Rod Stewart Dedicates Song to the Daughter He Gave Up for Adoption

Rod Stewart is planning to release his first album of original material in at least fifteen years and one of the songs is about his teenage lover and their first child. "Brighton Beach" is about... how he met an art student when he was 17 and the two fell in love. But the girl's father didn't approve and Stewart sings that one day he "woke to find you gone."

Lyrics include: "I swear to God, I could not have loved you any more. I sit here playing with my kids and wonder where you are in this world. Do you ever stop and think about me?"

Stewart opened up about the track, saying: "It's about a real girl, her name is Susannah Boffey. She was what I thought at 17 was my first love affair and she was the mother of my first child. She was adopted because we didn't have a pot to piss in in those days."

"There was no consideration of marriage and it was a real blot on your character to get a girl pregnant in those days. I was frightened to tell my mum and dad so I told my brothers and they said ‘we'll take care of you.'"

Stewart's daughter, Sarah, was given up for adoption in 1963 but the pair recently got back in touch. Her birth mother now lives in France and doesn't know the song has been written.

Rod Stewart said: "She doesn't know and neither does Sarah but she will love it. I'm very much in touch with Sarah now and we've just begun to call each other father and daughter which was hard because I didn't change her nappies or take her to school. Her mum doesn't want much to do with us, unfortunately."