My song today is ‘Sailing’. This song was composed by Gavin Sutherland of the ‘Sutherland Brothers’ in 1972 and was best known as a 1975 international hit for Rod Stewart.
Gavin Sutherland would comment: "Most people take the song to be about a young guy telling his girl that he's crossing the Atlantic to be with her. In fact, the song's got nothing to do with romance or ships; it's an account of mankind's spiritual odyssey through life on his way to freedom and fulfilment with the Supreme Being."
Written on the beach by Blythe Bridge, ‘Sailing’ was recorded by the Sutherland Brothers – a duo consisting of Gavin and Iain Sutherland The original idea was that it should have a Celtic feel to it. Issued as a single, the Sutherland Brothers' recording of ‘Sailing’ almost reached the official UK singles chart (then formatted as a Top 50), as ‘Sailing’ peaked at Number 54 in July 1972.
Rod Stewart's version of the song was recorded for his first album in North America rather than Great Britain called ‘Atlantic Crossing’. That album was recorded between April – June 1975. The first single from the album, ‘Sailing’ afforded Stewart an international hit notably in the UK where ‘Sailing’ remained Number 1 for four weeks in September 1975. ‘Sailing’ remains the Rod Stewart single to have the greatest success in its UK release. However, ‘Sailing’ failed to afford Stewart a major hit in his newly adopted US homeland.
Stewart would recall the recording of ‘Sailing’ as being a challenge. He said that he was awoken in his hotel room by a 10:00 am phone call from Dowd at Muscles Shoals, in which Dowd said: "Get down here in half an hour; we've mixed the track and need the vocal". Stewart replied(quote): "I was like: 'You're joking, recording at 10:30 am in the morning. I need a drink to calm the old nerves' and there was nothing alcoholic to be had anywhere and I was terrified to sing without a drink. I'd never sung anything in a studio without having a drink – let alone a big old anthem. And I'd never sung anything, anywhere that early in the morning. Got it in six or seven takes though.”
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Gavin Sutherland quoted that the song was an account of mankind's spiritual odyssey through life on his way to freedom and fulfilment with the Supreme Being. For my part, despite having always been a poor sailer, I have travelled on a personal voyage ever since a bad traffic accident crippled me at the early age of 11 years and left me unable to walk for three years.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that everything significant or momentous that ever happened to me in my life was influenced by that wagon that knocked me down, ran over me, and twisted my body-spine curvature around its main drive shaft.
The accident left close to death and hospitalised for nine months. Virtually every bone in my body was broken and distorted out of its natural position. My spine was badly injured and my chest collapsed with all but two of its 24 ribs broken and matted. I remained bodily disfigured in my legs thereafter, half of a kneecap missing and one leg left 3 inches shorter than the other.
Although I was medically informed that I would never walk again, it essentially took me two years from the day of my accident to be able to stand on my feet again and withstand my own body weight and another year to walk on my legs. That was followed by two years hobbling about and I was almost 16 years old before I started to regain enough mobility to start engaging in some sport and other activities again which the previous six years had prevented me from doing.
To regain better body balance (over 50 operations on my left leg breaking and re-setting had left it almost 3 inches shorter than my right leg, and riddled with arthritis). To compensate for my crippled movement, I engaged in every activity I could to ensure that no young man my own age would ever be likely to get the better of me in a fight.
I know how foolish that may appear to the reader of this post today, but during the 1950s and 1960s, while we did not put the boot in or carry weapons, boys and young men still depended on a sort of gang culture and group acceptance in order to feel valued among one’s peers.
Between the ages of 16 and 21 years, I engaged in boxing, amateur wrestling, judo, running, tennis, weightlifting, and I did as much rock and rolling on the dance floors as I could. I would engage in these activities five nights during the week and on Saturday noon and afternoon, without fail. I did all this to improve my body balance and increase my likelihood of never coming off second best either on the dance floor or in the boxing ring. This vigorous exercise routine worked for me, and although there were many sports and activities that I could not do again (like football or sprint), I was able to exchange speed of running with the stamina and endurance to run long distance and use the agility and speed of my fast hands with boxing, wrestling, judo and table tennis, instead of depending on any swiftness of foot. While football was out for me, I became an excellent table tennis player.
Being a 'with it' teenager and gang member involved being good at fighting, drinking, dancing, and pulling the birds. These were the qualities that rightfully or wrongly accorded a young man peer respect and ensured a high degree of popularity within one’s peer group.
I was in my early thirties before I learned that it took more guts to walk away from a fight, (especially one that you knew you could win). I would reach my forties before I was obliged to accept that marriage was not necessarily ‘forever’ and that no one person in a marriage can keep it alive when the other person is determined it should be killed off.
I retired on the grounds of ill-health (my mobility of legs was worsening yearly) at the age of 53 years and only then realised that life can be so productive in retirement. I involved myself in gardening more and more and the more I learned about my garden and its inhabitants, the more I learned about the needs of my wife and children and friends and neighbours. Nature taught me more about nurture and vice versa. I gradually grew to appreciate the similar needs of plant and person for the life of each to thrive. I learned that humans needed nutrients every bit as much as flowers and botanical plants do to survive and thrive in their environments. I learned that we all need our own space to grow better and that moving house can be just as disruptive to the human nervous system as moving a plant from its favourite shady spot to a different garden place, especially without also moving some of the familiar earth it was surrounded by since its infancy.
I learned that just as water, shade, sun, and nutrients are needed by every garden plant to grow and thrive, so humans need their equivalent boosts to thrive in life also. Humans need leisure and love. They need the leisure to take time out throughout the season, to better prepare them for a later time when we can re-emerge wholly reinvigorated; and just like plants, humans need love and attention in all its encouraging forms to be happy in their place. They need love shown to them; they need the love told to them, and they need love felt by them. I learned that humans thrive on being appropriately attended to just like plants and that there are times when they hate being fussed over. I learned that humans and plants hibernate in their own ways and also need restful periods where they can ‘take time out’ and be allowed not to be at their best and loudest.
My 60s witnessed a rejuvenation in my life when I needed to return to many activities of my youth. I took up bopping again and started attending rock and roll clubs all over the country with my sister Mary and her partner Richard and their rock and roll friends. I also increased my writing of poetry and rapidly increased my writing of novels (over five dozen novels by 2017). I was also able to give all my book sales profits (over £200,000 between 1990-2003) to charitable causes.
My seventies also brought me back to singing regularly. Having been a very good singer in my youth, I did not sing in public again between the ages of 21 years of age and 74. My recent cancers, restricted mobility, plus two heart attacks 15 years ago had depleted the functioning of my lungs to OCPD level. After reading that daily singing practice can greatly improve lung capacity and increase oxygenation, I began a singing regime of two hours daily. I sing and I post a new song daily on my Facebook page and have now recorded over 1000 (one thousand) videoed songs. My lung capacity and oxygenation levels have improved 20 percent and I am within the normal range now. I have also found joy in singing again.
I am now in my late 70s and despite my advanced age, my increasing immobility and experience of having to contend with three different body cancers and numerous removal of cancer operations and cancer treatments, this decade has strangely been the ten years which have seen me at my happiest. Despite having been diagnosed with terminal blood cancer three months after my wedding on my 70th birthday to my beautiful wife, Sheila (14 years younger than me), I feel like that I have at last learned how best to enjoy my life. I am happier today than in any year before I met and fell in love with Sheila. Despite having had nine cancer operations, two nine-month courses of chemotherapy, twenty sessions of radiotherapy, daily monthly blood transfusions at the hospital for three years, I have also been restricted in my daily life to keeping my social distance and maintaining a lockdown in the home for nine months annually over each of the past seven years. And yet, I would not swap my life today, for any part of life I previously experienced for all the tea in China.
In my 77th year of life, I have finally realised that each part and period of my life makes up a perfect whole life and makes me a happier and more wholesome person.
However strange it probably seems to any outsider I feel more loved at this moment in time than any man has ever felt or has a right to feel on this side of the grave. Over the past seven years, I have had more prayers and masses said on my behalf, and candles lit by people all over the world; each one giving me continual comfort and reassurance in my efforts to make this final voyage of mine last as long as possible before landing me on the shores of the promised land.
When my time eventually arrives, I will sail into the eternal sunset knowing that I loved and was loved in return by my wife, family, friends, neighbours, and one-time strangers turned friends. No more can any man ask for. I appreciate all of my life experiences to the extent that no amount of expressed gratitude can ever be given.
Love and peace Bill xxx