By Robert Chambers
I.
So, if you have a raspy, high-pitched baritone voice and decide to try your luck as a rock singer, what might the payoffs be? If you are Roddy Stewart, son of a north London plumber, they are considerable: Sales of 200 million records in 70 countries; concerts across the world before audiences numbering as many as 3.5 million fans (New Year’s Eve 1994, Copacabana Beach, Rio); a two-year contract for 52 concerts at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas (all sold out in a 4,100-seat venue); palatial homes in London, Scotland, Palm Beach, Beverly Hills, Spain, and all around the Mediterranean; ownership of every conceivable variety of exotic automobile (his consistent favorites have long been Lamborghinis, but there has always been room in his many garages for the occasional Ferrari, Porsche, Jaguar, Mercedes, or Rolls Royce); and, perhaps best of all, virtually non-stop sex for years with countless of the world’s most beautiful women (he’s married four of them and fathered seven children, all gorgeous).
“Excess” is the word for Rod Stewart, who has since his late teen years wanted almost everything . . . and gotten most of it. Now approaching 70, Stewart is still in remarkable physical shape and strong voice (as this writer witnessed at Caesar’s only three months ago). For decades he has shown himself to be one of the world’s greatest entertainers, and the awards have continually flowed in – twice elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (with his early band the Faces and on his own); many platinum recordings; an invitation to sing for the Queen; appointment as Commander of the British Empire.
And, more recently, Rod: The Autobiography, making its way up best-seller lists in several countries.
There have been downsides to Stewart’s career, too, but not many. A little-known bout with thyroid cancer in his 50s, for example, threatened his singular singing voice. But, typically, its timeline from surprise diagnosis through surgery to clean bill-of-health was only five days – no chemo, no radiation, no lasting damage.
And, when his packed arenas around the world began to show signs of emptying out a decade ago, Rod, against the advice of his inner circle, embarked on a series of American Songbook albums of old standards that ultimately sold 22 million copies worldwide and entirely jump-started his flagging career.
II.
For a rocker once known for slovenly dress, deplorable hygiene, and regularly trashing hotel rooms – he and the Faces were long banned from Holiday Inns everywhere – “our hero,” as he consistently refers to himself in this book, eventually matured into a fashion-plate adult of admirable self-discipline.
His famously tousled hair, for instance, was an invention of sheerest need and determination – he wanted a trademark and decided that hours of work on his hair each week could be well worth the time and effort required.
His celebrated do – seen now spiking above his eyes in countless posters all over Vegas – became Rod’s signature.
That, and the raspy voice that belongs to him alone. (When this reviewer asked a music professor and saloon singer friend his opinion of the quality of Stewart’s singing voice, he responded that “Its quality is irrelevant. His voice is utterly distinctive, and that’s why everybody loves to hear him sing.”)
Caring for his unique voice is another sign of Rod’s remarkable self-discipline. To protect it, he long ago gave up cocaine, cigarettes, and steroids as means of preserving his singular gift. And, as hinted above, he has always remained in splendid physical condition, readily living up to his “Rod the Bod” pseudonym for a half-century.
Stewart’s life-long desire to stay in shape has always been rooted in his obsession with football, a devotion nurtured by his soccer-fanatic Scottish-born father Robert. Early on, Rod’s dad taught his soon-to-be famous son that there were three essential ingredients to a grown man’s contentment: a job, a sport, and a hobby. This simple recipe has guided and focused Rod all his adult life.
His job, of course, is being lead singer in a rock band – “quite simply the best job in the world,” as he has often noted. His sport, which he still practices every week, even into his late 60s, is football. And his hobby, also pursued with singular drive each week, is model railroading, a hobby practiced religiously by other singers as well, including Frank Sinatra, Jr., and Roger Daltrey.
Stewart’s “job” is the primary topic of his autobiography, but the other two sides of the triangle also get their due. Throughout the book, Rod is seen flying all across the globe at tremendous expense to be present at football games, especially those of Glasgow’s beloved Celtics, a squad adopted by the singer years ago, whose green and white jersey he wears at virtually every concert and who inspired his signature kicking of autographed soccer balls into the crowd in each venue.
So deep is his devotion to football and its top-level players that Stewart has often said that if his athletic skills were good enough, he might have preferred the professional life of a soccer star to that of a rock icon. As a means of seducing football greats into his world, he actually built a world-class soccer pitch on the grounds of one of his London mansions.
To this reader, even more fascinating than Rod’s football mania is his daily focus on model railroading. It’s no surprise to learn that this, too, is pursued at a fanatical maxi-level. We are not talking here about the trains that ran on circular tracks around our childhood Christmas trees. No, Rod specializes in erecting the elaborate sites for his hobby far more than on the trains themselves. The buildings he constructs are sizable, amazingly realistic masterpieces, some several feet tall, that must be seen to be believed.
Such constructions require massive space, so Stewart purchases his fabulous homes in no small part to house them effectively. The entire top floor of his current Beverly Hills mansion – he left England for Los Angeles in 1975 as a “tax exile” weary of paying his British rate of 81%, as did Joe Cocker and Eric Clapton at about the same time – is a gigantic and beautiful model train facility upon which the rock star labors in some fashion every day, whether at home or on tour.
What is one to make of all this – of the handsome singer who is ridiculously talented and obscenely rich, who seemingly has slept with half the world’s beautiful women, who plays football every week (he started a senior club in LA years ago), who constructs model railroad sites non-stop, and who remains an absolutely electrifying performer? Does anyone deserve to live at such a stratospheric level every day?
As Clint Eastwood points out in the most memorable line from his great film Unforgiven (when he’s about to blow away the malevolent Little Bill, played brilliantly by Gene Hackman), “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
Rod Stewart would be the first to agree with this sentiment. As “our hero” puts it in the closing of his book:
“Rock ‘n’ Roll is full of singers who got lucky and started putting it down to hard work. And of course, there is hard work involved, but what you are working with, and trying to make the most of, is your amazing piece of luck in the first place, the quirk of fortune which means that, when you open your mouth, this particular sound comes out, rather than any other particular sound, and that this particular sound sells more than 200 million records and brings you fame all over the world and secures you a life more charmed than anyone has a right to dream of.
“In those circumstances, to be the recipient of another quirk of fortune which meant that, when you got thyroid cancer, you were rid of it within a matter of days and free to carry on . . . well, lucky, lucky man. Lucky as fuck.”
III.
On top of it all, Rod can write far better than merely decent prose. His Autobiography is a treat to wallow in from beginning to end, a treat made even richer by hosts of fabulous photographs of Stewart’s living his wonderful life – all the cars, the beautiful women, the model railroads, the football, and, finally, his gorgeous family, probably his greatest achievement of all.
Some guys have all the luck.
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Comments welcome.
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Previously in The Chambers Report:
* Steve Jobs vs. Jack Kennedy
* The Last Boy Of Summer
* Melville, Elvis And Baseball
* A Tale Of Three Cities
* How Obama And Bush Undermined America
* Ayes For Atheism
* Paterno.
Posted on January 21, 2013