Nun To Rod Stewart

ON July 21, 1972, Rod Stewart released the album ‘Never A Dull Moment’, whilst 51 years later, on the same date he performed to a large crowd at Starlite in Marbella.

Coincidentally, Euro Weekly News spoke to author and scriptwriter Steve Attridge on the same day about his latest book ‘God, Rod Stewart & Me: Years of Mayhem & Madness’ which reveals several stories about his exploits as a teenager.

Not overly successful at school, he had a few jobs but also wanted to learn about life and see the world, so he was delighted when he won a competition to meet Rod Stewart and the Faces, but the meeting was to be during a long weekend in New York.

Steve explained “It was a fantastic opportunity for a teenager who had never flown before but who loved rock music and before I knew it, not only was I there but everyone seemed to take a shine to me and I was offered a job for the rest of the tour.

“It was only when we started on the next leg of the tour that I asked what I was going to do and was told by the band’s manager that I would sit at the side of the stage with ice buckets full of bottles of the then very trendy German Blue Nun wine and serve it to Rod and members of the band during the concert!”

According to Steve it was a fantastic month but because they were often playing in large stadiums and Rod was a massive football fan, there were plenty of ‘pick up’ football matches including members of the band as well as support act Free and crew.

Laughing, he said “There was however an unspoken agreement that Rod was always allowed to score the winning goal.”

When the tour was over, he made his way back to the UK and decided he needed to explore religion, so joined a monastery where he spent nine months before moving on to become a follower of Hare Krishna and then the Divine Light Mission plus as many cults as he could find.

“Before I ‘settled down’ I took a job working for a local council’s parks and garden division and it was a bit like being in a care in the community operation but with pay.

“Perhaps the strangest discovery was a preserved dead body found in undergrowth that myself and a friend cut down and there he was sitting quite peacefully but long dead!”

He went to a rather rough school in North London and discovered that if he told stories and made people laugh, he was less likely to get beaten up and this was his what got him into writing.

Since then, he has published 26 books, written for TV, spent some time writing scripts for movies in America (“terrible job with so many rewrites and every director wants to be a writer”), was a regular warm up performance poet for John Cooper Clarke who doesn’t even remember him and recently a writer of children’s books.

Now a long term resident of Mijas, Steve loves being in Spain and is lucky enough to be able to do what he loves from the comfort of his own home.

Visit https://steveattridge.com/ to find out about all his work and how to get hold of his latest creations.