Rod Stewart

• Born: January 10, 1945
• Place of Birth: London, England

ENGLISH ROCK SINGER AND SONGWRITER

From his days as the lead singer of the blues-rock bands the Jeff Beck Group, and the Faces to his more than three decades as a performer of folk, soul, rock, disco, and Broadway-era pop, Stewart, with his distinctive raspy voice, distinguished himself as a versatile interpretive singer.

MEMBER OF The Jeff Beck Group; the Faces

The Life

After trying his luck at soccer, grave digging, and street-corner singing, Roderick David Stewart became, in the mid-1960s, one of England’s most sought-after lead singers, most notably with the Jeff Beck Group and, in 1970—one year after signing a solo contract with Mercury Records—the Faces.

In 1975, the Faces broke up, and Stewart left England for the United States and Mercury Records for Warner Bros. By the time his single “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” finished its eight-week run atop the Billboard charts, he was an international star. In subsequent decades, even when his sales and hits declined, he remained a first-rank concert attraction. Beginning with Alana Hamilton, to whom he was married from 1979 to 1984, Stewart was frequently seen in the company of young women. Two of them, Kelly Emberg and Penny Lancaster, became his second and third wives, respectively. He fathered children with all three.

In 2002, he released It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, Vol. 1, the first in what became a series of albums of pre-rock-and-roll pop standards. The collections reestablished Stewart as a formidable commercial force.

In addition to appearances at special concerts in the following years, Stewart would go on to release the album Soulbook (2009), a compilation of soul and Motown songs; begin a years-long residency performing in Las Vegas in 2011; and write an autobiography titled Rod: The Autobiography (2012). The following year, he released the first album in decades that consists of original songs that he wrote himself, titled Time; in interviews promoting the album, he claimed that penning his autobiography had inspired him to get back into songwriting. The well-reviewed album reached number one on the charts in the United Kingdom. His next album, Another Country (2015), drew mixed reviews from critics and was not as commercially successful as his previous project. In the fall of 2016, he was knighted by Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge.

Stewart continued to release new music in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Some of his most notable works from this period include his 2019 album You're in My Heart: Rod Stewart with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and his 2024 release Swing Fever. Also in 2024, Stewart's musical catalog was purchased by the Iconic Artists Group.

The Music

Early Works. Despite recording first as a member of Steampacket and Shotgun Express, Stewart made his best early performances on such Jeff Beck Group albums as Truth and Beck-Ola and on the Faces’ albums Long Player and A Nod Is as Good as a Wink…to a Blind Horse. It was as a member of the Faces that Stewart recorded “Stay with Me,” a longtime staple of his repertoire.

The Rod Stewart Album. The eight songs on this low-selling but critically well-regarded 1969 recording included original Stewart compositions, interpretations of the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man,” Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town,” the traditional folk song “Man of Constant Sorrow,” and “Handbags and Gladrags” (written by his pianist Mike D’Abo).

Every Picture Tells a Story. Like Stewart’s first two solo albums, this 1971 recording mixed Stewart originals, covers of rock, soul, folk, and traditional songs (Elvis Presley’s debut single “That’s All Right,” the Temptations’ “[I Know] I’m Losing You,” Tim Hardin’s “Reason to Believe,” “Amazing Grace”). It was “Maggie May,” however, a chart-topping, six-minute examination of a young man’s soured affair with an older woman, that made the album and Stewart formidable bestsellers.

A Night on the Town. Coming as it did after the coolly received albums Smiler and Atlantic Crossing, this 1976 album represented a make-or-break moment in Stewart’s career. What made the album was three Top 40 singles: “The First Cut Is the Deepest” (a Cat Stevens cover), “The Killing of Georgie (Parts I and II)” (an antigay-bashing saga), and “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” (which spent three weeks more at number one than “Maggie May”).

Storyteller: The Complete Anthology, 1964–1990. Released in 1989, this four-disc boxed set achieved double-platinum status, making it one of Stewart’s two best-selling albums of the 1980s and provoking a reassessment of his first quarter-century of work. It concluded with Stewart’s version of Tom Waits’s “Downtown Train,” which reached number three in 1990.

Unplugged . . . and Seated. This seventy-minute acoustic live album includes fifteen of the twenty-one songs that Stewart taped on February 3, 1993, for his appearance on MTV Unplugged. Although the greatest-hits nature of the set list made the album more a retrospective than a groundbreaking next step, Unplugged . . . and Seated debuted Stewart’s hit version of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately,” and it reunited him with his fellow ex-Faces member, the guitarist Ron Wood.

It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, Vol. 1. Rock stars recording pop standards of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s was nothing new when Stewart released this album in 2002. (Carly Simon and Linda Ronstadt had released pop-standards albums in 1981 and 1983, respectively). None of them, however, achieved the popularity of Stewart’s. He recorded three more similar albums, and all four were released as a boxed set in 2007. He released a fifth edition in 2010.

Time. Listeners and critics appreciated that on this 2013 album of almost all original songs, Stewart wrote nostalgically about his past and returned to the music of his earlier work with a heavier presence of instruments such as mandolins and acoustic guitars.

Another Country. While this 2015 album also includes several songs written by Stewart and the style is once again reminiscent of his earlier projects, the percentage of original pieces is lower than on Time. Additionally, some critics argued that the topics covered in the songs of Another Country do not have the same effect, but rather feel more forced.

Musical Legacy

Stewart’s complete work of more than thirty albums reveals the many facets of his talent and taste and some of the best-known folk, blues, gospel, and Broadway songs. Stewart became so identified with the songs of other composers that the fact that he had written or cowritten some of his biggest hits (“Maggie May,” “You Wear It Well,” “Tonight’s the Night [Gonna Be Alright],” “The Killing of Georgie [Parts I and II],” “You’re in My Heart [The Final Acclaim]”) is often overlooked. His series of major international hits over a period of forty years is a testament to the timelessness of his appeal and of the music he helped to popularize.

Principal Recordings

ALBUMS (solo): The Rod Stewart Album, 1969; Gasoline Alley, 1970; Every Picture Tells a Story, 1971; Never a Dull Moment, 1972; Smiler, 1974; Atlantic Crossing, 1975; A Night on the Town, 1976; Foot Loose and Fancy Free, 1977; Blondes Have More Fun, 1978; Foolish Behaviour, 1980; Tonight I’m Yours, 1981; Body Wishes, 1983; Camouflage, 1984; Every Beat of My Heart, 1986; Rod Stewart, 1986; Out of Order, 1988; Vagabond Heart, 1991; Unplugged…and Seated, 1993; Spanner in the Works, 1995; When We Were the New Boys, 1998; Human, 2001; It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook, Vol. 1, 2002; As Time Goes By: The Great American Songbook, Vol. 2, 2003; Stardust: The Great American Songbook, Vol. 3, 2004; The Day Will Come, 2005; Thanks for the Memory: The Great American Songbook, Vol. 4, 2005; Still the Same: Great Rock Classics of Our Time, 2006; You're in My Heart: Rod Stewart with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 2019; Swing Fever,.

ALBUMS (with the Faces): First Step, 1970; Long Player, 1971; A Nod Is as Good as a Wink…to a Blind Horse, 1971; Ooh La La, 1973.

ALBUMS (with the Jeff Beck Group): Truth, 1968; Beck-Ola, 1969.

Bibliography

Bradley, Lloyd. Rod Stewart: Every Picture Tells a Story. London Bridge, 1999.

Ewbank, Tim, and Stafford Hildred. Rod Stewart: The New Biography. Citadel Press, 2004.

Greene, Andy. "How Rod Stewart Thrilled Vegas, Reunited Faces, Found Happiness at 70." Rolling Stone, 29 Sept. 2015, www.rollingstone.com/music/features/how-rod-stewart-thrilled-vegas-reunited-faces-found-happiness-at-70-20150929. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.

Marcus, Greil. “Rod Stewart.” The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll. Edited by Jim Miller, Random House / Rolling Stone Press, 1980.

Nelson, Paul, and Lester Bangs. Rod Stewart. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981. Steele, Anne. "Rod Stewart Sells Song Catalog as Music-Rights Fundraising Surges." The Wall Street Journal, 15 Feb. 2024, www.wsj.com/business/media/rod-stewart-sells-song-catalog-as-music-rights-fundraising-surges-c50ceb4f. Accessed 13 Oct. 2024.

Twelker, Uli, and Roland Schmitt. The Small Faces and Other Stories. Sanctuary, 2002.