ROD STEWART AT 73
WITH A NEW ALBUM DUE OUT, THE ROCKER REFLECTS ON HOW LIFE HAS CHANGED
The rocker reflects on his life
In the discreet and snug bar of an elegant London pub, Sir Rod Stewart CBE is contemplating the act of physical love and how it has changed for him over the years.
“Well, I need a bit of a start on the handle now, that’s for sure,” the 73-year-old chuckles. “Like a vintage car.”
Having parked that classic, he continues, “Sex becomes more spiritual, I think is the word, as one gets older. You know, I love sex with my wife, but I love just giving her a hug before we go to bed. Every night we have a kiss and a hug, and that doesn’t always lead to sex but it’s still lovely.
“You know when anyone gives you a hug, it’s the most important thing. When I’m away from her for a long time and I don’t get a hug, I really miss it. And I know it sounds daft, but I’m a great one for giving my children a cuddle.
“Because although my dad loved me, and I loved him, we didn’t hug each other. In the last 15 years of his life, I taught him to hug. Now I pass it on to my kids and we hug all the time. I got a lovely Father’s Day card. Brought tears to my eyes,” he says, the famously fibrous voice getting wobbly.
“It said, ‘Dad, Happy Father’s Day. I have so much to thank you for, but thank you for giving me big hugs every time Celtic score.’ It just broke my heart.”
Rod notes that his young sons, Alastair (12) and Aiden (7), to whom he is touchingly devoted, have hopped aboard the carousel of love.
“My seven-year-old made his girlfriend a paper ring and gave it to her,” he sighs. “But he’s like me, a big romantic... The 12-year-old, Alastair, has just had his heart broken for the first time. He doesn’t want to talk about it...”
Rod shares these affectionate thoughts in a hoarse, humorous croak. He is dressed in white linen and a bold, golden blouson − needless to say, he wears it well.
The megastar arrived alone. His wife, Penny Lancaster (47) was last seen pottering locally. “Coffee with the girls” is her husband’s best guess.
Rod has eight children, been married three times and had innumerable partners, but has been with Penny since they met in 1999 and married in 2007.
What, you may wonder, are the pros and cons of being with a woman a quarter-century his junior? “With Pen, the points of reference are different,” he acknowledges. “Like mine would be, musically speaking, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, and hers are all from the 1980s.”
Which begs the question: was Penny, who was a teenager in the 1980s, a Rod Stewart fan before she met him?
“Do you know what? She’s never mentioned it,” he frowns, puzzled. “We were talking among friends and she was telling everybody how we met and all that palaver, and she said, ‘I’d heard of him.’ But it wouldn’t be natural for her to be a fan – she’d have been far too young.” He pauses, deep in thought. “I’m going to ask her about that.”
I ask Rod if he has any grumpy old bloke idiosyncrasies that annoy his partner and the reply is surprising.
“There is one thing that upsets her and I’m always apologising for it. I’m so ashamed, but I sometimes tell her to eff off,” he winces.
“It’s horrible. I dread it coming out. She goes mad. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always done it. I’ve told my brother to eff off too − of course I don’t mean it, but it’s not knowing what to say. I get frustrated... [It’s an] unpleasant habit,” he exhales.
Rod wants to talk about his deeply personal but satisfying new album, Blood Red Roses, which he has co-written and is up there with some of the finest work he has put his name to: Maggie May, The Killing of Georgie, I Was Only Joking, You’re in My Heart (The Final Acclaim) and Young Turks.
The album’s first single, Didn’t I, examines drug addiction from a parent’s perspective.
“It isn’t an anti-drug song,” he explains. “But there’s a clear warning message in there.”
The Grammy Award-winner’s own dalliance with drugs had peaked by the decadent mid-1980s, but he claims never to have purchased cocaine and can’t recollect the last time he powdered his celebrated nose.
The autobiographical approach of Blood Red Roses shines a light on many of Rod’s quirky personal secrets. The rocking Hole in My Heart reveals him as utterly undomesticated.
“Absolutely hopeless,” he despairs. “I can’t cook to save my life. I can do a boiled egg just about. I always had a housekeeper or a chef, or something like that. Before that, I just used to go around [to] me mum’s.”
The standout track from
the album, though, is the heart-rending Farewell. Rod wrote the tear-jerking eulogy for his late buddy Ewan Dawson, a mentor and confidant with whom he shared a number of outrageous adventures. “I think it will be played at a lot of funerals,” its author predicts.
The following week Rod calls from a yacht in the Bay of Naples (“Yes, I am sailing, very funny”) where he is holidaying with his family, and complains about his hair.
“It’s been flat for a week,” he laments. “It’s got to have a rest, I suppose. But it’s too long. I’m going to get it done when I get back to London.
“Although I find it easier to get around when it’s flat,” he observes, instinctively conscious of the paparazzi. “Or if I put my hat on and the sunglasses, and have my man-bag, usually I can get away with it − I have come to the man-bag quite late in life, I must say.”
Back in London, in a more reflective mood, Rod admits that he came to responsibility quite late in life too and often ended relationships in a cavalier, even cowardly, fashion.
“It’s true,” he confesses.
“I just didn’t have the bollocks. I didn’t want the confrontation.
“It was a different era, but that’s no excuse really. I can be accused of being cowardly, and rightly so. There was a lot of running away to the next one. I’m certainly not proud of it.”
So has he apologised to any of those women? “A few of them, when I bump into them, yes,” he nods. ‘Especially my daughter Ruby’s mum [American model Kelly Emberg], who’s an absolute diamond.”
His gallivanting days are long behind him, but there’s one beauty from his hair-raising heyday that continues to haunt him. Not Dee Harrington,
Britt Ekland, Alana Hamilton or Rachel Hunter, but a more exotic creature still.
“Oh, man,” Rod begins. “Australia, 1973, there’s this astonishing-looking specimen at the bar, an absolutely gorgeous woman. I’m the last one down in the bar. The other boys had set me up with her.
“So we went out, we had dinner and we finished up in the same room. Even then you couldn’t tell, right up close.
“Then, of course, there was the unveiling. She still had her knickers on, but I could see something was awry. ‘She’ was a bloke. I said, ‘No, mate, you’ve got the wrong one here’.” Grinning, he points with great purpose to a far horizon. “On your bike!”
Rod becomes equally animated at the prospect of the forthcoming Bohemian Rhapsody movie (“We’ve got to go to that”), which opens in October, and remembers his dear friend Freddie Mercury.
“The last time I saw Freddie,” he says, “Queen were having a party, but he didn’t want to appear with the band. He was ill and he didn’t want everyone to know. I remember going up this spiral staircase to see him and I said, ‘Freddie, come on, keep it together, man. You’ve got the best band in the world.’ He leant around, he was really losing weight, and he said,
‘Rod, I’m far too tired.’
“Of course, me and Freddie and Elton nearly formed a band called Hair Nose and Teeth,” he adds, laughing. “I must have been nose and Fred was teeth. Elton was hair – it was ironic at the time.”
Rod believes he owes
Sir Elton John an apology for his uncharitable verdict on his pal’s recently announced Farewell Yellow Brick Road shows, as he feels he has done the man he calls ‘Phyllis’ (Rod in turn is ‘Sharon’) an injustice.
“I was a bit unfair to Elton,” he grimaces. “On a drunk night on television in New York, I spitefully said, ‘I think it’s bang out of order that you announce a farewell tour every time, and it stinks of grabbing money.’
“I wish I hadn’t said it,” he says. “I think he’s very upset with me. Penny keeps saying, ‘Send him an apology.’
So I should really.”
He treasures the Rembrandt sketch that Elton gave him in 1974 (“Why would I sell that? It’s going up in price”) but Rod, who is careful with his finances, has made a few errors in judgement along the way.
“I was asked to invest in Starbucks about 20 years ago and I turned it down,” he groans. “I was saying, ‘Who is going to want to drink coffee all day? It’ll never happen.’ I was a cup of tea man. Now they’re on every street corner. I must have lost millions.”
Rod straightens his pants indignantly and considers his fortune. “I’ve got more money than I can spend,” he shrugs. “I’m not complaining at all.
“I got up about half-past six this morning, and I was having a stroll outside, looking at the beauty of the gardens and house; and there’s a Ferrari plus a Lamborghini on the drive, and I’m thinking, ‘You lucky bugger’.”
Last year at their 18th-century Essex home, Rod and Penny renewed their marriage vows to mark their 10th anniversary.
“It was bloody sweltering, but it was a lovely day,” reports the born-again groom.
Asked if there is anything else he’d like to renew, the singer rises gingerly to his feet.
“If I could just have a new knee, then there’s nothing else I want,” he says, then remembers. “Apart from a haircut, which is happening this afternoon.”
Rod rubs his hands together gleefully. “I’m very happy indeed,” he grins. “Tremendously content.”