... but at last, it’s Sir Rod!
ALMOST 20 years have passed since Paul McCartney got his. It was arise Sir Elton in 1998 and, five years after that, there was even a knight in the Rolling Stones. Soon Tom Jones had one, too. But characteristically the ‘Cockney Scotsman’ affected a relaxed attitude. ‘If my time comes, it will,’ he said. ‘If it doesn’t, I’m not bothered.’
There have been many fibs along the way in Rod Stewart’s half-century of fame. He used to say he was born in Highgate minutes after a German V-2 missile exploded there. It fell weeks later, two miles away.
He said he was once a gravedigger. He never was, really. Nor is there any record of him having signed for Brentford FC. But on the scale of tall tales put about by Roderick David Stewart CBE, the claim that he was ‘not bothered’ about being elevated to a knight was a whopper.
Behind the bluster and matey chuckles, he burned for the honour – and clearly wondered why he was still waiting for it. Could it be because he was mainly based in Los Angeles? But then, he reflected, ‘Mick doesn’t pay taxes here and Tom lives in America’.
Nor was there any apparent issue with the Royal Family. Stewart has long been on friendly terms with Prince Charles and, at a 2013 charity show in St James’s Palace, sang directly to the Queen.
‘She was sitting in her throne with all her fundraisers around her, so I did three or four standards, looking directly into her eyes,’ he recalled.
Well, today Scotland’s favourite adopted son can stop wondering. It is, at last, Sir Rod. Not that he or anyone else would have imagined 50 years ago in his Rod the Mod days – or 40 years ago in his globe-trotting, blondebedding period – that a knighthood awaited in these twinkle-eyed, pensionable years.
Yet, for all the hedonism for which the singer became known in his 1970s pomp, there was always a vein of conventionality running through Stewart’s life. He has been a model train enthusiast since boyhood – a lifelong lover of football, fan of Celtic and, of course, passionate patron of Scotland, the land his Edinburgh-born-father Robert left a few years before he was born.
‘Every time I play in Scotland I think of him,’ he said once. ‘He was a wonderful man. A plumber to trade. He was never a man for many words but he instilled manners in me. Even today, that’s something I try to instil in my own boys.’
SCOTLAND, he says, is his ‘spiritual homeland’ – a convenient expression for a star who has never lived here or sounded like anything other than a Cockney geezer. But his dedication to the country – and the national football team – is quite sincere.
His heroes as a teenager in North London were not the likes of Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton who, in 1966, would lift the World Cup for his native England. It was the Scottish players whose pictures adorned the walls of his brothers’ bedrooms and soon he, too, was roaring them on, even in matches against England.
There were childhood fantasies, no doubt, of one day playing for Scotland. Certainly he was a gifted player at school, but his talent as a singer was rarer still.
‘A musician’s life is a lot easier and I can also get drunk and make music, and I can’t do that and play football,’ he said once. ‘I plumped for music. They’re the only two things I can do actually: play football and sing.’
There were other talents, of course – his legendary ability to charm his way into the
affections of some of the world’s most desirable blondes, for example. And a knack for self-mythology.
In his 2012 autobiography, Stewart was ready to admit he hadn’t really been a gravedigger. It was a tale he had gone along with after measuring out some plots in Highgate with string on two Saturdays. Similarly, the story about the V-2 missile was ‘just one of those legends, fables and downright lies told in the name of publicity’.
Even his supposed notoriety as a man careful with his cash was a put-up job. He is an enthusiastic supporter of multiple charities, including Breast Cancer Care and The Princes’ Trust.
It was his ex-Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood who spread the word about Stewart’s stinginess – with the singer’s approval. He explained: ‘In the Faces it suited me to be thought of as a bit tight. We were always getting ripped off and I thought it would be good to make people think twice about me. I told Ronnie to use an old line of my dad’s and say I was tighter than two coats of paint.’
It was as he carved out a parallel solo career while still performing with The Faces in the 1970s that Stewart became an international star. There was a string of memorable singles, including Maggie May, You Wear It Well and Sailing, all of which were number ones.
Meanwhile album titles such as Foot Loose & Fancy Free and Blondes Have More Fun told their own story. Stewart was loving every minute of life as a red-blooded, spikyhaired rock lothario – and didn’t care who knew it.
‘I was never a good-looking guy,’ he said later. ‘But I had a certain amount of charm and I was the singer in a rock group. That helped.’
For some of the 70s, he and model Dee Harrington were an item. Then came two years with actress Britt Ekland, followed by marriage to American actress and model Alana Hamilton. They had two children before he moved on to another model, Kelly Emberg.
‘I was s ****** g my way round the world,’ he said. But he admitted: ‘The one thing I am desperately ashamed of is the way I would finish relationships. I can have a confrontation with a bloke but never with a woman. I just have to run away from it.’
The hits continued through the 1980s – even if the critical acclaim often did not. Looking back, he described his 1980 album Foolish Behaviour as a ‘pile of s***, really. Maybe a couple of others were, too.’ In the late Nineties, meanwhile, ‘I might as well not have made records’.
But by then he was in the darkest pit of his life. His second marriage, to supermodel Rachel Hunter, was ending – at her behest, not his. The carefree Casanova of the 1970s was long gone. He had been entirely faithful to her.
‘Rachel,’ he said, ‘was everything I wanted.’ Yet she no longer wanted him: ‘I took to lying on the sofa in the day with a blanket over me and holding a hot water bottle.’
IN time, Stewart emerged from his despair – wiser and stronger. He threw himself into a new project, recording a string of his favourite standards under the title The Great American Songbook and scored a huge hit which spawned multiple follow-ups. A new, mellower phase had begun for one of popular music’s great vocalists.
There was cheering news on the romance front, too. The blonde who asked for his autograph in a hotel lobby had handed over her phone number in return. Now Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster were dating.
Soon he would propose atop the Eiffel Tower and she would say yes. And so, a spring in his step once more, Stewart claimed his rightful place as a national treasure – an effortlessly talented man of music, growing more likeable by the year.
Receiving his CBE for services to music at Buckingham Palace in 2007, he was clearly moved by the recognition. ‘It’s a marvellous occasion,’ he said. ‘We’re the only country in the world to honour the common man.’
It was a typical remark from a musician worth an estimated £150million who, nonetheless, has never forgotten his roots.
He once said: ‘I love the fact that I’m still being accepted. There’s nothing better than walking down the street with people shouting “You all right mate?” out of taxis.’
Mindful, perhaps, of his Scottish father’s words about manners, the singer rarely speaks ill of anybody. Only once – some would argue with justification – did he really let fly.
‘She is a manipulative cow,’ said Stewart of Scottish bra tycoon Michelle Mone when she replaced Miss Lancaster with his ex Rachel Hunter as the model for her lingerie brand. ‘I hope Michelle chokes on her profits.’
These days, Stewart continues to enjoy his model railways. He still enjoys his third marriage and his eight children by five different mothers.
Some of them continue to enjoy him. His first wife runs an unofficial Rod Stewart Exes’ Club, attended by the likes of Kelly Emberg, Britt Ekland – and sometimes Stewart himself.
He still enjoys his music. His 29th album, Another Country, reached number two last year. And now, at 71, there’s a new thing to enjoy. Wear it well, Sir Rod.