Songfacts®:

• This was originally recorded by the Sutherland Brothers on their Lifeboat album in 1972. It was written by their bassist Gavin Sutherland. Rod Stewart's cover in 1975 bought the group to prominence and they released a couple of UK Top 40 hits the following year: "Arms Of Mary (#5) and "Secrets" (#35).
• Stewart related to the song's theme of homesickness (the high rate of tax in the UK had forced him to move to America) and he recorded his version at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama with a choir assembled by Bob Crewe, the Four Seasons' producer. It became his third UK chart-topper and the following year, it was revived following it's use as the theme music for a BBC TV documentary series about the HMS Ark Royal, this time peaking at #3. The combined sales of the 2 releases meant this is Stewart's biggest ever selling single in the UK with 955,111 copies sold.
• Other acts who have covered this include Robin Trower (1976), Joan Baez (1977) and Smokie (2001).
• Stewart confessed in a 2010 interview with Mail on Sunday's Live Magazine that he suffers from nerves when he has to perform live or in the studio, and always has a drink before hitting the stage or laying down vocal tracks. However, he had to record 'Sailing' completely sober because there was no alcohol available at the studio in Alabama. Said Stewart: "It's the only song I ever recorded without a drink inside me. My thing was always to have a little tipple before I sang; even now I'll have a Bacardi and Coke before I go on stage. It just helps.
  
  But 'Sailing' was recorded in Muscle Shoals, which was a dry area. The producer Tommy Dowd woke me up at ten in the morning saying, 'Get down here in half an hour; we've mixed the track and need the vocal.' I was like, 'You're joking, recording at 10.30 in the morning. I need a drink to calm the old nerves.' I was stuffed, because there was nothing to be had anywhere and I was terrified to sing without one. But I did and it turned out to be one of the biggest ones I ever made."
• The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section backed Aretha Franklin on many of her early hits. They also recorded with The Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and many other Soul music luminaries, so when Rod Stewart traveled to Alabama to record this song, he was surprised at what he saw. Muscle Shoals bass player David Hood, who owned the studio with three other members of the rhythm section, told Songfacts: "Rod, I think, was a little intimidated by our track record at the time. When he first came in and saw us, he asked Tom Dowd, well, where's the band? And Tom said, 'That's the band.' He thought that they were trying to pull something on him, because he'd seen these white guys sitting out there at the instruments. He thought the band that he was coming to record with was Aretha Franklin's band and was gonna be a bunch of black guys. So he was suspicious of us from the start. But he was also, I think, intimidated; once he found out who we were and what we had done, he was intimidated by that. He didn't really want to sing in front of us at first.
  
  'Sailing' was a huge international hit. I don't think it was that big a hit in the States, but internationally it was a huge record. They played it before all the soccer matches, the World Cup and everything. It was a big, big hit for Rod. And that record, Atlantic Crossing, was a big point in his career, because it opened him up to more of a solo thing. Before, he'd been a solo artist, but it all sounded like the Faces and that kind of stuff. "
• According to Iain Sutherland, Rod Stewart was first alerted to the Sutherland Brothers after his then-girlfriend saw their performance on BBC Two's Old Grey Whistle Test in June 1972.