Rod Stewart – Sailing

“Sailing” – Single by Rod Stewart from the album Atlantic Crossing
B-side: “Stone Cold Sober” (US “All in the Nameof Rock ‘N’ Roll”)
Released: 8 August 1975
Songwriter: Gavin Sutherland
Producer: Tom Dowd
Charted No.58 in US and No.1 in UK

This was originally recorded by the Sutherland Brothers on their Lifeboat album in 1972. It was written by their bassist Gavin Sutherland.

Stewart related to the song’s theme of homesickness (the high rate of tax in the UK had forced him to move to America) and he recorded his version at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with a choir assembled by Bob Crewe, the Four Seasons’ producer.

The first single from the album, “Sailing” was an international hit, notably in the UK, where it was number one for four weeks in September 1975. It returned to the UK chart in 1976 and, with less success, in 1987. “Sailing” remains Stewart’s biggest single hit in the UK, but was not a top 40 hit in his newly adopted US homeland.

Although Stewart had been touring the US with the Faces at the time of the autumn 1975 single release of “Sailing” that tour’s setlist was focused on Stewart’s collaborations with the Faces, with “Three Time Loser” being the only Atlantic Crossing number to be included. “Sailing” would debut as a Rod Stewart concert number during his European tour of November 1976 – January 1977 with the song usually serving as each show’s purported finale to be followed with “Stay With Me” as encore: Stewart’s 1 November 1976 performance at the Trondheim Spektrum in Norway launched the tour which after dates in Scandinavia, Finland, Belgium and the Netherlands played nine cities in Great Britain including six nights (21 -24 December 1976/ 14–15 January 1977) at the Olympia London.