Rod Stewart
In his LA mansion, the original Modfather looks back on a life well-lived: “I enjoyed being a celebrity, a Jack The Lad… Who wouldn’t?”
ROD STEWART, it seems, has a lot on his mind. There is a new album to discuss, but the original Modfather is in an uncharacteristically reflective – and revealing – mood. Inviting Michael Bonner to his LA mansion, Stewart ruminates on a life well lived. Subjects include CND marches, the Faces and his position as rock’s most celebrated playboy. “I enjoyed the money, being a celebrity. Jack the Lad. Who wouldn’t?” There is the enduring importance of Bob Dylan to discuss, the significance of crushed velvet trousers and the wisdom of digging holes through hotel room walls. Tales involve upstaging the Grateful Dead, tormenting John Peel and being threatened with a knife by an august bluesman. “I’d seen a lot,” says Stewart. “But there was a lot more to come, as well.”
“See this?” says Rod Stewart, pointing towards a perfect scale model of a two-up two-down terraced house overlooking an impressive network of snaking railway lines. “This is like the house I grew up in on the Archway Road. We had train tracks running along the back there, too.”
It is mid-morning and Rod Stewart is in the loft of his Beverly Hills residence playing with trains. His pride and joy, Stewart has spent 23 years building this 1,500 square-foot diorama, partly inspired by post-war New York, where mountains spill down towards towering skyscrapers and bustling street scenes. A discerning eye might spot the creator’s hand in the finer details. Celtic Coal And Steel is a reference to his beloved football team. There is a church complete with a gravedigger (“a little nod to one of my early jobs”) while a hoarding outside one building is inscribed with the legend JB Bollocks – purveyors of, among other things, dentures and condoms. It is a place of extraordinary, meticulous detail. Even the sprawling piles of scrap in a junkyard appear to have been assembled with skill and patience. “I’m good at rubbish,” he notes dryly.
Stewart is a master of this kind of self-deprecating remark. His manner is easy-going, earthy; he seems to find it faintly ridiculous that he, a North London plumber’s son, has made it this far, to the very top. Certainly, Stewart’s personal mythology is strong on roots. Despite the hundreds of pre-Raphaelite artworks decorating his home, it’s likely the most priceless pictures on display are the framed grainy black and white photographs hanging in Stewart’s kitchen of his father and uncle playing Sunday league football in the 1940s. You can take the boy out of Highgate – but if you have the means and the patience, Highgate can always be replicated in 1:87 scale on a giant model railway set.
A day spent with Stewart often finds him circling back to traditional values: chiefly, family and football. These days, he explains, he arranges tours around Celtic fixtures and his children’s holidays. There are even football scores scribbled on the walls of the tiny, gated lift that rises from the ground floor to the loft: Celtic on one side, Arsenal on the other. But Stewart has worked hard at being an ordinary bloke. In the ’60s, he was just another working-class teenager caught up in the buzz of the germinal R&B scene. During the early ’70s, his early solo albums included songs about the land, hardworking families, grimy streets and factories. As the jetset lifestyle beckoned, he approached fame with a raised eyebrow – as if to say, “Well, wouldn’t you?”
It’s important to emphasise how significant the records he made between 1969 and 1974 were: his faultless song selection and interpretation (Dylan a speciality) cast alongside his own charismatic compositions. There’s “Maggie May” and “You Wear It Well”, of course, but also “Blind Prayer”, “Gasoline Alley”, “Mandolin Wind” and then in the late ’70s and early ’80s, “The Killing Of Georgie”, “I Was Only Joking” and “Young Turks”. As Stewart readily admits, though, the girls, cars and celebrity lifestyle offered too many distractions. “Everything else got in the way of my songwriting,” he says. “There wasn’t any consistency. Some albums I’d write two songs, some I’d write five. When you finish up writing 11 or 12 for an album, that’s a body of work and people can appreciate it.” Twenty years of crippling writer’s block didn’t help. He takes pride in having beaten it: he’s co-written songs for his last three albums, including the most recent, Blood Red Roses, released later this year. Among the songs on the new record is “Farewell”, an adieu to a late friend that revisits Stewart’s early haunts the Flamingo and the Marquee, while another, “Didn’t I”, about a teenage drug addict, might prove as controversial as “The Killing Of Georgie” 40 years ago.
In his loft, a few rooms away from the model railway, trophies from those previous decades hang on portable clothes rails. A widelapelled black pinstripe suit nestles next to a boating blazer that hangs in turn alongside a bright red bomber jacket. He confesses he doesn’t entirely know what to do with them all. Today, Stewart is dressed more plainly in blue espadrilles, beige chinos and a pastel striped shirt topped off with a white denim jacket. He is buoyant company – if pre-occupied with the weighty business of the Argentina vs Croatia World Cup match on a TV in the living room.
We take a brisk drive past his neighbours’ homes in his white Ferrari Spider 458 – “That’s Denzel Washington’s place,” he says, gesturing towards a driveway dominated by a Versailles-sized fountain – before he guns the car along tight hairpin bends down towards Beverly Glen, the small shopping enclave at the top of Mulholland Drive. Stewart comes here most days for coffee, he explains. During three separate interviews – at Beverly Glen, then later back in his kitchen and finally outside on his veranda – Stewart will lay bare the bones of his career, from blues clubs and CND marches to the groundbreaking work of the Jeff Beck Group, the glory days of the Faces and beyond. There is Rod
The Mod – a recently re-discovered documentary from 1965 – to discuss, his divisive relocation to America in the mid-’70s and his undying devotion to the songs of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits. But for now he settles onto a wooden bench placed outside Beverly Glen’s Palace dry cleaners and stirs his coffee. Above him, a neon sign reads: Expert Alterations.
How do you normally feel at the end of a project like this? Are you happy with this record?
Usually, you want to start it again because you think it is rubbish. I do it every time I’ve made an album. More so now, because I’m writing so many songs. I listen to them so much in the build-up, working on lyrics, so by the time I’m finished, I think it’s useless. Which is not the case at all. Walk away from it for a couple of weeks, then go back and listen to it.
How do you write?
I’ve got an ideas book and a titles book. Sometimes I start off with nothing. Sometimes I start off with just a title, like the song about a teenage drug girl, “Didn’t I”. I was singing along with the demo and “Didn’t I” just came out. It was the same when I made “Maggie May”. The first thing I sang after three takes was “Maggie May”. [sings] “Oh, doo be doo be oh Maggie…” It just comes off the top of your head. I didn’t have a title for “Maggie May”, just a chord sequence.
“I’ve always been a clothes horse. I was up myself a little sometimes”
Presumably, that makes the stakes higher than on, say, American
Songbook albums? They’re your babies out there...
That’s right. They’re my little babies, I gave birth to them and then they go out there and they’re accepted or they’re not accepted in the world.
Tell us a bit about “Farewell”. It’s very evocative: the references to the Marquee and Flamingo, skinny ties and mohair suits.
It’s about a mate of mine who passed on about three years ago. We grew up through the ’60s. We lost contact for a little bit. He was a public school boy – very well-spoken, very humorous. I’d go as far as to say I idolised him. We were more or less the same age. But I think it’s a very moving song. I think it’s going to be played at so many bloody funerals…
Who do you see as your peers these days? Is it Stones and The Who – that Marquee generation, if you like? Or the contemporary practitioners of the great American songbook, like Michael Bublé?
Most of the people I look up to are dead. Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Muddy Waters. I still find myself going back and listening to that music in quiet moments. They’re my reference points. Who do I look up to now? No-one, really. I can’t say I like anybody I would walk from here to Starbucks to see – Starbucks, incidentally, is just six feet away.
Did you hear any of Dylan’s recent LPs of Sinatra covers?
Yeah, we all had a good laugh at that one. Me and the band sat around and listened to the one that came out about four years ago. He shouldn’t really try that stuff. He should stay where he is. I like my mate Michael Bublé. He can’t sing “Hot Legs” though.
Dylan was an early hero, wasn’t he?
I played that first album day and night. When I went on the CND marches to Aldermaston, I really thought I was Bob Dylan. I met him once. He’d come to see a show at Madison Square Garden. He turned up just as I was leaving. I said, “Hiya, Bob. How you doing?” He said, “Are you going?” That was it. But, yeah, he’s one of my idols. I was very disappointed when I went to see him in concert, though. He doesn’t acknowledge the audience. The songs are nowhere near to what they’re meant to sound like. Van Morrison’s another one. He just puts his head down and gets on with it. I got my three daughters tickets to see him. Within two songs, they were on their cell phones. Apparently, he told a joke on stage about six months ago. But he’s great, so is Bob.
You’ve recorded eight covers of Dylan songs…
There’s more that haven’t come out. Loads.
So what’s the enduring appeal as a songwriter?
Him and Tom Waits are the two people I look up to as lyricists. They’re so good at imagery. I don’t have that quality in me. I just tell stories. For a song to work for me, I have to connect with the lyrics and I have to find them different. I can’t stand words that rhyme for the sake of rhyming. Tom Waits is an absolute exception. The most recent one of his I recorded was “Picture In A Frame”, what a song!
Is that storytelling tradition something you picked up from folk?
It’s because I only went to a Secondary Modern, we never learned any big words! No, I think you’re right. It’s because of folk music, the way those songs are told.
What was the scene like back then?
There’s a song on the new album called “Blood Red Roses”. It’s a whaling song. I used to listen to Ewan MacColl sing it. He always used to hold his ear [does a perfect impression of MacColl] “Go down, you blood red roses, go down…” So I’ve taken that bit and turned it into a whole song. But the folks clubs? I remember Ken Colyer’s jazz club, in a basement on Great Newport Street, off Charing Cross Road. That used to be folk.
There’s terrific footage of you and Long John Baldry in the Rod The Mod film, singing together at Ken Colyer’s…
It went on and on and on. I don’t know what sort of pills we were on.
What did you learn from Baldry?
One of the things he taught me was how to stand. Keep your legs apart. You watch any great performer and they never stand at the microphone with their legs together. See me onstage today and you’re seeing what John taught me. Then there was the way he would
speak to an audience, connect with them. He’d tell them about the song, where he first heard it. He thought my voice was amazing. Funny, I thought my voice was really high when I was singing “Tiger In Your Tank” in the film.
The footage of the Marquee looks so quaint now.
You can tell the kids had just gone through the trad era, because they’re still dancing like it was trad jazz. They’re trying to find out the right dance steps for this new music – which it was to them, many of them had never heard of Muddy Waters. It was an exciting time. You had people who liked the blues, those who liked folk, but it all blended together. I think what made the Stones so great was Charlie’s drumming: he came straight out of a jazz band. That’s what’s made Baldry’s band so good: they all came from a jazz background and they were all accomplished musicians.
Baldry was the first of your early foils, wasn’t he? You’ve always seemed to respond well to a creative partner: Baldry, Jeff Beck, Ron Wood, Martin Quittenton, Jim Cregan…
I suppose so. They’re all guitar players, obviously. I don’t know about a foil, but I’ve always had someone to work with.
What qualities do you recognise from then that you still have?
I like to think I’m still very approachable. It’s hard… being in John’s band was a wonderful learning curve. I couldn’t even work my way round a 12-bar blues, that’s how naïve I was. I could play all these lovely Ramblin’ Jack Elliott songs on the guitar, but I couldn’t figure out a 12-bar change! I got it in the end. They’re all gone now. Geoff Bradford, Cliff Barton, Ian Armit on the piano. He played with the Clyde McPhatter Jazz Band. Such times! [laughs]
You’ve covered Muddy Waters’ “Rollin’ & Tumblin’” on this new album. Do you see still yourself as a blues singer at heart?
Yeah. You’ve seen where I was brought up. My dad’s little shop and we lived on top. I still believe that a white kid can sing the blues. Mick Jagger’s a good blues singer, Keith Relf was a good blues singer, Chris Farlowe was a good blues singer. There’s no call for it nowadays, but if you accomplish that and understand it, it bodes well for future songwriting. I owe such a great deal to black culture. We all do. We should all pay some sort of fee to a scholarship for black kids because we depended on black music, we loved black music.
What did you make of the Stones’ album of blues covers, Blue & Lonesome?
I heard it on the radio. It was brilliant. See, they play with conviction. Jagger is a really good harp player. It did well, too. They’re getting good reviews at the moment. Once upon a time, when there was a lot of drugs and drinking, you didn’t know if you were going to get a good show or a bad show. They’ve grown up – of course they have!
You shared bills with Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter. Did they ever offer you any advice?
No, but Sonny Boy Williamson took a knife to me. Me and John were supporting him. We’d just done our set at the Marquee. He was just about to go on. He said, “Go get me a couple of white girls.” I said, “Fuck off, get them yourself.” That was it. He drew a knife on me.
So did you?
Yeah, I brought a couple backstage… wouldn’t you? I never got to talk to them. Buddy Guy was the same. He’d just do the show and disappear.
Did it feel a risk to go from the kind of straight blues you were singing with Baldry to the Jeff Beck Group?
No, not at all. John knew a lot of the old blues men and he would teach me about them, who they were, where this guy was born, how he was discovered. All we did with the Jeff Beck Group was play the same music but in what we thought was a Chicago blues way. That was a great band. Another great big learning curve for me. To just have a guitar player so sympathetic and so good at listening to me sing and reply, or the other way round, was just wonderful.
Did Truth feel like an important album?
Cor, not half. Everybody talked about it. We didn’t realise what we were doing at the time, of course… it was all done at Abbey Road in a week. Five days, Monday to Friday, vocals, everything. We never worked to a clock. Go in, a bottle of that sweet German wine, Liebfraumilch, every day. Between the four of us? It might not seem a lot, but it was expensive.
Did you and Jeff have good camaraderie in those days?
Not as good as it could have been, because by that time me and Woody had forged a relationship. I’m still in contact with Ron. He sends me videos of his kids. But with Jeff, we did try and get together again. I still don’t think it’s too late for us to shrink our egos a little bit and do it.
Ron was evidently impressed with you; but what impressed you about him?
We met in the pub across the road from the Marquee on Wardour Street, The Ship. I was there about three weeks ago, funnily enough. We introduced each other. I said, “’ello, Nose.” He said, “’ello, Nose.” We both had big noses. I think what brought us together was our sense of clothing – we both liked style – and our unique sense of humour. That’s bonded us together over the years. I don’t see so much of him now, of course.
The musicianship shouldn’t be overlooked. The work he did on your early solo albums is incredibly expressive.
Yeah, with the birds and the hair out the way, there’s something tangible there. I think it’s more by luck than judgment. We both grew up listening to the same stuff. When we came together it was a matter of finding a way to let it pour out. On Every Picture Tells A Story, he played 60 per cent of the bass. He plays bass like he plays guitar; he wanders everywhere, it’s lovely.
What do you remember about those early American tours with the Jeff Beck Group?
The first tour went on for four months. We came over on one of the first 747s. Can you imagine? That was wonderful. Free drinks. There was me Woody and my mate I sung about [on “Farewell”], Ewan. There was a screen for films! But it was about six inches big and about 12 feet away. They gave you a pair of earphones and they piped the sound in. We were picked up at JFK, we drove across the Brooklyn Bridge into New York. But we got homesick. We weren’t used to being away from our girlfriends, and we weren’t used to being away from London.
They were huge tours. You were on bills with the Grateful Dead and Hendrix — competing very much on their level. Why do you think you resonated with American audiences so much?
We supported Sly & The Family Stone – gave them a run for their money – I think we blew the Grateful Dead way off the stage. Because it just looked different. You had these three guys with the same haircuts, me and Woody had crushed velvet trousers, loads of crosses, little silk shirts. We’d stand by each other, having a laugh, touching each other’s bums. The Americans hadn’t seen all this. They went mad. It was a great band. Micky Waller – what a great drummer! If anybody didn’t look like a drummer, it was him.
It was all going great and then Led Zeppelin came along and stole your thunder.
Yeah, Jeff especially took it a bit bad. They even did “You Shook Me” on their first album, because we were doing that. They used to come and watch us. First of all, it was Jimmy. Then it was Jimmy and John Paul Jones. Then it was Jimmy, John Paul Jones and Robert. Because we all had the same manager, Peter Grant. Prick, he was.
What makes you say that?
He was a horrible piece of work. He had people beaten up at Zeppelin shows when they got too close to the stage. I love Robert, though. He did blues in his own way. He wasn’t necessarily trying to sound black, Robert. I’ve got a lot of admiration for him. I’m pleased about Wolves, going back in the Premiership.
Was the transition into a solo career difficult? It’s your name above the door: there’s no-one else to blame if it all goes wrong.
When I made the first album, the Faces were all behind it – McLagan’s on it, Kenney Jones is on it, Ron is all over it. I think even Ronnie Lane played on one number. We had two basses – two basses! But the solo career got in the way once “Maggie May” was away. They started billing us as ‘Rod Stewart And The Faces’, particularly in America. I hated it. We had to get people to take the signs down or paint part of it out. That was the beginning of the end. I remember Ronnie Lane and Mac told me, “We’ve had one singer who dumped us and left. We don’t want it to happen again.” But I didn’t dump them. I did my solo career as a little thing on the side, really; but it became a huge success. I offered “Losing You” to the Faces. They decided not to do it, so I recorded it on Every Picture Tells A Story.
Did you see yourself in competition with the Faces?
I never looked at it like that, but I suppose so. There were two different record companies. I was Mercury and they were on Warner Bros. But we were having so much fun. We’d come into our first few shillings and we all bought cars and I don’t think anybody thought about it until later on.
But you were ambitious, right? It wasn’t just about being able to afford the next Lamborghini, was it?
Right from the start, there was a deep love for the music. It’s what we all loved and got us through some pretty bad times in the past – all of us. We’ve lost two of the Faces now. We’ve lost Ian and we’ve lost Ronnie.
Are you in touch with Kenney Jones?
I might invite him over for Christmas once or twice or if we’re having a party at the house. But we don’t keep in touch like me and Ron do. There’s always a chance of the Faces getting back together. Just every time I’m about to start a tour, the Stones are going to start a tour, then I start and they start. We can’t go on forever. But I said that 20 years ago.
“Banned from Holiday Inns, we’d check in as Fleetwood Mac…”
Did you feel like you needed to make a statement with An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down?
Not really. I had no high hopes of huge chart success. After we finished it, we put on the album cover, right down in the right hand corner, the word “Thin”, because me and Woody were expecting thin sales. That pressing is worth a few bob now.
As both a singer and a songwriter, you’re very drawn to a certain kind of melancholia, aren’t you? On that first album, “I Wouldn’t Change A Thing” is shot through with a sense of things passing…
Yeah. As I remember, I was writing about a life well lived, but I was only in my twenties. I’d seen a lot, I guess. But there was a lot more to come as well.
There’s incredible footage on YouTube of the Faces live. When you were great, you were amazing.
Yeah, but we did like a drink...
Do you have a favourite Faces story?
There’s so many…. How about Ian McLagan and Ronnie Lane digging a hole through to Kenney Jones’ room in a Holiday Inn?
How on earth did you dig into someone’s hotel room?
The walls were made of that breezeblock. If you get under the wallpaper, it’s like getting out of prison. I think they used the brass top off a bedpost. They only got through a little bit: “We can see you!” They couldn’t actually get in. Cheap hotels, Holiday Inns. I remember once, arriving at a Holiday Inn at 2am. We found a kid’s railway and started pushing it around and pushing it and eventually the police came. There were helicopters, too. Eventually, we got banned from all Holiday Inns, so we used to check in as Fleetwood Mac. We got away with it! Neither of us were very famous then, you see. I could go on and on and on.
How did the songwriting process work with the Faces?
We were very fair with each other. We’d all chip in. It was more or less the same way I’ve always written songs. What was fun was the mixing of the albums. We’d have Glyn Johns. A solo would come up, so Ronnie would [mimes pushing the levels up]. Then a drum break and Kenney would go [mimes pushing the levels up]. After about 10 minutes, we’d have to put it all back and start again. But it was a very democratic band. No arguments, we all looked after each other, all had the same sense of humour. The only downside, none of them were football fans. You can tell that when you see us playing “You Wear It Well” on Top Of The Pops. You can see Woody trying to kick the ball. Awful.
How important was John Peel to the Faces?
We used to drive him mad. When we did the John Peel show, we’d be in the pub just round the corner from the studio. If the show went on at 7:30, we’d still be in there at 20-past. “Come on, John. Just one more!” We’d get in there one minute before the red light went on. The poor bugger, we tormented him and teased him. But he got us going, he believed in us, he loved us. I do miss him.
Solo artist versus being a group: what are the pros and cons?
I wasn’t making any solo appearances, I didn’t go anywhere and have me own band. The boys didn’t mind playing some of my songs – “Losing You” and “Maggie”. We did some of Ronnie Lane’s songs, “Ooh La La”. And we used to do songs off Woody’s album like “I Can Feel The Fire”. There was no animosity when we all split up. We’d already lost Ronnie Lane: he’d left the band because he was sick and we had Tetsu. So the whole engine had gone out of the band by then. Then Woody went – and I knew he would, eventually. He was born to be in the Stones.
That run of solo albums up to Smiler is pretty amazing. Did you ever think that your luck might run out one day?
No, no. I was enjoying myself too much. Loving everything that came with being successful. I enjoyed the money, being a celebrity. Jack The Lad. Who wouldn’t, at my age?
When you came to make Atlantic Crossing, the Faces were over, Ron was in the Stones. Hooking up with Tom Dowd allowed you to work with a bunch of musicians whose work you admired. Is that right?
Yeah, it was. That was when my solo career started, really. That’s when I felt I could make my own
“I still sell out the Hollywood Bowl. I’d be a mug to give it up!”
decisions, record whatever I want, go wherever I want. I wasn’t tied to the Faces – no, I love the Faces, I won’t use that word ‘tied’. I was part of them. They were part of my blood. When Tommy Dowd said let’s go to Muscle Shoals, off we went with no songs written. Same process though. I’d sit around with Steve Cropper and the band and write. What an experience that was, going to Muscle Shoals. No alcohol for 20 miles. We used to get a bottle of Bacardi, draw little lines on it and share it: that one’s for Steve, that one’s for Booker, one for Tom, that one’s for me.
A lot of people never quite got over you moving over there. There’s the famous Greil Marcus quote: “Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone betrayed his talent so completely.” I always wondered how personally you took that.
At the time? Yeah. But you let bygones be bygones, right?
But then “The Killing Of Georgie” proves Marcus wrong. Tell us about the circumstances behind you writing it...
Georgie was a very handsome black gentleman, probably in his early twenties. He was a good friend of Mac’s, more so than me. He used to come round and bring us some sounds, the new Sam & Dave single or whatever. One night, we heard he’d been murdered. So I wrote a song about it. It was very spontaneous. If I look back on that now, and said, “I’m going to write a song about homosexuality,” I’d have said, “Fuck off.” It would have scared me. But if you let your inner self just flow out, you’d be surprised. It’s like the song on this LP, about the girl with the drugs, “Didn’t I”. I never dreamt of writing a song like that. You put your aerial up, who knows what will come down.
What about the risk to your career?
I didn’t see it like that. It wasn’t like I was admitting to being gay or anything. It was just a story, I told it like it is. I might have nicked a bit from Lou Reed on the backing vocals, the “do do do do do” from “Walk On The Wild Side”. [laughs] I’m too honest sometimes!
Talking about risks, there were some striking fashion choices…
I’ve always been a clothes horse. I was up myself a little sometimes. Any sartorial regrets? No, but when I look at old photos of album covers, I do regret that boater I wore for A Night On The Town. That was Britt Ekland’s idea. When people take the mickey, I say, “Well, let me see what you was wearing in those days!” We all made these mistakes. In fact, the attic is full of all the old stage clothes. I’ve kept everything. My worst one was the tank top, yellow trousers and a fur boa round me middle. Is there an archive, then?
Every time I write a song, I buy one of those little leatherbound books, like Moleskines. They go all the way back to Every Picture Tells A Story. Horrible grammar mistakes in there, because when you get an idea you write it down quick. I’m going to bundle them all up when I’m near the end and say, “Sorry about the spelling!” Yeah, every song.
A lot of your contemporaries struggled during the ’80s with the critical weight of what they’d achieved in the previous decade…
… After you’ve painted what you think is your masterpiece? What do the Stones do after Exile, which was a masterpiece?
Exactly. But you had a very successful ’80s. Did you feel that as you gained a new audience, you left your earlier fans behind?
I don’t really know, unless I walk out to an audience and say, “Hey, listen. Were you following me back in the early ’70s?” When I play Vegas, I’d say 60 per cent of them are in their sixties. Whether they’ve followed me all the way from “Maggie May”, I don’t know. I hope so.
Did you hear Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand? Are you ever tempted to make a record that sustains that kind of mood: something sparse and quite intimate?
Yeah. But not yet. I’ve still got a lot of rocking stuff to be done. I’ve thought about getting a girl to sing with me on those kind of stripped back ballads. I know the record company want me to do it. But I need to find a girl I think I can sing with – Bonnie Raitt would be great – and the songs come and they’re all in that vein and they can all be interpreted, then I’ll do it. And it will happen.
Do you think much about your legacy?
I must admit, when I did the American Songbook, never have I had more pleasure than when I sang those songs. That sold 27 million. Phenomenal. I had writer’s block. I became a lazy git. No, maybe it wasn’t that. I didn’t have, as you said, a foil. I couldn’t find anyone I wanted to write with, until Kevin Savigar came along, the co-producer. He’s brilliant. We could go on and on writing songs for years.
What’s the drive to go out still, to make albums and tour?
Oh, please! You’ve got no idea! When I first started, none of us thought about fame. We just had to play and people listened – that was all we wanted. It’s still the same. Plus I’m a natural showoff! The audience is still there. Two nights, sold out, at the Hollywood Bowl. 15,000 a night. I’d be a mug to give it up.
Ronnie Lane went off and lived in a caravan. Did you ever consider packing it all in for a simpler life?
Ronnie and I, though there was a great respect for each other, that was his way of doing things. That’s what made him happy. This is what makes me happy. Look where I came from: a little tiny sweetshop on the Archway Road to three houses like this – one in Florida like this, one in London, one in the South Of France. Anyway, we’re only temporarily custodians. It’ll all go to the kids. I’ve created it all from these two little muscles [points at throat] that bang together and make a noise. There isn’t a day go by when it doesn’t cease to amaze me.
What do you think the 19-year-old Rod in the film would make of all this?
He’d have been over the moon. There’s that little bit in the film where I say, “If it lasts for six months…” Ha! All I was doing was trying to save up to buy an MG Sprite. They were £450. I got to about £380, I had a little pot to put my money in – my dad told me not to trust banks – but he borrowed it to pay his income tax bill. He said, “Don’t worry son. I’ll give it back to you.” He never did, but then I struck it lucky. I didn’t get my Sprite, I got a lovely Marcos. Then a Lamborghini. When I married Penny, I had an Enzo Ferarri. I sold it. I shouldn’t have done, it’s worth a fortune now. I thought, ‘You know what? At last, it’s out of your system.’ But it never is. I guess it’s like music.
Blood Red Roses is released September 23 on Decca/Republic