Another week another match
On Friday night Rod was in Murphy’s Bar in Glasgow and did a fine version of Maggie May with John McLaughlin and Kevin McGuire.
The main reason Rod was in Glasgow was it was The Scottish Cup semi final between Aberdeen and Celtic at Hampden Park
Rod, Alastair and Aiden all celebrated an incredible game,
It was a tense time for the trio as the match ultimately went to penalties after a 3-3 draw, with Celtic eventually triumphing 6-5. Their team will now face rivals Rangers or Hearts at next week’s final.
Rod also made a young Celtic fan’s day as he posed for a photo before the match.
Puttin’ on the Ritz
Rod and Penny had dinner at The Ritz London and were spotted with Anglo Italian Soprano superstar Carly Paoli
Nitin Sawhney
The SMILER team would like to wish a speedy recovery to Nitin Sawhney who worked with Rod and Jools Holland on the Swing Fever album producing three tracks.
Nitin posted photos and a health update following his third surgery after his recent heart attack. The acclaimed musician was forced to cancel a string of upcoming dates after being rushed to hospital for emergency surgery in early March.
Nitin posted on his Instergram account ‘Just to let you all know… I had my third and final heart operation today and it went very well 🙂 I’m tired but feeling good… 7 weeks since my heart attack and it’s been a little journey… Because of wonderful care and the hard work of some great doctors and nurses, I was able to tour and after a little rest I’ll be back to my old self. Cheers (Don’t have a heart attack by the way. Not fun. Especially if you black out and collapse onto a glass ornament that shatters in your face… ) 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾’
This week’s Rod Art
Looking thriugh the SMILER archives I came across these great drawings of Rod
These are from a time when we had many budding artists who sent in drawings of Rod
The drawings were sent in by Carole B and Jay Paris..Do we still have any budding artists?
Dim All The Lights
Did you know “Dim All The Lights” was a song that Donna Summer wrote all by herself for Sir Rod, The story goes that Donna wrote the song for Rod but then chickened out and decided to sing the song herself. She included the song on her 1979 “Bad Girls” album & the song would become one of her biggest hits! It peaked at #2 on the BB Hot 100, being blocked from reaching #1 by another DS song. “No More Tears” the duet with Barbra Streisand was the song that would block “Dim” from going to #1. The situation with “Dim All The Lights” would go onto cause a major rift in the relationship between Donna and Casablanca records founder & president, Neil Bogart. It’s said that Neil released the duet with Barbra a month earlier than he had planned to even though he told Donna he would wait until “Dim” peaked at #1.
talkSPORT
Rod phoned the Alan Brazil show on talkSPORT on Thursday morning and sang the praises of Dundee’s’s Luke McCowan who will be playing against Celtic this week
Talking about last week’s match Rod started by saying..
“They (Aberdeen) were outstanding. I actually felt a bit sorry for the Aberdeen supporters, they deserved a little bit more than that. If they can keep that up next year then they are going to be a top-four team, they were brilliant.”
“We can’t take our foot off the pedal that’s the thing. Dundee could be a problem. Have you seen this young kid McCowan? He plays for Dundee. Wow. He is superb, I hope Celtic have got their eye on him.”
And Finally..
Glad to see Issue 103 of SMILER is getting out to our members and many of you let us know you were settling down with a glass of Wolfie’s to read it
Hope you are all enjoying it
If you need any extra copies or forgot to subscribe go to
https://www.rodstewartfanclub.com/product-category/mag
A couple of members have asked why this issue came out in April and is titled Winter 2023..Good question
Well…It is a tradition at SMILER to have a reference title consisting of an issue number and a season, the season is a rough guide as to when the issue will be published so in 2023, the winter solstice fell on Friday 22 December. At 3.27am to be exact. This astronomical winter lasted until Wednesday 20 March 2024, the date of the spring (or vernal) equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, the magazine needed and extra couple of weeks as Rod got his contribution in on time [Well done Sir!] but Jools went off to America promoting the album and couldn’t get his contribution in until he returned..so April it was
See you next week..