The Motown hit that “ravished” Rod Stewart’s soul
It’s hard to deny Rod Stewart anything less than the mantle of a rock star. He has a number of accolades, has dabbled in various genres, and played such a massive variety of gigs that the ‘Maggie May’ singer has sound embedded into him at this point. His entire career started in 1962 when he began busking with his harmonica; the rest is history.
It was easy for Stewart to perform and win over audiences because he was passionate about the music that surrounded him. He constantly listened to different genres, and his love for R&B and soul music was consistently cemented. While he labels a number of artists as inspirations, there was one band that he simply couldn’t get enough of.
“I was on holiday with my parents in the late ‘60s when I heard ‘I Wish It Would Rain’. I lived in England, where it fucking rains all the time, so it was appropriate,” he said, recalling the first time that he came across The Temptations track, “But that’s also when I fell in love with David Ruffin’s tenor – it jumped out of the speakers and ravished my soul.”
As someone who wanted to sing, it’s unsurprising that Rod Stewart was so drawn to The Temptations, as very few bands had a vocal range as beautiful as theirs. They were responsible for a barrage of hits, each laced with some of the best vocals available in music. It was hard for Stewart to ignore.
What Stewart responded to most was not just technical excellence, but emotional immediacy. The Temptations sang with a sense of urgency that felt lived-in rather than performed, delivering heartbreak and hope with equal conviction. For a young singer finding his own voice, that ability to sound both effortless and devastating was something to aspire to rather than imitate outright.
That influence would quietly shape Stewart’s own approach as a frontman. Even as his career moved through folk, rock, soul, and pop, there was always an emphasis on feel over perfection, on sounding human rather than polished. Much like The Temptations, Stewart learned that the power of a song often lies not in how cleanly it is delivered, but in how deeply it connects.
“The Tempts were always an all-star vocal band,” he said before listing some of the bands hits that moved him, “’My Girl’, ‘The Way You Do The Things You Do’, ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg’, ‘Just My Imagination’. Later on, they broke ground with the psychedelic soul of ‘Cloud Nine’,” he said, “I remember listening to the high-hat rhythms on that record over and over with the guys in the Jeff Beck Group. We’d try to change every one of our songs to try and capture their drumbeats.”
The band was such an inspiration for Stewart that he doesn’t only cite their music as influencing his career but the way they dressed. He refers back to the record ‘I Wish It Would Rain’ and remembers buying it and seeing the cover.
“When I got home from holiday, I immediately bought ‘Wish It Would Rain’. At that time, I was very much into folk music and turning the corner into R&B, and I’ll never forget that cover, with all The Tempts dressed as Foreign Legionnaires, sitting in the desert,” he said, “Their outfits were wonderful – I blame them for teaching me to wear loud colours.”
It’s hard to deny The Temptations’ talent, and it’s clear just how much of an influence they had on Stewart when you listen to the music he made and see the way he dressed. His ravished soul inspired how he navigated the musical world, and music is all the better for it.
