. Stewart’s family grew to love the late musician.
