The story of Rod Stewart

A football mad boy from Highgate

Roderick David Stewart was born at home at 507 Archway Road in Highgate, north London, on the tenth of January 1945, while the Second World War was still going. He was the youngest of five, and his nearest sibling was eight years older, so he was thoroughly spoiled. His father Robert was a Scottish master builder from Leith, near Edinburgh, and his mother Elsie had grown up in Upper Holloway. When his father retired, he bought a newsagent's shop on the Archway Road and the family lived above it. Rod later called his childhood fantastically happy. He failed the eleven plus exam, went to William Grimshaw Secondary Modern in Muswell Hill, and spent his spare hours on a hobby that would last a lifetime, model railways.[1] [2] [3]

In the Stewart house, football came first. Rod's father had played and managed local amateur sides, and his brothers pinned pictures of Scottish players on the bedroom wall. Rod turned out to be the best player in the family. He captained his school team and played centre half for Middlesex Schoolboys. Music ran a close second. The family adored Al Jolson, and Rod collected his records and studied the way he worked an audience. Then rock and roll arrived. Little Richard's The Girl Can't Help It hooked him, his father bought him a guitar in January 1959, and the first record he ever bought was Eddie Cochran's C'mon Everybody. By 1960 he was in a school skiffle group called the Kool Kats.[1]

Rod left school at fifteen and worked briefly as a silk screen printer. Pushed by his father, he tried for a football career and had trials at Brentford in the summer of 1960, but it came to nothing. He later reasoned that a musician could get drunk and still work, while a footballer could not. So he drifted through odd jobs instead. He delivered newspapers, put up fences, painted signs, worked in a funeral parlour in North Finchley, and labored at Highgate Cemetery, a detail that became part of his legend. In 1961 he even got an audition with the famous producer Joe Meek, who stopped the session by blowing a rude noise. Meanwhile he was falling for folk music, from Woody Guthrie to the first Bob Dylan album.[1]

In his late teens Rod became a beatnik with left wing politics. He lived for a while on a houseboat at Shoreham by Sea, joined the Aldermaston marches for nuclear disarmament from 1961 to 1963, and was arrested three times at sit ins in Trafalgar Square and Whitehall. He later admitted the marches were also a good way to meet girls. His first serious girlfriend was an art student named Suzannah Boffey. She became pregnant, but neither Rod nor his family wanted him to marry, and their baby daughter, born in 1964, was given up for adoption. She grew up as Sarah Streeter with her adoptive parents. The relationship ended, and it was a chapter Rod would only speak about openly decades later.[1] [2] [3]

In 1962 Rod started hanging around the folk singer Wizz Jones, busking in Leicester Square and picking up the harmonica, which was the fashionable instrument of the moment. Over the next eighteen months the pair took their act to Brighton, then to Paris, where they slept under bridges over the Seine, and finally to Barcelona. In 1963 the Spanish authorities deported Rod for vagrancy. Back home he had a brief brush with fame by association. He had been at school with three future members of the Kinks, and for a moment he was considered as their singer. That same year he went Mod, building his famous spiky rooster hair with sugar water and his sisters' hair lacquer, and he fell hard for soul music after seeing Otis Redding and hearing Sam Cooke.[1] [2]

Rod the Mod and the London blues clubs

In October 1963 Rod joined a rhythm and blues group called the Dimensions as harmonica player and part time singer. It was his first professional music job, though he still lived at home and worked in his brother's picture framing shop. A Birmingham singer named Jimmy Powell soon took over the group, which became Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions. They played every week at Studio 51 in London, where the Rolling Stones often headlined, and Rod sharpened his harmonica playing by watching Mick Jagger. He soon clashed with Powell over who did what in the band and walked away. It was a short spell, but it gave him a way into the busy London rhythm and blues scene.[1] [2]

The big break came in January 1964 on a railway platform. Rod had been to see Long John Baldry and his band at Eel Pie Island, and while he waited at Twickenham station he played Smokestack Lightnin' on his harmonica. Baldry heard him and invited him to sit in with the group. When he discovered Rod could sing, he offered him thirty five pounds a week, after first getting permission from Rod's mother. At nineteen Rod quit his day job. Shy and nervous at first, he grew into the role and was soon billed as Rod the Mod Stewart, thanks to his sharp clothes and careful grooming. His first appearance on record, uncredited, was on the B side of a Baldry single that June.[1] [2] [3]

Decca spotted Rod at the Marquee Club and signed him as a solo act in August 1964. He turned down the commercial songs the label suggested and made the session players, among them a young John Paul Jones, learn a Sonny Boy Williamson number instead. That became his first single, Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, released in October 1964. He sang it on Ready Steady Go, but it missed the charts. That same month he fell out with Baldry and left the band. The two soon made up, and they stayed friends for life. In 1965 the manager Giorgio Gomelsky built a soul revue called Steampacket, with Baldry, Rod, Julie Driscoll, the organist Brian Auger and the drummer Micky Waller.[1] [2] [3]

Steampacket supported the Rolling Stones on tour in the summer of 1965, and watching the screaming crowds gave Rod his first taste of real hysteria. The band never made a proper record, because its members were tied to different labels and managers. Rod's Mod image went national in November 1965, when he was the subject of a half hour television documentary called An Easter with Rod. His solo singles kept failing, but he found his true idol. He spent the best part of two years listening mainly to Sam Cooke, and later said he knew he sounded a bit like Cooke, so he studied him. By March 1966 he was out of Steampacket, and in May he joined Shotgun Express.[1] [2]

Shotgun Express had a remarkable line up. Rod shared vocals with the Liverpool singer Beryl Marsden, while Peter Bardens played keyboards and the band included Mick Fleetwood and Peter Green, who would go on to form Fleetwood Mac. None of that talent helped. Their one single, an orchestra heavy song released in October 1966, flopped, and the group fell apart in early 1967. Rod was scathing about it later, calling it a poor copy of Steampacket and saying he was tired of singing other people's music. By now he had bounced between bands for years with little to show for it. What set him apart from all the other hopeful London singers was one thing, the growing rasp in his voice.[1] [2]

Singing for Jeff Beck

In February 1967 the guitarist Jeff Beck, fresh out of the Yardbirds, hired Rod as singer for his new band, the Jeff Beck Group. It was the big break of Rod's early career. In the band he played alongside Ronnie Wood, whom he had first met in a London pub in 1964, and the two became inseparable friends. The first year was rocky. Drummers kept changing, and the band's manager, the pop producer Mickie Most, wanted to shrink Rod's role. Rod's own solo career sputtered on in the background, with a single called Little Miss Understood in March 1968 that went nowhere. By the spring of 1968 the band had toured Europe, recorded, and was almost broke.[1] [2] [3]

Then the assistant manager Peter Grant, later famous as Led Zeppelin's manager, booked the band a six week American tour starting in June 1968 at the Fillmore East in New York. It was Rod's first trip to America, and on opening night his stage fright was so bad that he sang the first song hidden behind the amplifiers. Only a quick shot of brandy got him out front. The tour was a triumph anyway. The New York Times praised the clash of Beck's wild guitar and Rod's hoarse shouting, and the band was reported to be pulling in money on a level with Jimi Hendrix and the Doors. America had noticed the singer from Highgate.[1] [2]

The band's first album, Truth, came out in the summer of 1968 and climbed to number fifteen in America, though it did not chart in Britain. It is now seen as one of the earliest heavy metal records. Rod co-wrote three songs under the joint name Jeffrey Rod, and he credited the album with developing the sandpaper quality in his voice. A second album, Beck Ola, followed in 1969. But the atmosphere was cold. Rod said later that in two and a half years with Beck he never once looked him in the eye, only at his shirt. When Ronnie Wood left in July 1969, Rod went too, turning down Beck's plan for a new supergroup with the Vanilla Fudge rhythm section.[1] [2] [3]

Two side deals from this period would matter later. On the eighth of October 1968, Lou Reizner of Mercury Records, who had seen Rod with Beck, signed him to a solo contract, though legal tangles delayed any recording until July 1969. And in April 1969 Rod did a favour for an Australian band called Python Lee Jackson, whose keyboard player felt his own voice was wrong for a song called In a Broken Dream. Rod sang it, and his fee was a set of seat covers for his car. The track flopped in 1970. Released again in 1972, with Rod now a star, it reached number three in Britain.[1] [2] [3]

The Faces, a solo deal and Maggie May

In early 1969 Steve Marriott walked out of the Small Faces, leaving Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones without a singer. Ronnie Wood joined them on guitar and suggested Rod, but the others were wary of another big ego. Rod was so shy that he listened from the top of the stairs at their rehearsal room, then sat silently on the amplifiers for days. Finally Kenney Jones asked him in the pub if he wanted to join, and Rod asked whether the others would really let him. He became their singer on the eighteenth of October 1969. The word Small was dropped, partly because Rod and Ronnie were so much taller. They were now simply the Faces.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rod now led a double life, singing with the Faces while making solo records for Mercury. His debut, An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down, came out in America in November 1969 as The Rod Stewart Album. It set the template for his early sound, a warm mix of folk, rock and country blues with a working class heart, including a version of Mike d'Abo's Handbags and Gladrags. Gasoline Alley followed in June 1970 and brought mandolin into the sound. Rolling Stone's reviewer called Rod a supremely fine artist. Both albums were produced by Lou Reizner, and both leaned on Faces players, a crossover that would cause trouble later.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Britain was slow to warm to the Faces, but America took to them fast, starting in Detroit. They were a party on legs. They set up a bar on stage, kicked footballs into the crowd, and often ended shows collapsed in a heap. Their hotel antics got them banned from the entire Holiday Inn chain, so they checked in under the name Fleetwood Mac instead. The actor Ryan O'Neal loved them so much that at Los Angeles shows he acted as Kenney Jones's roadie, handing him towels and drinks. Their albums were patchier, but A Nod Is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse, in late 1971, went top ten on both sides of the Atlantic and gave them the hit Stay with Me.[1] [2]

Rod's third solo album, Every Picture Tells a Story, came out on the twenty eighth of May 1971. Its first single was a Tim Hardin song, Reason to Believe. But radio DJs flipped it over and started playing the B side, a song Rod had written with the guitarist Martin Quittenton called Maggie May. Rod said it was a true story about an older woman he had been with at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in 1961, with the name borrowed from an old Liverpool song. In October 1971 the song and the album were number one in both Britain and America at the same time, a chart first. Maggie May stayed on top for five weeks in each country and became his signature song.[1] [2] [3]

The Maggie May session was loose. It was cut in two takes, and the drummer Micky Waller turned up expecting a kit to be waiting. It was, but nobody could find any cymbals, so the cymbal crashes were added days later. The famous mandolin was played by Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne, who was paid a fifteen pound session fee. On the sleeve he was not named, only described as the mandolin player in Lindisfarne whose name had slipped Rod's mind. On Top of the Pops the DJ John Peel mimed the mandolin part. Critics loved the album too. It has sat in Rolling Stone's list of the five hundred greatest albums ever since the list began.[1] [2] [3]

Two careers, one singer

In 1972 Rod released Never a Dull Moment, which went to number one in Britain and number two in America. Its single You Wear It Well, another song written with Martin Quittenton, topped the British chart, while his cover of Twisting the Night Away made his debt to Sam Cooke plain. Critics were still on his side. Looking back in 1980, Rolling Stone's history of rock praised the early Rod as one of the most compassionate voices in music, a teller of tall tales with an eye for small details. But inside the Faces, the tension was rising. Rod's solo records were outselling the band's, and there were grumbles that he was keeping his best songs for himself.[1] [2]

The rift broke open on the Faces' last studio album, Ooh La La, released in 1973. According to Ian McLagan, Rod did not show up until two weeks into the sessions, then complained that songs were in the wrong key. The band recut the title track three times before Rod passed on it, leaving Ronnie Wood to sing it. When the album came out, Rod told the press it was a mess. It still went to number one in Britain. Ronnie Lane, who had written much of the album, had had enough. Unhappy with the reviews and with Rod's lack of commitment, he played his last show with the band on the fourth of June 1973.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rod later said that when Ronnie Lane left, the spirit of the Faces left with him. The Japanese bassist Tetsu Yamauchi came in, but McLagan admitted it was a mistake. The others were trying to drink less and create more, while Tetsu, as McLagan put it, was a party boy. Rod remembered him as a sweet man who barely spoke English, which made him hard to read. The band managed a live album that critics disliked and a couple of fine singles, including Pool Hall Richard. Rod's 1974 solo album Smiler went to number one in Britain and featured a song written for him by Paul and Linda McCartney and a duet with his friend Elton John.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Money pushed Rod further away. In 1974 he told Melody Maker that with a top tax rate of ninety percent, it was no longer worth living in England, and that he would leave if he wanted to. In 1975 he did, moving to Los Angeles, which brought criticism from the British press and even from Elton John. That same year Ronnie Wood filled in on guitar for the Rolling Stones after Mick Taylor quit. Kenney Jones said Ronnie came back from that tour as a Rolling Stone. After a troubled American tour in the autumn, the Faces announced in December 1975 that they were splitting up. Wood joined the Stones for good, and Rod was now a solo star full time.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Sailing to Hollywood

Rod's first album for Warner Bros, Atlantic Crossing, was recorded in 1975 at Muscle Shoals in Alabama with the producer Tom Dowd and the studio's famous rhythm section. Its first single was Sailing, a song by the Sutherland Brothers. Rod's girlfriend Dee Harrington had spotted the duo on television and pointed them out to him. Rod actually argued against releasing Sailing as a single, preferring one of his own songs. He was overruled, and in September 1975 it spent four weeks at number one in Britain. The next year the BBC used it as the theme for a documentary series about the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and it went top three all over again. It remains his biggest selling single in Britain.[1] [2]

In Los Angeles Rod became a fixture of celebrity life. In 1975 Joan Collins introduced him to the Swedish actress Britt Ekland, and they lived together for more than two years, with Britt putting her own career aside. The press followed them everywhere. She inspired Tonight's the Night, from the 1976 album A Night on the Town, and she speaks the French words near the end. The BBC banned the song at first because of its suggestive words, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson protested against it. It did not matter. From November 1976 it spent eight straight weeks at number one in America, the longest run at the top since Hey Jude, and it was Billboard's top song of 1977.[1] [2] [3]

The same album held one of Rod's bravest songs, The Killing of Georgie. It told the story of a gay man thrown out by his family, who finds acceptance in New York only to be killed in a street attack by a gang. Rod said it was based on a real gay friend of the Faces who was murdered, and that he had written it entirely on his own. At a time when almost nobody in pop sang about such things, it reached number two in Britain in 1976. Rod later explained that his publicist and manager were gay and that he was surrounded by gay people then, and that it felt like a brave step rather than a risk.[1] [2]

By 1977 Rod had his own band, with the drummer Carmine Appice, the bassist Phil Chen and the guitarists Jim Cregan, Billy Peek and Gary Grainger. Their album Foot Loose and Fancy Free brought You're in My Heart and the rocker Hot Legs. In 1978 came Blondes Have More Fun and the disco hit Da Ya Think I'm Sexy, which topped the charts in Britain and America. Rock critics called it a betrayal, and the Brazilian musician Jorge Ben sued, saying the chorus came from his song Taj Mahal. The case was settled, and Rod gave his royalties from the song to UNICEF. In January 1979 he performed it at a charity concert in the General Assembly hall of the United Nations.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rod's private life kept changing. Britt Ekland said in 1981 that she had ended their relationship because he was unfaithful. In 1979 he married Alana Hamilton, the former wife of the actor George Hamilton, and they had two children, Kimberly, born in August 1979, and Sean, born in 1980. His sound shifted towards new wave with Passion in 1980 and Young Turks in 1981, and when MTV launched that August his videos were in heavy rotation. There were darker notes too. In 1982 he was carjacked on Sunset Boulevard, though his Porsche was recovered. And he was criticised by the anti apartheid movement for breaking the cultural boycott to play the Sun City resort in South Africa on his 1983 and 1984 tours.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Credibility, comebacks and Copacabana

In September 1983 Rod hired a new manager, Arnold Stiefel, whose first task was to repair Rod's reputation as a rock singer after the disco years. The marriage to Alana ended in 1984, and from 1983 Rod was with the American model Kelly Emberg, with whom he had a daughter, Ruby, in 1987. The hits kept coming. Baby Jane went to number one in Britain in 1983, and it remains his last British number one single. Infatuation in 1984 featured his old boss Jeff Beck on guitar, and in 1985 the two reunited for a version of Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready. They tried touring together, but it fell apart after a few dates.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1986 the Faces reformed for the encore of Rod's show at Wembley Stadium. Ronnie Lane, by then badly weakened by multiple sclerosis, came on in a wheelchair and sang, with Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones playing bass for him. Two years later Rod made a real comeback with Out of Order, produced by Andy Taylor of Duran Duran and Bernard Edwards of Chic. It became his best selling album of the decade. One of its songs, Forever Young, was written about the children he felt he had missed while touring. Its structure was so close to Bob Dylan's song of the same name that Rod sent it to Dylan, and the two agreed to share the royalties.[1] [2] [3]

The Out of Order tour grew from four months to thirteen and grossed fifty million dollars. In Buenos Aires in 1989 more than ninety thousand people squeezed into River Plate Stadium, and firehoses were turned on the crowd to cool them down. Rod's cover of Tom Waits's Downtown Train reached number three in America. In 1990 his relationship with Kelly Emberg ended. In his autobiography he later blamed his own unfaithfulness, and Emberg filed a palimony suit that was settled in 1993. By then Rod had met the New Zealand model Rachel Hunter in a Los Angeles nightclub. She was twenty one, twenty four years younger than him, and they married three months later, on the fifteenth of December 1990.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The early nineties were a second golden age. Vagabond Heart in 1991 gave Rod a duet with Tina Turner on It Takes Two and the hit Rhythm of My Heart, whose melody was adapted from the Scottish song Loch Lomond. In 1993 he won the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music and pulled the Faces on stage for an impromptu reunion. That year he joined Bryan Adams and Sting on All for Love, a number one in America, and he reunited with Ronnie Wood for an MTV Unplugged show. The album from it, Unplugged and Seated, reached number two in America, and his version of Van Morrison's Have I Told You Lately became a huge hit.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 1994 Rod entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, inducted by Jeff Beck. On New Year's Eve that year he played a free show on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro to a crowd estimated at three and a half million, which Guinness recorded as the biggest free rock concert ever. The later nineties were quieter. Rod said he was not a natural songwriter and largely stopped writing. Then came a sad farewell. Ronnie Lane, whose medical care had been funded partly by Rod, Ronnie Wood and Jimmy Page, died of pneumonia in the late stages of multiple sclerosis on the fourth of June 1997 in Trinidad, Colorado. He was fifty one. In January 1999 Rod and Rachel Hunter separated.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Cancer, a new voice and the Great American Songbook

In May 2000 Rod was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had surgery that same month. The tumour was removed quickly and he needed no chemotherapy, which he joked meant he would not lose his hair, a threat to his career second only to losing his voice. But the operation did threaten his voice, and he had to learn to sing all over again. He wrote later that he had never felt so fearful and vulnerable. Afterwards he became a major fundraiser for the City of Hope cancer charity, especially for children. That period also brought a new partner. In 1999 he had met the model Penny Lancaster when he let her photograph him on tour.[1] [2] [3]

Family troubles surfaced too. In September 2002 Rod's son Sean was sentenced to three months in jail for attacking a man outside a restaurant in Los Angeles, and was ordered to pay compensation and attend anger management and drug and alcohol courses. Musically, though, Rod found an unexpected new direction. Growing up, he had heard the songs of Cole Porter, Gus Kahn and the Gershwins at home, and he told NPR these were beautifully crafted songs, not sweet or horrible ones. On Clive Davis's J Records he released It Had to Be You, the Great American Songbook, in October 2002. It reached number four in America and began a five volume series that sold on a scale he had not seen since the seventies.[1] [2] [3]

The songbook albums became a phenomenon. As Time Goes By, the second volume, went to number two in America and included a duet with Cher. The third, Stardust, released in October 2004, was his first American number one album in twenty five years. It featured Stevie Wonder on What a Wonderful World, a duet with Dolly Parton, and it was dedicated to the Tartan Army, Scotland's football fans. Stardust won the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, Rod's first ever Grammy. A fourth volume in 2005 brought duets with Diana Ross and Elton John, and in 2006 an album of rock covers called Still the Same also debuted at number one in America.[1] [2]

In July 2005 Rod lost the man who had discovered him. Long John Baldry, whom Rod had checked into a London clinic a few years earlier when he was badly ill with gout, died of a severe chest infection in Vancouver on the twenty first of July, aged sixty four. Rod had visited him in hospital that spring. There was good news at home. Penny Lancaster gave birth to their son Alastair in November 2005, and on the sixteenth of June 2007 they married in a medieval monastery near Portofino in Italy. Rod had been made a CBE that year. At the palace he said Britain was the only country in the world to honour the common man.[1] [2] [3]

In February 2011 Penny gave birth to a son, Aiden, after three rounds of IVF, making Rod a father for the eighth time at sixty six. His eight children came from five mothers, from the daughter adopted in the sixties through Kimberly, Sean, Ruby, Renee, Liam, Alastair and Aiden. That year he began a Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace that would run on and off until 2024, and he toured arenas with Stevie Nicks. In 2012 he signed with Universal, released a Christmas album that became one of the best selling records in the world that year, and published his autobiography, Rod. There was one disappointment. When the Faces entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, Rod had flu and missed it.[1] [2] [3]

Sir Rod, still standing

Writing the autobiography unlocked something. Rod said it ended what he called a dark period of twenty years without songwriting, and in May 2013 he released Time, an album of his own songs. It went straight to number one in Britain, his first chart topping studio album since A Night on the Town in 1976. That set a British record for the longest gap between number one albums. Rod told the Official Charts Company there were still plenty of songs left in the old violin. That September he handed Elton John the first Brits Icon award, calling him the second best rock singer ever, before the two old friends sang a duet together.[1] [2] [3]

More old friends were lost. Ian McLagan, the Faces keyboard player, died of a stroke in Austin, Texas, on the third of December 2014, aged sixty nine, just as a Faces reunion tour with Rod was being discussed. The surviving trio of Rod, Ronnie Wood and Kenney Jones finally played a short charity set together in September 2015, and The Telegraph called it worth the forty year wait. In the 2016 Birthday Honours, Rod was knighted for services to music and charity. In September 2019 he revealed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer two years earlier and had been given the all clear after catching it early. He urged men to get checked.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In November 2019 Rod released You're in My Heart, new versions of his hits with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It became his tenth British number one album, and at seventy four years and eleven months he became the oldest male solo artist ever to top the chart. Weeks later he was in trouble with the law. At a New Year's Eve children's party at the Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, Rod and his son Sean were accused of shoving and punching a security guard after their family was refused entry. Both were charged with battery. In 2021 they pleaded guilty to simple battery in a deal that brought no jail time, no probation and no fine.[1] [2] [3]

Rod kept making records, including The Tears of Hercules in 2021 and Swing Fever with Jools Holland's orchestra in 2024. He also spoke out. In 2022 he said he had turned down more than a million dollars to play in Qatar because of its human rights record. In January 2023 he phoned a Sky News programme while building his model railway, called for the government to stand down, and offered to pay for NHS scans, then funded a day of scans at a hospital in Harlow near his Essex home. That same month Jeff Beck died of bacterial meningitis. Rod attended the funeral and sang at the tribute concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, calling Beck his dear old pal.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In February 2024 Rod sold his catalogue to Irving Azoff's Iconic Artists Group for close to one hundred million dollars, saying his life's work was in safe hands. Later that year he said he would stop large scale world tours at the end of 2025. In May 2025 five of his children presented him with a lifetime achievement award at the American Music Awards. On the twenty ninth of June 2025 he played the Sunday legends slot at Glastonbury, becoming the first artist to have both headlined the festival and played that slot. Ronnie Wood joined him for Stay with Me, and Lulu sang Hot Legs with him. As of 2026, Rod, Wood and Kenney Jones have been working on new Faces music.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The people around Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood. They first met in a London pub in 1964 and became best friends in the Jeff Beck Group, then left together to join the Faces. Wood co-wrote Gasoline Alley and Every Picture Tells a Story and played all over Rod's early albums. Wood's move to the Rolling Stones helped end the Faces, but the friendship survived, from MTV Unplugged in 1993 to Glastonbury in 2025.[1] [2] [3]

Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck. Beck gave Rod his big break in 1967, but the band was tense and Rod said he never looked Beck in the eye. They reunited on record for Infatuation and People Get Ready, though a joint tour collapsed. Inducting Rod into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Beck joked that Rod loved him and he hated Rod. After Beck died in 2023, Rod called him his dear old pal.[1] [2] [3]

Rod Stewart and Long John Baldry. Baldry heard Rod playing harmonica at Twickenham station in 1964 and hired him on the spot. They fell out within months, then made up and stayed friends for life. In 1971 Rod and Elton John each produced one side of Baldry's album It Ain't Easy. Late in life Rod paid for Baldry's hospital care in London and visited him before his death in 2005.[1] [2]

Rod Stewart and Ronnie Lane. Lane was the heart of the Faces and wrote much of Ooh La La, but he grew tired of Rod's divided loyalties and quit in 1973. Rod later said the spirit of the band left with him. When multiple sclerosis left Lane without income, Rod, Ronnie Wood and Jimmy Page helped fund his care until his death in 1997.[1] [2]

Rod Stewart and Ian McLagan. The Faces keyboard player played on Rod's first solo albums and on Maggie May. He was also Rod's sharpest critic, accusing him of neglecting Ooh La La and calling Da Ya Think I'm Sexy a rip off of the Stones. Still, he was part of reunions in 1986 and 1993, and a new tour with Rod was being planned when McLagan died in 2014.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rod Stewart and Elton John. The two became close friends and playful rivals. They co-produced Long John Baldry's 1971 album, sang a duet on Rod's Smiler, and Elton criticised Rod's move to Los Angeles for tax reasons. In 2013 Rod presented Elton with the first Brits Icon award, teasing that he was the second best rock singer ever, and they sang Sad Songs together.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland. Joan Collins introduced them in 1975, and the Swedish actress and the rock star became one of the most photographed couples of the decade. She gave up her career for him, appeared with him in the Sailing video and spoke the French lines on Tonight's the Night. She said in 1981 that she ended it because he was unfaithful, and told the story in her book True Britt.[1] [2]

Rod Stewart and Alana Stewart. The actress and model, formerly married to George Hamilton, married Rod in 1979. They had two children, Kimberly and Sean, before divorcing in 1984, though she kept his surname. Rod said Forever Young came from realising he had missed years of Kimberly's and Sean's childhood while touring.[1] [2]

Rod Stewart and Kelly Emberg. The American model was with Rod from 1983 to 1990, and their daughter Ruby was born in 1987. Rod insisted at the time that the break up was her decision, but his autobiography blamed his own unfaithfulness and his meeting Rachel Hunter. Emberg filed a palimony suit that was settled in 1993, and she later worked as an interior designer on his Los Angeles home.[1] [2]

Rod Stewart and Rachel Hunter. Rod met the New Zealand model in a Los Angeles nightclub when she was twenty one and he was forty five. They married three months later in December 1990 and had two children, Renee and Liam, who became a professional ice hockey player. Rod said at the time he had been tamed. They separated in 1999 and divorced in 2006.[1] [2] [3]

Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster. The model met Rod in 1999 when he let her photograph him on tour. After a seven year courtship they married near Portofino in 2007, and they have two sons, Alastair and Aiden. In 2024 Rod publicly accused MasterChef host Gregg Wallace of humiliating her on the show. She took the cover photo for his album The Tears of Hercules.[1] [2] [3]

Rod Stewart and Arnold Stiefel. The American manager has looked after Rod since 1983. His first job was repairing Rod's credibility after the disco years, and he oversaw the huge Out of Order tour, the Copacabana concert and the Great American Songbook albums. He also produced the West End musical Tonight's the Night, built around Rod's hits.[1]

Rare facts about Rod Stewart

• Rod was paid for singing In a Broken Dream with a set of seat covers for his car. In 1969 he sang on a track by the Australian band Python Lee Jackson as a favour. His fee was car seat covers. The single flopped, then reached number three in Britain in 1972.[1] [2]
• No cymbals could be found at the Maggie May session, so the cymbal crashes were added days later. Drummer Micky Waller expected a kit to be provided, and one was, minus cymbals. The song itself was recorded in just two takes.[1]
• When the Faces played Maggie May on Top of the Pops, the DJ John Peel mimed the mandolin. The real mandolin player was Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne, who was not named on the album sleeve. For television, John Peel joined the band on stage and pretended to play.[1]
• The Faces dropped the word Small partly because Rod and Ronnie Wood were so much taller than the others. The record company wanted to keep the old name, so in America their debut album was still credited to the Small Faces. Later records used the new name.[1]
• Banned from the whole Holiday Inn chain, the Faces checked in under the name Fleetwood Mac. Their hotel antics on American tours were so wild that the chain barred them. They simply used another band's name at the front desk.[1]
• The actor Ryan O'Neal loved the Faces so much that he worked as their drummer's roadie in Los Angeles. Kenney Jones recalled that O'Neal would sit behind him at shows, handing him towels and drinks. The band even had a bar built on stage.[1]
• The sleeve of Gasoline Alley explained that Ian McLagan was missing because of a bus strike. The British credits said Mac was not available due to a bus strike, while the American release credited him on piano and organ.[1]
• Rod and Jeff Beck wrote together under the joint name Jeffrey Rod. Three songs on the 1968 album Truth were credited to the pseudonym. All three were reworkings of existing blues songs by Buddy Guy and B.B. King.[1] [2]
• The famous producer Joe Meek ended Rod's 1961 audition by blowing a rude noise. Rod had gone to Denmark Street with a group called the Raiders. Meek was unimpressed and stopped the session in the crudest way possible.[1]
• As a teenage campaigner for nuclear disarmament, Rod was arrested three times. He joined the Aldermaston marches from 1961 to 1963 and was arrested at sit ins in Trafalgar Square and Whitehall. He later called himself a little red in those days.[1] [2]
• Rod was deported from Spain for vagrancy in 1963. Busking with folk singer Wizz Jones, he slept under bridges in Paris before reaching Barcelona, where the authorities sent him home.[1]
• Rod was briefly considered as the singer of the Kinks. He had been at William Grimshaw school in Muswell Hill with three members of the band before they became famous.[1]
• His famous spiky hair was held up with sugar water and his sisters' hair lacquer. He also backcombed it and held it in place with his hands against the wind at Highgate Underground station.[1]
• John Paul Jones, later of Led Zeppelin, played on Rod's very first single. Rod rejected Decca's commercial songs and made the session players learn Good Morning Little Schoolgirl instead. It came out in October 1964 and did not chart.[1]
• On his first American show, at the Fillmore East, Rod was so scared he sang from behind the amplifiers. It was June 1968, with the Jeff Beck Group. A quick shot of brandy finally got him out to the front of the stage.[1] [2]
• Rod's girlfriend Dee Harrington discovered Sailing's writers by watching The Old Grey Whistle Test. She saw the Sutherland Brothers on the programme in June 1972 and told Rod about them. He became a fan after seeing them at the Marquee.[1]
• Rod recorded Sailing at half past ten in the morning, without the drink he usually needed first. Tom Dowd called him in early to add the vocal. Rod said he had never sung in a studio sober or that early, but he nailed it in six or seven takes.[1]
• Sailing was played over the loudspeakers as the Falklands task force left Portsmouth in April 1982. It had already become linked with the navy through a 1976 BBC documentary on HMS Ark Royal, which sent it back into the top three.[1]
• The final vocal of Tonight's the Night was recorded in the mountains at Caribou Ranch in Colorado. The song was mostly recorded at Muscle Shoals, but Rod, Britt Ekland and Tom Dowd spent several days at Caribou Ranch to finish it.[1]
• Carmine Appice and Rod agreed to pronounce the drummer's name A piece, even though that is wrong. The correct pronunciation is closer to app uh see, but when Rod asked, Appice said everyone said A piece, and they just went with it.[1]
• The Young Turks video was the first breakdancing video ever played on MTV. Directed by Russell Mulcahy and choreographed by Kenny Ortega, it was shot in downtown Los Angeles in 1981.[1]
• Rod's model railway city took twenty three years to build, and he worked on it in hotel rooms on tour. Hotels removed the beds to give him space. The layout, modelled on New York and Chicago around 1945, has appeared on the cover of Model Railroader several times.[1] [2]
• Rod is colour blind, and he found out partly through his model railway. He confirmed it in Model Railroader after accidentally mixing red scenery material into the grass around his model buildings.[1]
• The melody of Rhythm of My Heart is adapted from the Scottish song Loch Lomond. Its bagpipes suited the moment when it was played at the British farewell ceremony in Hong Kong in 1997.[1]
• At seventy four, Rod became the oldest male solo artist to top the British album chart. You're in My Heart reached number one in December 2019 when he was seventy four years and eleven months old, beating Paul Simon's record by three months.[1]
• Stardust, his 2004 songbook album, was dedicated to the Tartan Army, Scotland's travelling football fans. It was also his first American number one album in twenty five years and won him his first Grammy.[1]
• The opening song on Smiler features noises made by Micky Waller's dog. Waller, the drummer on Maggie May, shared drum duties on the 1974 album, and his dog made it onto the record too.[1]
• Paul and Linda McCartney wrote a song for Rod, Mine for Me, which appeared on Smiler in 1974. It was the B side of Farewell in America and became a minor hit there on its own.[1]
• The liner notes of Every Picture Tells a Story slip the names of two drinks in among the musicians. Martell Cognac and Mateus Rose are listed among the personnel. The same sleeve credits the singers Maggie Bell and Madeline Bell with vocal abrasives.[1]
• Rod and neighbours filled potholes themselves on the lane near his Essex home in 2022. He said an ambulance had burst a tyre and his Ferrari could not get through. The council warned that residents doing their own repairs could be liable.[1]
• Rod turned down more than a million dollars to perform in Qatar. He revealed in 2022 that he had refused the offer about fifteen months earlier because of the country's human rights record.[1] [2]
• Rod's 2013 album Time set a British record for the longest gap between number one albums. His previous chart topping album had been Greatest Hits Volume One in 1979, and his last number one studio album was from 1976.[1] [2]
• In the 1970s Rod lived in the Malibu Wave House, often linked to the Sydney Opera House. He asked its architect Harry Gesner to add railings to the balconies, and used them as an outdoor dance floor. He sold it in 1987.[1] [2]
• The first record Rod ever bought was Eddie Cochran's C'mon Everybody. His father gave him a guitar in January 1959, and the first song he learned on it was the folk tune It Takes a Worried Man.[1]
• Rod's version of Handbags and Gladrags came back to life thanks to The Office. It was never a British hit for him, but after the song became the sitcom's theme he sang it at the Party at the Palace in 2002, with Phil Collins on drums.[1]
• In Rolling Stone's 2023 list of the two hundred greatest singers of all time, Rod ranked forty nine. The magazine praised him as one of rock's great interpreters, who reimagined Sam Cooke's grainy style from the inside.[1] [2]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.