It is 10 January 1945 - for more than five years, the whole world, but especially Europe, has been groaning under the Nazi-initiated Second World War. On this freezing Wednesday in January 1945, the people of London are not only suffering from the regular bombing by the Nazis, but also from extremely cold temperatures of just over 0 degrees during the day and sometimes -7 degrees centigrade in the evening and at night. On Archway Road in London's Highgate district, it was precisely on this uncomfortable day that little Roderick David Stewart saw the light of day - the fifth child of proud parents Bob and Elsie Stewart in a small bedroom on the top floor of the family's small terraced house.
Little Roderick was not necessarily planned, but rather came about as a ‘slip-up’ by his Scottish father - ‘in contrast to his other slips, however, a rather lucrative one’, as the then still tiny boy wrote many years later in his own autobiography.
Times were tough in those days, and not just for the Stewart family, who now had five mouths to feed instead of just four. Dad Stewart was working as a plumber at the time when little Rod was born. ‘He worked twelve hours a day, came home at seven in the evening and put his feet up,’ Rod remembers. In his spare time, Bob Stewart managed a local football club - Highgate Redwing - and so the young Rod came into contact with the sport at an early age, which still inspires him today, as we celebrate his 80th birthday, just as much as it did in his childhood and teenage days.
Of course, it wasn't long before Rod was also lacing up his boots for the Redwings. First as a centre-back, then in midfield, before Rod found his desired position as a right-back.
Things went well for him at school; young Rod wasn't an outstanding pupil, but he was conscientious and ‘reasonably hard-working’, as he later put it. Funnily enough, today's music superstar had his problems in music lessons. ‘When I had to stand up in front of the class, I was always paralysed,’ Rod recounted in his book. ‘It wasn't shyness that was my problem, I was more afraid of being ridiculed’.
From his room in Highgate, Rod looked out at the Highgate marshalling yard and the tracks behind it again and again in his younger years. This fascinated the teenager more and more and so his desire for a wooden Triang model railway grew. This wish was dashed on Rod's 15th birthday, of all days, when his father gave him a guitar. The anticipation of the model railway disappeared in one fell swoop and instead a huge disappointment spread through Rod, unaware of what this guitar would mean for him later in life. In 1962 - Rod was now 17 years old - he travelled to Paris with a few friends. ‘That was the first time I'd ever left England. I borrowed some money and took the ferry to France,’ says Sir Rod. He sang for passers-by and guests outside a café and bought himself a baguette with the few bucks he earned. They slept under a bridge over the Seine, near the Eiffel Tower. A second, similar trip took the busker to Spain, more precisely to Barcelona. ‘I slept under the roof of Camp Nou, the football stadium in Barcelona, with a group of English travellers,’ recalls the singer.
But it didn't last long, then the Spanish police turned up and took the group to the British consul, who in turn put the troublemakers on the next plane to England. ‘I cost my parents a few nerves during that time,’ Rod remembers today. But back then, as a teenager, when you rarely really think about everything and everyone, but rather just want to experience everything there is to experience, that wasn't really the case.
An encounter that changes everything
Back in England, Rod could often be found at Twickenham railway station in West London in 1962 and 1963. And it was there that the story took its decisive course.
At the time, Rod was travelling through the city's pubs and clubs, always on the lookout for the opportunity to earn a few pounds here and there as a backing singer. It was on one of these evenings that he saw the Yardbirds for the first time, with a certain Eric Clapton on guitar. A little later, he would also see Mick Jagger and the Stones for the first time at a show. The music had captivated the now 18-year-old Roderick more and more. Whenever he was on the road - and he always was - he always had his guitar with him. And whenever the opportunity arose, he strummed away on it. The disappointment about the birthday present he had received was no longer an issue. The boy had talent and he attracted people with his guitar playing and singing. ‘When I played on the beach, I always had a small audience around me,’ says Stewart. So why shouldn't he put himself on a stage, Rod thought. He knew he could sing, but his plans hadn't really materialised yet. Apart from a few small jobs, nothing much materialised. However, he was able to earn his first spurs with Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions.
Then came that memorable evening at Twickenham railway station, which changed Rod's life in one fell swoop. ‘I was sitting on the platform at Twickenham waiting for the train to Waterloo. To pass the time, I took the harmonica out of my coat pocket and played the riff of Howlin‘ Wolf's Smokestack Lightnin’, a blues number I could do reasonably well,’ Rod reports in his 2012 autobiography. Long John Baldry was at the station at the same time and “pricked up his ears when he heard a wonderfully melancholy blues ringing through the deserted station on that winter's night”.
Baldry introduced himself to Rod and together they drove back to the city centre and talked about Long John's plans to continue his band ‘Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men’. In short: Baldry asked Rod if he would like to join the Hoochie Coochie Men as a backing singer.
‘Of course I jumped at the chance,’ says Rod. But getting started was a little more difficult than expected, because Rod's mum Elsie needed some warm and convincing words. Baldry took this into his own hands: ‘Don't worry Mrs Stewart, I'll look after your Roddy’. With that, the hurdle was cleared and Rod was now part of the Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men.
Rod took off - Faces ‘disguised’ as Fleetwood Mac
From then on, Rod's still young music career only went upwards. Via The Soul Agents, Shotgun Express and The Steampacket, he joined the Jeff Beck Group in 1967. Rod stayed with Jeff Beck for two and a half years, then joined the Faces (formerly Small Faces) together with his best mate to this day, Ron Wood.
The Faces, which included Wood and the three remaining Small Faces members Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones, quickly gained a reputation as one of the best live bands of the late 60s and early 70s. On tour - first in Europe, later also in the USA - things went wild. Unbridled alcohol consumption on and off stage as well as the band's numerous escapades quickly led to a ‘bad reputation’. Hotel rooms were sometimes smashed to pieces, which led to the Faces being blacklisted by the Holiday Inn hotel chain and strictly banned from the hotel. But the clever guys found a solution for this too. ‘After one bathroom had been flooded too many times, we were finally blacklisted and banned from all Hoilday Inn properties,’ Rod remembers back to the days of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. ‘As far as I know, we were the first rock band to be banned. To get round the house ban, we started checking in as Fleetwood Mac. When that came out, we called ourselves The Grateful Dead. There are always ways around problems like that,’ said Stewart, but not without his famous mischievous grin.
The Faces not only made a name for themselves through such stories, but also through their music. Hits such as Stay With Me, Had Me A Real Good Time and Ohh La La made their mark on the music scene in the 1970s. Despite the huge success of the band, Rod Stewart also focussed on his solo projects. This was not without consequences.
Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you ...
The mood in the Faces suffered from Rod's solo endeavours. ‘The water got murkier,’ wrote Rod Stewart, looking back on this time. ‘Ronnie and Mac were constantly asking each other suspicious questions: Who was I devoting more time to? Where was my energy going? Was my priority or myself?’
The situation intensified with the release of Rod Stewart's song Maggie May. After a radio DJ in Cleveland switched the sides of the single and played Maggie instead of Reason To Believe (actually the song on the A-side), Maggie May shot to number one in the charts like lightning. The song thrilled listeners and became the ultimate starting point for Stewart's solo career. In October 1971, Maggie climbed to the top of the charts, to drift into football jargon, in both the UK and the United States. As a result, the accompanying album Every Picture Tells A Story also landed at number one and even knocked John Lennon's album Imagine off the top spot.
However, Rod's success also signalled the end of the Faces, who split up in 1975. The individual band members went different ways: Wood went to the Rolling Stones; Lane founded Slim Chance and had a modest solo career; Jones switched to The Who after the death of Keith Moon; Ian ‘Mac’ McLagan became a studio musician.
After Maggie, Rod ‘sails’ around the world
In the same year that the Faces announced their split, Solo-Rod took the next step in his success, which is still going strong today. Sailing was the song that almost 100 per cent of the world's population probably associate with his name. Originally written in 1972 by Gavin Sutherland of the Sutherland Brothers, the song went ‘through the roof’ three years later with Rod Stewart's version and became one of the anthems of music history. It reached number one in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Great Britain and even Zimbabwe. Sailing reached number two in Australia, South Africa and Switzerland, third place in New Zealand and fourth place in Germany. The song was not quite as successful in the USA, where it only made it to number 58 in the Billboard charts. This is probably one of the reasons why Sir Rod never plays the song Sailing at his concerts in the USA, whereas in Europe and other parts of the world it is a firm fixture in the set lists.
Hit after hit - and an excursion into the world of disco
In the late 1970s, Stewart delivered hits like an assembly line. Whether The Killing of Georgie and Tonight's The Night (1976), I Don't Want To Talk About It, The First Cut Is The Deepest and You're In My Heart (1977) as well as Hot Legs and I Was Only Joking (1978) - all of these songs became the best-known songs in the music world and are still regularly played on radio stations around the world some 50 years after their release.
With Da Ya Think I'm Sexy, Sir Rod also landed another hit in which he ventured into disco music. This track is still part of the singer's current repertoire at his concerts and is a fan favourite. Even if Rod himself didn't seem to be as fond of ‘Sexy’ as his millions of followers. ‘I don't want to be 50 years old singing Da Ya Think I'm Sexy and be a parody of myself,’ he once said in an interview. We all know that our good Rod has been past his 50th birthday for a very long time now and yet it's impossible to imagine his concert setlists without the song. He told Esquire magazine in 2012: ‘I used to be embarrassed to sing Da Ya Think I'm Sexy, but people love it. So it's in the show.’ And who says you can't change your mind once you've written it?
Baby Jane storms the European charts
At the beginning of the 1980s, Sir Rod gave us two of the best rock songs of all time. Even if this was not necessarily reflected in the chart positions. But Young Turks and Tonight I'm Yours (both from the album Tonight I'm Yours, 1981) - and now watch out! - Fan opinion: ... have delighted Stewart fans worldwide and are still an integral part of the 80-year-old singer's concerts today. For me, and the author of this story probably speaks from the soul of many fans, these two songs are among the best that Rod Stewart has ever released. The songs are infectious from the very first bar and there will probably be very few people who don't just start fidgeting when they hear them. Fan opinion over!
Two years later, Baby Jane was no less rousing, but much more successful. The single from the album Body Wishes became Stewart's most successful single after Da Ya Think I'm Sexy. In Germany and the UK, the song became number one in the charts and stayed in the German charts for an incredible 21 weeks (14 in the UK). It went gold in Germany and France and silver in the UK.
The following albums Camouflage (1984), Every Beat Of My Heart (1986) and Out Of Order (1988) ended Stewart's successful 80s era, but none of the singles on these longplayers came close to the success of Baby Jane. Even though the discs produced such catchy tunes as Some Guys Have All The Luck, Every Beat Of My Heart and Lost in You.
As a vagabond into the 1990s
At the beginning of the next decade, Rod Stewart released his album Vagabond Heart, with the songs Rhythm Of My Heart or It Takes Two, which he sang together with Tina Turner.
However, the album also featured lesser-known songs such as Rebel Heart and Go Out Dancing, as well as the tearjerker You Are Everything and If Only. The Vagabond Heart Tour took Stewart to gigs all over the world. He played 123 concerts in 1991 and 43 the following year. There were 73 appearances in the USA alone during this period, followed by Germany (22), Great Britain and Australia (20 each). The 1991 tour through Europe in particular was characterised by the singer's vocal problems. A number of shows, especially in Germany, had to be rescheduled or even cancelled altogether.
The author of these lines was even directly affected by this. In the summer of 1991, he wanted to attend a concert in the small town of Grefrath, just 50 kilometres from Düsseldorf and close to the border with the Netherlands. The ice rink there was sold out and the fans were eagerly awaiting the start of the evening, which, however, turned out quite differently than planned. Shortly before the show was due to start at 8pm, a representative of the local organiser came on stage instead of the singer everyone had been expecting and announced that Rod would not be able to perform due to vocal problems that had arisen at short notice while warming up in his hotel room. That same evening, the audience was refunded the money for their tickets and so they returned home without having achieved anything.
Back to the standards - the Great American Songbook characterised the 2000s
For Rod Stewart, the new millennium began with a private stroke of fate. In May 2000, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer during a routine check-up and was in danger of losing his voice, which is unique in the music world, forever. ‘News like that hits you to the core,’ he later admitted, looking back. ’When the initial daze wore off, I struggled with fear, feeling more vulnerable than ever before. It was a blessing that the necessary measures were initiated so quickly and that I hardly had any time to let these feelings run free.’
The measures were the operation, which was carried out top secret. ‘I checked in at five o'clock in the morning under the name Billy Potts (the names of my two dogs) so that the press wouldn't get wind of the fact that Rockstar Rod had to go into hospital for cancer surgery’. The operation went well, ‘everything bad was out’, but the doctors told Rod that ‘it might not be the same voice’. The doctors prescribed rest, especially for his voice. Rod began to panic. Would he ever be able to record an album again? Would he ever be able to stand on a stage and sing in front of an audience again?
After six months, Rod began doing vocal exercises with a cantor from a neighbouring synagogue. ‘I was told that he knew all about voices and how to strengthen them. It was a daily exercise programme. He made me sing scales, runs and arpeggios. He made me make snorting and humming sounds,’ Stewart recalls in his autobiography. Afterwards, he invited his band round to his house and simply sang a few songs. Gradually the strain on his voice increased, first one line of text, then several, then two verses and finally a whole song. Sir Rod had to learn to sing all over again, which we all know today was successful. ‘I was lucky,’ the now 80-year-old summarised aptly.
Musically, Sir Rod presented something completely new in the new millennium - the Great American Songbook. For Rod, it was a long-cherished dream to record an album of American pop standards and the idea took shape during a dinner with his friend and producer Richard Perry, who died on Christmas Eve 2024. And so It Had To Be You - The Great American Songbook was born, released on 22 October 2002. The album was a huge success, going 14 times platinum and twice gold. The album reached number four in the USA and number eight in the UK. In the following years, Rod released four more albums with the American Pop Standards, which did not always go down well with the long-time fans who had accompanied him in his Faces days. The fanbase wanted more of his own, self-written Stewart songs and a return to good old rock'n'roll.
2010s: The way back to songwriting and Rod becomes Sir Rod
In the new decade, Rod decided to tell his life in book form and published his autobiography with the simple title ROD in October 2012. In over 400 pages, Rod tells his story - openly, relentlessly and honestly. There is no settling of scores with colleagues or former friends, but there is a comprehensive insight into many moving moments in the singer's career.
Inspired by the creation of his autobiography, Rod then began writing his own songs again. The result was Time, a number one album that climbed to number one in the UK in 2013 and remains Rod's last chart-topping album to date. Time was followed by two more albums, Another Country (2015) and Blood Red Roses (2018), which mainly featured songs written by Rod himself. On Tears of Hercules, Rod's first album in the 2020s, listeners were also able to enjoy new Stewart material.
In 2016, Stewart was also knighted for his services to music and charity and was allowed to call himself Sir Rod from then on. A special honour for the singer, which he proudly announced at a concert.
Swing Fever
2024 saw the release of the album Swing Fever, which Sir Rod recorded together with bandleader Jools Holland and his orchestra. The songs were all recorded live and you can tell that from the album. The Austrian news portal Heute agrees, writing: ‘The songs on it are not polished cover versions of classics from the 1930s to 1960s, but swing as it should be in its best form: loud, fast and dirty. They include songs such as ‘Lullaby Of Broadway’ from 1935, which was already sung by Doris Day, ‘Pennies From Heaven’, with which Bing Crosby had a hit as early as 1936, and ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ from 1947, with which Elvis Presley later celebrated success. Rod Stewart's legendary grating voice merges with Holland's piano and the big band to create a new whole, which is first and foremost fun. And it moves from the musicians directly to the listeners.
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