Songfacts®:

• Rod Stewart wrote this tear-jerking eulogy for his late friend Ewan Dawson, who was a mentor and confidant to the singer back in the '60s. Rod lost touch with Ewan for a time in the '90s but they picked up their friendship again in the 2000s. After he died in the mid-2010s, Stewart waited for the right vehicle in order to pay tribute to his close pal.
  
  "It's about a mate of mine who passed on about three years ago," the singer told Uncut in 2018. "We grew up through the '60s. We lost contact for a little bit. He was a public school boy - very well spoken, very humorous. I'll go as far as to say I idolized him. We were more or less the same age. But I think it's a very moving song. I think it's going to be played at so many bloody funerals."
• The song acts as a nostalgic remembrance of Ewan Dawson and his and Stewart's favorite haunts back in the '60s.
  
  All dressed up on a Friday night
  Getting drunk on cheap red wine
  Two north London boys just out on the town
  Catch a train up to cool Soho
  The Marquee and The Flamingo
  Pills and chills and girls in heels and Georgie Fame
  
  Asked by The Sun how they met Stewart replied: "He came from Muswell Hill and I came from Highgate. There used to be a coffee bar we used to frequent and he was in there one night. I noticed him in a corner, good-looking fella in high-heeled boots... you know Beatle boots. I thought I was the only one who wore them so I went over and said hello and we were instant pals."
• The song is a different one to Rod Stewart's 1974 UK top ten single that is also titled "Farewell."