This week’s news and gossip

Main photo by Marc Baulisch-Steines

SMILER TARTAN Local

This week’s big news is SMILER is holding a second SMILER Tartan local party It will be to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Faces playing the Sutton Granada and will be held in the same venue as the last one. The Nightingale pub in Sutton

The event will take place on 9th of December and will feature a specialy formed band The Old Raincoats tickets will be £10 [Includes a free drink] and a link will be posted on the SMILER news page very soon

Don Stewart

Last week Don Stewart got a mention on The Mike Sweeney show on Radio Manchester when Heather from Woodley told the story of how she has seen Rod over 40 times after she went to see him at Belle Vue in 1978 when her friends talked her into going after she told them she was not into Rod as she was a Motown girl,

She went and turned into a fan and started a life long passion with her all time favourite song being ‘If We Fall In Love Tonight’ Mike disagreed and said his favourite was ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’ then Heather told the story of how she met Rod when a friend of her’s who played football rang her one night and said Rod’s brother Don had rang him and arranged a football match on Rod’s pitch and invited her ..she even got to look after Rod’s Cartier watch when big Al gave it her as he was scared of losing it!

Mike said in his 40 year career he has never interviewed Rod but knew Don as he arranged a match with Capital Radio when Mike was a DJ on the station the match was arranged but Mike never got to go.

This week’s Rod Art

This week we feature the work of Anne Deon who told SMILER this week

“Back in the 1980s I was an art-rocker. I was always a painter but started playing instruments in grammar school, around 7.5 years old, marching in the fife and drum corps. I loved it. At age 9 I realized I had a gift of painting talent too. I have always loved Rod Stewart’s voice, stage cavorting, songs, sense of humor , I loved his love of his own musicians so apparent when performing with them. Rod’s songwriting is so very immediate and heartfelt, and reaches out to his audience with the most overpowering injection of love from him to them and vice versa. I have never experienced such warmth, energy, heat, humor, wit love, fun, from any other performer of his generation and maybe any performer in any generation. His mental health and spirital health is a thing of beauty, his lyrics are alway so real, no posing lyrics at all, he is authentic”

Here is Anne’s amazing oil on canvas portrait of Rod and Penny

Anne added “During covid stay at homes I started watching youtubes of rockers and became overwhelmed by Stewarts talent, age, dignity, relevance warm, wit..humor…..et. al. etc. and spent many hours seeing the live shows and hearing him. I am of his generation, a bit younger, I decided I HAD TO DO A MAGNIFICENT PAINTING OF HIM. I wanted to put Penny in the painting too and searched around for the pics to use for reference”

To see more work by Anne go to https://www.instagram.com/anne.deon/ or http://www.annedeon.com/index.html

Forever Young

Congratulations to Daniel Grindstaff Music for being considered for a Grammy nomination for his cover of Rod’s Forever Young..

Daniel said “For your consideration. My release of “Forever Young” ft. Paul Brewster & Dolly Parton is eligible for a nomination in Best American Roots Performance. Your continued support means the world, and I am thankful for each and every vote”

Penny on crutches

It was announced that Penny has suffered a torn meniscus on her right knee.after she arrived at Geri Horner’s Tower Of London book launch on Tuesday using a pair of crutches.

Rod’s no to Saudi Arabia

Rod was praised on Talk TV for turning down one of the biggest offers of his career by refusing to perform in Saudi ­Arabia because of the ­kingdom’s human rights injustices.

The Mirror reported that Rod said: ‘I’m grateful that I have a choice whether or not to perform in Saudi Arabia. So many citizens there have extremely limited choices… women, the LGBTQ community, the press.’I’d like my choice not to go… to shine a light on the injustices there and ignite positive change.’

A source added: ‘Rod was determined to do the right thing and couldn’t accept the offer, no matter how much money was on the table. Some things are more important.’

SMILER Calendar

No live shows to report on this week so a good chance to plug our 2024 SMILER calendar that is selling fast..it is a strictly limited run so please get your orders in soon to avoid disappointment. Calendars will be shipped from the UK from end of October.

The calendar features exclusive photos by professional photographers, Specialising in the music industry and favourites of our SMILER members; Don Atkins, Bruce Kessler and Shannon Holliday. Bruce has photographed virtually every major rock concert to play Houston and whose work has amazed not only our readers many times over the years but Rod himself who included Bruce in his Best of CD booklet. Shannon Holliday is an amazing freelance photographer whose work has been featured many times not only in our calendar but also in our SMILER magazine.

We also have stunning shots from SMILER photographers Yve Paige and Marc Baulisch-Steines Who took the stunning cover photos of Rod and his sister Mary that all the British press wanted to use and who also took our main photo of Rod in his Faces shirt this week.

To order yours go to https://www.rodstewartfanclub.com/product/smiler-2024-calendar/

Sing It Again Rod

The Sing it Again Rod Figures have completely sold out thank you to Tim Jeffs for his fantastic work and thanks to everyone who supported this project and made it a huge success.

And Finally..

Now is the time everone is thinking about costumes for Hallowean ..lets see if Rod and Penny have any ideas?

See you next week..