ROD D. STEWART, MAY YOUR GUIDING LIGHT BE STRONG

Today, The Grandma has been watching by streaming the amazing concert that Rod Stewart has offered in Calella de Palafrugell, Girona. Stewart is one of the greatest rock and pop stars of all time, and it is always a privilege and a great emotion to see his performances.

May good fortune be with you and you stay forever young, Rod!

Roderick David Stewart (born 10 January 1945) is an English rock and pop singer and songwriter. Born and raised in London, he is of Scottish and English ancestry. With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart is among the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 120 million records worldwide.

He has had 10 number-one albums and 31 top-ten singles in the UK, six of which reached number one. Stewart has had 16 top-ten singles in the US, with four reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.

Stewart's music career began in 1962 when he took up busking with a harmonica. In 1963, he joined The Dimensions as a harmonica player and vocalist.

In 1964, Stewart joined Long John Baldry and the All Stars before moving to the Jeff Beck Group in 1967. Joining Faces in 1969, he also maintained a solo career releasing his debut album that year. Stewart's early albums were a fusion of rock, folk music, soul music, and R&B.

After a disco and new wave period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stewart's music turned to a soft rock/middle-of-the-road style, with most of his albums reaching the top ten in the UK, Germany and Sweden, but faring less well in the US.

In 1993, he collaborated with Bryan Adams and Sting on the power ballad All for Love, which went to number one in many countries.

In the early 2000s, he released a series of successful albums interpreting the Great American Songbook.

In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked him the 17th most successful artist on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists. A Grammy and Brit Award recipient, he was voted at No. 33 in Q Magazine's list of the Top 100 Greatest Singers of all time. As a solo artist, Stewart was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and he was inducted a second time into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Faces.

More information: Rod Stewart

Roderick David Stewart was born at 507 Archway Road, Highgate, North London, on 10 January 1945, the youngest of five children of Robert Joseph Stewart and Elsie Rebecca Gilbart. His father was Scottish and had been a master builder in Leith, Edinburgh, while Elsie was English and had grown up in Upper Holloway in North London. Married in 1928, the couple had two sons and two daughters while living in Scotland, and then they moved to Highgate.

Stewart worked in the family shop and as a newspaper delivery boy. He then worked briefly as a labourer for Highgate Cemetery, which became another part of his biographical lore. He worked in a North Finchley funeral parlour and as a fence erector and sign writer.

In 1961, he went to Denmark Street with The Raiders and got a singing audition with well-known record producer Joe Meek, but Meek stopped the session with a rude sound. Stewart began listening to British and American topical folk artists such as Ewan MacColl, Alex Campbell, Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and especially Derroll Adams and the debut album of Bob Dylan.

Guitarist Jeff Beck recruited Stewart for his new post-Yardbirds venture, and in February 1967, Stewart joined the Jeff Beck Group as vocalist and sometime songwriter. This would become the big break of his early career. There he first played with Ronnie Wood whom he had first met in a London pub in 1964; the two soon became fast friends.

Stewart's sputtering solo career also continued with the March 1968 release of non-hit Little Miss Understood on Immediate Records.

By the early 1990s, Stewart had mostly abandoned creating his own material, saying that he was not a natural songwriter and that the tepid response to his recent efforts was not rewarding.

In May 2013, Stewart released Time, a rock album of his own original material. It marked a return to songwriting after what Stewart termed a dark period of twenty years; he said that writing his autobiography gave him the impetus to write music again.

May the good Lord be with you down every road you roam
And may sunshine and happiness surround you when you're far from home
And my you grow to be proud, dignified and true
And do unto others as you'd have done to you
Be courageous and be brave
And in my heart you'll always stay

Forever young

May good fortune be with you, may your guiding light be strong
Build a stairway to heaven with a prince or a vagabond
And may you never love in vain
And in my heart you'll always remain

Forever young

And when you fin'lly fly away, I'll be hoping that I served you well
For all the wisdom of a lifetime, no one can ever tell
But whatever road you choose
I'm right behind you, win or lose

Forever young

 More information: Ben Vaughn

Songwriting's never been a natural art for me;
it's always been a bit of a struggle.

Rod Stewart

THE FUTURE, MAY & WILL FOR WISHES & PREDICTIONS

Today, The Grandma has continued her English classes with The Bishops in Castelldefels.

First, they have practised future tense and indefinite pronouns composed by some, any and no.

Next, they have read some tarot cards and have predicted the future using Will/Won't, and they have expressed their best wishes using May.

It has been another interesting class where they have been talking about different themes like the troubadours, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Gypsy culture, and the importance of space and time in compositions and explanations.

More information: Some, Any & No Compounds

More information: Future Simple (Will)

More information: May

Forever Young is a song by Bob Dylan, recorded in California in November 1973. The song first appeared, in two different versions, a slow-pace and a fast-pace, on Dylan's fourteenth studio album Planet Waves.

A demo version of the song, recorded in New York City in June 1973, was included on Dylan's 1985 compilation Biograph. In the notes included with that album, Dylan is quoted as saying that he wrote Forever Young in Tucson, Arizona, thinking about one of his sons and not wanting to be too sentimental.

 

A live version of the song, recorded in Tokyo on 28 February 1978 and included on Dylan's album Bob Dylan at Budokan, was released as a European single in 1979.

 
Written as a lullaby for his eldest son Jesse, born in 1966, Dylan's song relates a father's hopes that his child will remain strong and happy.

It opens with the lines, May God bless and keep you always / May your wishes all come true, echoing the priestly blessing from the Book of Numbers, which has lines that begin: May the Lord bless you and guard you / May the Lord make His face shed light upon you. Not wishing to sound too sentimental, Dylan included two versions of the song on the album Planet Waves, one a lullaby and the other more rock-oriented.

In notes on Forever Young written for the 2007 album Dylan, Bill Flanagan writes that Dylan and the Band got together and quickly knocked off an album, Planet Waves, that featured two versions of a blessing from a parent to a child. In the years he was away from stage, Dylan had become a father. He had that in common with a good chunk of the audience. The song reflected it. Memorably recited on American television by Howard Cosell when Muhammad Ali won the heavyweight crown for the third time.

 

According to his website, Dylan performed the song live 493 times between its live debut in 1974 and its last outing in 2011. This includes a duet with Bruce Springsteen at the Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, in 1995. Dylan also performed the song live on the Late Show with David Letterman in 1993.

 

Rod Stewart recorded a song titled Forever Young that was released as a single and included on his 1988 album Out of Order. Stewart's manager, Arnold Stiefel, said, [I]t would be fair to say that while the melody and the music is not at all the same [as Dylan's song], the idea of the song is similar. The architecture of the lyrics of the song is very much from Dylan–there are definite similarities.

 

The similarities were enough to cause Stiefel to contact Dylan, who requested a share of the royalties, and Stewart agreed.

 

More information: Bob Dylan

 

 May you grow to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
And may you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young.

 

Bob Dylan