1966 Folk Song, Covered by Rod Stewart, Is Still a Powerful Hit 60 Years Later

In 1966, Tim Hardin released a song about heartbreak that would ultimately become far better known through other voices.

“Reason to Believe” appeared on the singer-songwriter’s debut album, Tim Hardin 1, pairing a restrained folk arrangement with a painful question: “Why keep believing someone you know has deceived you?” The composition became one of Hardin’s most enduring works, inspiring recordings by numerous artists before Rod Stewart gave it one of its best-known interpretations.

Hardin’s original was striking in its simplicity.

“When I started I was a terrible guitar player,” Hardin told The Guardian. “Six months after I started I was broke so I gave lessons to college kids to make money. There are now an awful lot of very bad young guitar players around America as a result! Because of this I started out writing my own material because I wasn’t good enough to cope with anyone else’s involved arrangements. That’s why my songs are simple.”

Rather than filling the song with accusations, he focused on the emotional contradiction at the center of a broken relationship. The narrator knows he has been lied to but still wants to find a reason to trust the person responsible. Hardin’s understated delivery allowed that tension to carry the song, helping it stand apart from the more elaborate folk-rock productions emerging at the time.

Other musicians quickly recognized its potential.

The Youngbloods recorded “Reason to Believe” in 1967, while Karen Dalton included an interpretation on her 1966 debut, It’s So Hard to Tell Who’s Going to Love You the Best. The song would continue moving between folk, rock, and pop artists, gradually becoming a standard even as Hardin himself remained more of a songwriter’s songwriter than a mainstream star.

Then came Rod Stewart.

Stewart recorded “Reason to Believe” for his 1971 album Every Picture Tells a Story and released it as a single with “Maggie May” on the other side.

“I knew Rod from Marquee days when he used to see me with Alexis Korner and from meets on the road, when Pentangle and the Faces shared a hotel,” Danny Thompson from folk group Pentangle told Louder. “He wanted me to replace Ron Wood’s electric bass part with my acoustic. I doubt it took 20 minutes. After the playback, I’m off. Rod and his girlfriend, who was wearing thigh-length leather boots, saw me to the door and he held my bass while I got my car, an S1 Bentley. Rod’s jaw dropped. ‘I’ve always wanted one of those!’ He was an endearing bloke, a proper geezer. I did it because I thought Tim Hardin – who was huge on the folk circuit – would get a load of money. I didn’t even get paid. He still owes me 20 quid. He said, ‘I’ll make it up next time.’ But he never did.” 

Radio programmers increasingly favored “Maggie May,” which ultimately became Stewart’s enormous breakthrough hit, but his tender reading of Hardin’s composition remained closely associated with his early solo career.

Stewart wasn’t finished with the song, either. He returned to “Reason to Believe” years later, recording a new version for his 1993 live album Unplugged…and Seated, demonstrating how firmly the composition had remained in his repertoire.

Sixty years after Hardin first released “Reason to Believe,” its central conflict still feels immediate.

“People understand me through my songs,” Hardin once said in an interview. “It’s my one way to communicate.”

What began as an intimate folk song in 1966 went on to cross generations and genres, with Rod Stewart among the artists who ensured that Hardin’s quietly devastating composition would endure.

Related: 1965 Rock Song, With Singer Nicknamed ‘British Bob Dylan,’ Became a Major Hit