The chilling true story behind Rod Stewart song ‘The Killing of Georgie’
Through the late 1960s, Rod Stewart grew from strength to strength as a singer and songwriter. Alongside his work with the Jeff Beck Group and later with Faces, he launched a solo career, with his debut LP arriving in 1969. An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down was a commendable start, but Stewart’s solo ventures truly lifted off in 1971 upon the release of his third studio album, Every Picture Tells a Story. The album was home to Stewart’s breakthrough hit, ‘Maggie May’, and its double A-side neighbour, ‘Reason to Believe’, a cover of Tim Hardin’s 1966 original.
Remaining prolific throughout the mid-70s, Stewart was characterised for an eclectic sound, almost as much as his raspy vocals. He welcomed folk, rock, soul and classic R&B threads to his tapestry and was just as capable of churning out chart-topping hits like ‘You Wear It Well’ as he was of penning epic, insightful ballads. One such epic arrived in 1976 by the name of ‘The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II)’.
The track, running for six-and-a-half minutes, appeared on Stewart’s highly acclaimed seventh album, A Night on the Town, and told a chilling tale based on true events. “That was a true story about a gay friend of [former band] the Faces,” Stewart told Mojo in 1995. “He was especially close to me and Mac [Faces’ pianist]. But he was knifed or shot, I can’t remember which. That was a song I wrote totally on me own over the chord of open E.”
The powerful lyrics tell the story of a homosexual man named George, who was murdered by a New Jersey gang. At the time, very few musicians had the confidence to confront the topic of homophobia artistically, and its impact was unprecedented. “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,” Stewart sings at the beginning of the song.
As he continues, it’s revealed that George’s sexuality isn’t accepted by his mother and heads out to live independently in New York. “Accepted by Manhattan’s elite/ In all the places that were chic/ No party was complete without George/ Along the boulevards he’d cruise/ And all the old queens blew a fuse/ Everybody loved Georgie boy,” the lyrics continue.
George enjoys an affluent lifestyle and even falls in love for the first time, but one fateful night, he walks the wrong street at the wrong time. “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”.
The story is based on a real man named Georgie, whom Stewart knew, but was a closer friend of Faces’ keyboardist Ian MacLagan. “I only knew him fleetingly,” Stewart told the Guardian in 2016. “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.”
Stewart later opined that he wrote ‘The Killing of Georgie’ “probably because I was surrounded by gay people at that stage. I had a gay PR man, a gay manager. Everyone around me was gay. I don’t know whether that prompted me into it or not. I think it was a brave step, but it wasn’t a risk. You can’t write a song like that unless you’ve experienced it. But it was a subject that no one had approached before. And I think it still stands up today.”
While the story’s structure is true to life, Stewart admitted: “I wasn’t on the scene when it happened, so I embellished a bit.” In the song, he sympathetically portrayed the murder as unintentional. “That was poetic license,” Stewart added. “I thought maybe they didn’t mean to take his life. Maybe they just meant to do him over.”
To this day, ‘The Killing of Georgie’ remains among the most poignant and impactful of Stewart’s creations. In the late ’70s, some critics likened Stewart’s lyrical accomplishment to Bob Dylan’s work. In response, Stewart proudly admitted to Sounds, “The verse reminds me a bit of [Bob Dylan’s] ‘Hurricane’, only slower.”
Watch the official music video for Rod Stewart’s ‘The Killing of Georgie (Parts I and II)’ below.
