Around October 1968 - or possibly month or so later - Rod recorded the infamous In a Broken Dream with Python Lee Jackson. Although originally put down as a guide vocal, Rod's performance was so strong that the band's lead singer, Dave Bentley (who'd penned the song), never got around to putting his own vocals over the top. Although it flopped upon its initial 1970 release, it became a huge worldwide hit when reissued in 1972. As Rod later recalled:

Peel was quick to confirm he had nowt to do with the reissue:

The initial 1970 release, on Dallon's Youngblood label, had indeed paired up In a Broken Dream and Doin' Fine (YB 1017); however, a different B-side, Boogie Woogie Joe (which didn't feature Rod), appeared on the 1972 reissue (YB 1002). Rod had also recorded a third track with the band, The Blues, which appeared on their album, In A Broken Dream (SYB 3001), and was later paired up with (a by now correctly titled) Cloud Nine on a 1976 Younglood single (YB 1077). Confusing or what ? [NB: Rod later said that the fee he was paid for singing these three tracks was a set of new mats for his car!!!] --- liner-notes by N. E. Fulcanwright

But the band still had contacts through their former manager turned Oz publisher Richard Neville, and a recording date was arranged at CBS studios. "Mick (Liber) asked me, 'We've got this date tomorrow, could you write a song?' And if someone says, write a song, you do. I was supposed to sing it as well. I hadn't been the singer in the band before but I did sing, although I was more of a jazz singer".

"In the morning I was walking along the street and I heard Joe Cocker singing 'With A Little Help From My Friends' coming out of a record shop. And the next shop had Stevie Winwood singing something. "I thought, 'There's no point me singing this'. My style was too gentle and intimate for it to work, so I phoned up and said I didn't want to do the vocal."

When Bentley turned up, Rod was there. Stewart's manager was a friend of Liber's. "He had rehearsed the song in this little bedsit where the other guys were living. CBS had hired me a Hammond organ, which I loved but had never played before, but when we went in the song just wasn't working, it was horrible. "John Peel (music nut and famed BBC DJ) was the producer, so he sent out for enormous amounts of beer and we got pissed and it worked, you know. "And when Rod came in to do the vocals he added this extra dimension as I'd hoped that a good singer would. I do remember that he couldn't read the last verse because the lights were out so there are a few odd thing in there that aren't in the script!"

After the job was done, they went their different ways. While it had been floated that they might become Stewart's band, nothing came of it and the singer joined the former members of The Small Faces, along with his Jeff Beck Group chum Ron Wood, to form The Faces, a project that ran in tandem with his solo career.

In a Broken Dream went nowhere. Bentley's memory is that it was released seven times to zero result but eventually its star rose with Stewart's. "The song didn't connect in England at all until someone picked it up in Los Angeles, by which time Rod's career had moved forward to rekindle interest in the track. By that time people were releasing old Rod Stewart tracks left, right and centre, all of them to no effect except In a Broken Dream." In 1972 the song became a No 3 hit in the UK, and has been successfully reissued several times since.

It was included on the 1989 Stewart box set Storyteller, where Stewart said in the liner notes: "This was only meant to be a demo which I did for a friend in exchange for a new set of carpets for my automobile." Others had a higher opinion, like respected UK critic John Bauldie, who argued it was one of the best things Stewart ever did. By the time the song broke the band had long since split. For a time Bentley wrote songs for a London publisher, but for the months that Python Lee Jackson was a household name, Bentley was living in splendid isolation in a remote village in Majorca.

Bentley and Stewart never met again, although they came close. One night when he was on tour, Stewart dined in a Brisbane restaurant, never suspecting that the piano player was the author of In a Broken Dream. Bentley laughs. "I felt a bit weird about being the restaurant piano player and him the big star, so I didn't say anything."

But he is at ease with the song. He has just included a version of it in his set, the first time he has played it since his brush with fame one night in London, 33 years ago. David Bentley still plays regularly in Brisbane.