Rod Stewart's cover album comes of age: Happy 18th Birthday, Still The Same!

Rod Stewart was and is a master of cover songs. The Brit has made numerous songs, which tended to have a grey-mouse image after the release of the original, famous with his new recordings and usually put the famous ‘Rod stamp’ on them. First and foremost, Stewart fans will naturally think of such classics and concert favourites as The First Cut Is The Deepest, I Don't Want To Talk About It, Twistin' The Night Away, Handbags & Gladrags and, of course, Sailing.

Six years before Sir Rod rediscovered his passion for songwriting with the publication of his autobiography ROD and released the album Time - the first with his own songs in more than 20 years - Rod fittingly released an album with numerous rock cover songs.

Still The Same - Great Rock Classics Of Our Time was released on 10 October 2006 and was produced by Clive Davis and John Shanks. On the album, Stewart presented milestones in rock history from the last few decades. For example Bonnie Tyler's It's A Heartache, Day After Day by Badfinger or the classic Have You Ever Seen The Rain by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which also became the first single release.

The album contains 13 songs, and the UK version also included a bonus track, Eric Clapton's Lay Down Sally.

Still The Same became one of the most successful albums of the 2000s and, with over 1.3 million sales, was able to compete with The Great American Songbook album series, which was particularly successful in the USA, even if it was not always very well received by fans.

The great rock classics of our time reached number one in the charts in Canada, New Zealand and the USA. Still The Same reached number four in the UK, number five in Sweden and number eight in Germany.

The album went nine times platinum and seven times gold. Songs such as It's A Heartache and Have You Ever Seen The Rain are still regularly on the set lists at the 79-year-old's shows.

Still The Same was recorded at Henson Studios in Los Angeles, and Rod himself was ‘extremely happy’ with the album, as he emphasised several times in interviews. ‘I grew up with these songs and I really enjoy singing them,’ said Rod Stewart in an interview with the US television channel ABC in 2006.

Appetiser concert in Times Square

One day before the official release of Still The Same, Stewart presented the songs from the album to the public in a live performance at the Nokia Theatre in New York's Times Square. The concert consisted of two parts: In part one, Sir Rod played nine songs from the new album, in the second part he added eight of his classics such as Maggie May, Rhythm Of My Heart or Hot Legs.

Still The Same - Great Rock Classics Of Our Time: Tracklist

1 Have You Ever Seen The Rain

2. fooled around and fell in love

3 I'll Stand By You

4 Still The Same

5 It's A Heartache

6 Day After Day

7 Missing You

8th Father & Son

9. The Best Of My Love

10. if Not For You

11 Love Hurts