"A Friend for Life"
Song by Rod Stewart
from the album Another Country
Released	23 October 2015
Length	4:42
Label	Capitol
Songwriter(s)	Steve Harley, Jim Cregan
Producer(s)	Rod Stewart, Kevin Savigar

"A Friend for Life" is a song by British singer-songwriter Steve Harley, released as a non-album single in 2001. The song was written by Harley and ex-Cockney Rebel guitarist Jim Cregan, and produced by Cregan.

Harley's first release of new material since the 1996 album Poetic Justice, "A Friend for Life" was later included on Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel's sixth studio album The Quality of Mercy, released in 2005, where production credit would be shared by Cregan and Harley.

In 2015, the song was covered by British singer Rod Stewart for his album Another Country.

"A Friend for Life" was written when Harley stayed with Cregan at his home in Los Angeles during 2000. On his return flight back to the UK, Harley came up with the song's lyrics. In 2015, Harley recalled: "I was in Los Angeles, staying at Jim's (then) house. We wrote most days and that tune came from one lazy afternoon's messing about. I wrote the entire lyric on the flight home." Later in the year, the song was recorded at friend and songwriter Mike Batt's home studio. Batt arranged and conducted the song's string quartet and also played keyboards on the track. The recording of the song inspired Batt to record extensively at his home and most of Katie Melua's recordings have since been made there.

In 2000, Harley had also started negotiating with various record labels over the release of a new studio album. In an online diary entry in September that year, Harley said: "Plans to further the recording career at in hand. Negotiations are taking place daily and constantly. I am determined that "A Friend for Life" will be available in the shops and on the radio in time for the next Spring band tour, with an album, God willing, in the can." By 2001, Harley had come to an agreement with Intrinsic Records for the release of "A Friend for Life" as a single. No new studio album would materialise until 2005's The Quality of Mercy. In a January 2001 diary entry, Harley gave an update on the song's release:

"We are pretty sure that "A Friend for Life" will be released mid-March. It should, with a little luck and the efforts of a good plugger, start getting airplay around the country towards the end of February. I can't in all honestly seriously expect a hit record. It will not be released by EMI or Sony, but by a small independent label with a good heart and much belief in the product. But airplay will help sell tickets for concerts, anyway, and to play is my first love, of course."

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Wikipedia