When I mentioned to my teenage niece that I was writing about Rod Stewart she said ‘Is that the old man with the babies?” I was stunned. Rod the Mod? Yes, I told her. He has had a lot of babies. And he is technically old, at 71. We figured out that she was thinking of Ronnie Wood, but just to set her straight I made her sit through six hours of Rod in his multi-faceted magnificence.
We started with my personal favourite Rod, which is him in the yellow satin skin tight trousers and nipple revealing purple vest that he wore in The Faces. Almost as well known for his vast array of outfits as he is for his music, Rod said in one interview that while he was not a follower of fashion, he loved clothes more than cars. After seeing the yellow trousers I felt, it would be impossible for her to still think of him as an old man.
That worked. I then attempted to build a picture of this magnificent man with the vastly contradictory elements that he encompasses.
When many fans think of Rod Stewart, they also immediately think of Scotland, of blondes and of football, and these do form the building blocks for the story of the man we are familiar with today.
The Scottishness comes from his father Robert who was a builder from King’s Port, but despite having sported tartan trousers, tartan shirts, kilts, suits and even having posed in only a thong and a tartan scarf, Rod was actually born and raised in the Archway Road in North London.
Not being a model student, he left school aged fifteen and took several jobs including one at Highgate cemetery (although he never actually dug graves, he only measured them.)
The Stewarts are a football crazy family, there is some beautiful footage online of Rod watching football surrounded by his male relatives. Interestingly, he is the only one with long hair and skin tight trousers. Legend has it that he almost became a professional footballer, playing for Brentford, but he never did actually sign with them.
There are many versions of why, and in one of them Rod says that although he was good at football, he knew that by becoming a musician he would have the freedom to drink a lot and still work, and he has never denied that he liked to party. Ronnie Wood has said that while he and Rod were in The Faces most nights the audience were invited back to the hotels to keep the party going.
The audiences enjoyment and energy has perhaps the most consistent element in Rod’s varied career. When asked by David Dimbleby in the 1970’s what he enjoyed most about singing, Rod said that:
sending ten or fifteen thousand people home happy is the greatest experience you could ever have.
While the enthusiasm has remained constant for over five decades, the music has changed radically. In the very early days, Rod was a musician’s musician, and was first employed as a harmonica player with an R and B group called The Dimensions. He later got a full time job playing harmonica with Long John Baldry that paid thirty five pounds a week, which was not bad money in 1964.
After joining the Jeff Beck Group and receiving rave reviews from the New York Times and the NME he went on to receive further critical acclaim with The Faces, and for his solo albums.
Rod was nicknamed ‘Rod the Mod’ in 1964 while still with Baldry, but he has experimented with many musical styles including folk, blues, soul, disco, new wave and synth-pop.
In 1978, he had a controversial hit with a single called ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ which was trounced by the critics, but which also went platinum in the US.
Never being the type to let criticism deter him, he re-invented himself yet again in 2002 with the first in a series of five ‘Great American Songbook’ albums with straight covers of 1930’s and 40’s standards, which are proving to be some of his most popular work to date .
While Rod is now one of the richest people in the music industry having sold over a hundred million records, money was not initially a motivating factor in his choice of material. He was heavily influenced by black soul singers like Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, and says that he tried hard to sound black, before realising that he had his own very distinctive sound.
In 1964 he was signed by Decca as a solo artist but his first single ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ (by Sonny Boy Williamson) did not chart, and it took seven years before he had his first proper hit with ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’, his third solo album which went to number one in the US and UK along with the single ‘Maggie May’.
Women, particularly blonde models and actresses have featured prominently in the Rod Stewart story. In a TV interview, Piers Morgan attempted to uncover the allure of the blondes as opposed to brunettes or redheads. When he was a boy, Rod said he had been very taken by Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and also Jayne Mansfield, and he offered this as a possible explanation, but also suggested that while he never married a brunette, he had experienced a number of them, and had in no way discriminated.
To prove this, they showed a photo of him with Joanna Lumley who had been a brunette at the time that she and Rod were together. ‘I do like a bit of posh, but she was too posh,’ he has said of her.
There have been many other women, including five wives and so far eight children, and Rod admits to having been exceptionally lucky with the ladies, something he says that he cant explain. ‘I do have a certain charm and some good chat up lines,’ he ventures.
Many rock stars who go on to be family men make attempts to white wash their sexual pasts, particularly when they have been colourful, but in his autobiography Rod says that he took full advantage of being fancied ‘as any red blooded man would’, until so many girls had thrown themselves at him that he got tired of it, and longed to settle down with someone. He is currently very happily settled with his fifth wife Penny Lancaster, with whom he has two children.
As a teenager, he was arrested three times while protesting on behalf of CND, and was deported from Spain in his youth where he had been sleeping rough under bridges while busking with his harmonica.
He is now thoroughly respectable, having been given the CBE in 2007, and he became Sir Roderick David this year, in recognition of his services to music and charity.
These are simply some of the facets of the diamond that is Rod Stewart. Long may he shine on.
Rod Stewart performs at The Hydro as part of his From Gasoline Alley to Another Country: Hits 2016 tour on Friday 16 December 2016 at 18:30.