‘I Was Only Joking’: The song Rod Stewart said was closest to his heart
Rod Stewart is known for his ability to pen lovesick ballads, and his husky tones have always been able to get fans swooning. Whether the subjects of his songs were real or fictional, they were always relatable, and that’s a large part of why his music became so beloved by audiences across the globe.
After his group, The Faces, disbanded in 1975, the shaggy-haired songsmith’s career went from strength to strength, with albums such as Atlantic Crossing and A Night on the Town cementing his place as one of pop music’s biggest idols. He’d already had a relatively illustrious solo catalogue prior to this, but it was at this point that he rose to the peak of his fame and remained there for almost two decades.
However, fame and fortune don’t make you immune to sorrow and heartbreak, and on his eighth solo album, Foot Loose & Fancy-Free, he releases one of the most rueful and anguished songs of his career. Despite having been written and released several years after the initial events that inspired the song took place, ‘I Was Only Joking’ saw Stewart dig up an agonising episode from his past that he still held deep-seated regrets about.
Telling the story of how he lost the love of his life through a series of silly mistakes, the track dives deep into the psychological torment that Stewart felt when he realised the error of his ways and squandered his chances with his sweetheart. Throughout the first verse, Stewart paints a picture of an unruly teenage version of himself, who messed around too much to realise how much he was breaking his girlfriend’s heart, and from there onwards, he continues to lament his past actions in an increasingly remorseful fashion.
Even addressing the girlfriend in question, he sings directly to Susannah Boffey in the second verse, declaring, “Susie, baby, you were good to me, giving love unselfishly, but you took it all too seriously, I guess it had to end,” before running into the chorus where he declares “I was only joking, my dear, looking for a way to hide my fear, what kind of fool was I?”
Making excuses for himself throughout, such as his mistakes being a case of the wine doing the talking and collecting “lovers like butterflies,” he finally admits that he was at fault at the end of the song, “owning up for prosperity, for the whole damn world to see.”
Boffey gave birth to Stewart’s first child in 1963 but gave their daughter up for adoption, and it wasn’t until 2010 that the identity of their offspring became known to the public. The then 19-year-old Stewart had made too many mistakes ever to rectify the breakdown of their relationship, and it’s something that Stewart was still grappling with for many years after.
In the liner notes to his 1989 Storyteller anthology album, Stewart revealed that it was perhaps the most personal song he’d ever written. “Songs that are closest to the heart are the easiest and by far the most satisfying to write. Much about my spirited and slightly delinquent youth here – all in all, a general review of my checkered past.” He may well have messed up on a grand scale, but at least he was mature enough to acknowledge the miscreant ways of his youth.
