Is ‘The Killing of Georgie’ a true story?
Often associated with his vibrant take on sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Rod Stewart has built a healthy back catalogue that celebrates the vitality of life. His third studio album, Every Picture Tells a Story, released in 1971, told stories of forbidden lust on a hard-rock and folk backdrop that resulted in him becoming the pin-up boys of ’70s rock salaciousness. It was a role he slipped into with relative ease and continued to build a solid discography of fun-loving music.
While his 1976 album A Night on the Town certainly opened proceedings in a similar vein with the sultry ‘Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)’, the record’s fourth song, ‘The Killing Of Georgie Pt I and II’ displayed a more observational side to Stewart’s writing.
The song tells the story of a homosexual man who was murdered in New York by a New Jersey gang. With 1970s America as the backdrop, wrestling between liberalism and conservatism, the song is an intelligent and emotive confrontation of homophobia. The opening verse, in particular, is a striking introduction to a story of one man’s abandonment: “In these days of changing ways/ So called liberated days/ A story comes to mind of a friend of mine/ Georgie boy was gay I guess/Nothin’ more or nothin’ less/ The kindest guy I ever knew/ His mother’s tears fell in vain/ The afternoon George tried to explain/ That he needed love like all the rest”.
What follows is a story about Georgie moving to New York, where he finds freedom and community among the city’s liberal elite. With the introduction of every line, Stewart shares a compelling but tragic story that soon ends with Georgie’s murder upon his arrival in New York.
“Out of a darkened side street came/ A New Jersey gang with just one aim/ To roll some innocent passer-by/ There ensued a fearful fight/ Screams rang out in the night/Georgie’s head hit a sidewalk cornerstone/ A leather kid, a switchblade knife/ He did not intend to take his life/ He just pushed his luck a little too far that night”.
It’s perhaps Stewart’s finest hour as a songwriter and earned him Bob Dylan comparisons among critics. Which, in an interview with Barbara Charone from Sounds later that year, he happily admitted was somewhat of intention: “I was certainly influenced by Dylan. The verse reminds me a bit of ‘Hurricane’ only slower”.
While Dylan’s ‘Hurricane’ was a protest song directly referencing the imprisonment of boxer Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, the question of whether ‘The Killing Of Georgie Pt. I and II’ came from similarly true origins, as is often asked.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2016, Stewart confirmed the story was indeed about a man named Georgie who, during Stewart’s time with The Faces, became somewhat of a familiar face: “He would play songs for us and say, ‘Have you heard this?’ I remember him turning us on to Sam and Dave singing ‘Night Time Is the Right Time’. I can tell you, he was a hell of a good-looking guy.”
While Stewart admitted to embellishing some of the story’s finer details, he did confirm in another interview with Mojo that Georgie was, in fact, murdered: “That was a true story about a gay friend of [former band] the Faces,” he continued “but he was knifed or shot, I can’t remember which”.
While Stewart embellishes elements of the truth in the name of poetic license, the sad reality is they aren’t desperately detached from reality. ‘The Killing of Georgie Pt I and II’ remains one of his finest songs to this day because of its worryingly accurate portrayal of a warped political landscape where tragedies like these quite commonly happened. While the true story of Georgie may be told in this song with shades of grey, the broader truth of homophobic hate crimes very much exists.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.