Rod Stewart:
It’s Not What You Think . . .

Bryan Adams: I remember when I first started to become a singer, when I thought, “This is good. I’ve got a voice.” What was the moment for you, that moment you realized, “Oh, I can sing”?
Rod Stewart: When I was a youngster, six or seven, we had huge family parties. My parents, my brothers, they all had voices, they could all sing. So I was surrounded by would-be singers. But in my beatnik days, down in Brighton Beach when I was about sixteen or seventeen, people would ask me to take my guitar out and play Woody Guthrie’s this and that. And I thought: “I must have something here.” 

BA: I love the story about you busking on a train platform. Is it true that you were discovered there?
RS: Yeah. You know Long John Baldry? Him and Cyril Davis were bringing the blues to Great Britain and trying to get Muddy Waters to come over. I’d just gone to see his band, and I was on the way home, on platform seven, but Baldry was on platform six or whatever. I was playing a harmonica and singing by myself, doing an old Muddy Waters song, and he came over and said: [briefly puts on a posh accent] “Young, man, would you like to join the band as a backup singer?” So I did, and that’s what started it all. Thirty-five pounds a week, which was a fortune in those days. The average wage was twenty pounds a week.

BA: Long John Baldry played near me in Vancouver years ago, but in a restaurant. 
RS: I’ve still got his guitar. His ashes are inside, so if I rattle it round I can hear him. He’s still with me. 

BA: That’s sweet. “Tears of Hercules” is such a good song. 
RS: It was written by Mark Jordan. He’s written a couple of songs for me. 

BA: Were you working with Kevin Savigar on that record? That must have made it a little bit easier? 
RS: Yeah, it was fun. You know Jools Holland? I did the swing album with him that just came out. It’s all up-tempo stuff with his band, which is probably one of the best I’ve ever heard. The Great American Songbook [a series of five albums released between 2002 and 2010] was all ballads. They sold thirty-seven million. So I was very happy with that. 

BA: That would explain the Botticelli over your shoulder.
RS: I wish it was. No, it’s a Victorian painting. 

BA: Did you do the new swing album with Jools Holland in London? 
RS: It was in his studio. He’s also a model railroader like me, and his whole studio is like a railway station. That’s how we first met, because we’re both model railroaders. 

BA: How’s the voice holding out, by the way? 
RS: Fucking amazing, mate. Better than yours! [laughs loudly] I look after it.

BA: Gallons of Mateus Rosé? 
RS: No, I drink a little rum and coke before I go on now. 

BA: But when we did “All for Love” with Sting, you said white wine.
RS: Some people think you shouldn’t drink when you sing, but I do. It doesn’t make any difference. But I do have a proper way of doing it. I don’t drink till I’m totally warmed up, which takes me about an hour. And then I have a little rum and coke and then I have hot lemon water. 

BA: Whatever you’re doing, don’t change it. Bob [Ezrin, a Canadian musician and record producer] asked me to ask you a question: Is it true blondes have more fun? 
RS: I’ve always fancied blondes, since I saw a picture of Marilyn Monroe in her swimming costume when I was little kid, and I immediately masturbated. I’m kidding. I was only seven. 

BA: And that concludes the interview . . . Right, I wanted to say one of the things I love when I listened to you is your story songs, like “Maggie May”. But my favourite one is from A Night on the Town, it’s “The Killing of Georgie”. 
RS: It’s funny you should say that. We’re putting that in the set tomorrow night in Vegas.

BA: I was just going to ask you if you still play that song. 
RS: Very rarely, but we wanted to change it up a little bit, so we’re gonna put that one in.

BA: It was ahead of its time even when it came out.
RS: It was. And the BBC wouldn’t play it. The most gratifying thing is when I bump into people now, and guys come up and tell me how helpful that song was when it came out, and they were much younger than me, and it helped them through some very bleak times when they didn’t know what to do with their sexuality. So it sort of opened the doors for them. And that is the most gratifying thing about writing songs: when people come up and say: “Oh my god, that got me through a bad period of my life,” or “I had a baby to ‘Tonight’s The Night’,” or something like that. 

BA: It’s a beautiful song. You should be really proud of that lyric. If I was you, I’d have it in every night. In terms of its content, like I said, back then it was ahead of its time, but even now. Beautiful. 
RS: Thank you.

BA: Where were you when you wrote that song? 
RS: [pauses and exhales, distracted by the soccer match] Jesus Christ! 

BA: With Jesus Christ? 
RS: Yeah, he comes and sees me now and then. We have a kick-about on a football pitch here in Beverly Hills. That was a foul, wasn’t it? Sorry, Bryan, where were we? 

BA: My question was where were you when you wrote “The Killing of Georgie”?
RS: I write lyrics all over the place. I could have been on a flight, or I could have been in the toilet, or just getting out of bed. I don’t know about you, but lyrics don’t come to me that easy. I’m not a natural lyricist. I was reading something about that ginger bollocks Ed Sheeran writing four songs in an hour. Well good luck to him. I can’t do that.

BA: Not many can. I mean, you can write four songs, but are they good? 
RS: Yeah, exactly. That’s a difficult thing when you’ve got a lot of songs to finish: zeroing in on the ones you really believe in, the ones you think other people are gonna like.

BA: I wanted to say sorry about your mate Jeff [Beck, whose band Stewart was the singer with in the late sixties, who died in January]. That must have been really hard.
RS: Yeah, it was. We’ve got his concert in a couple of weeks at the Royal Albert Hall with Clapton. It’s gonna be great, two sold-out two nights. The funeral was exceptional. Everybody got up and spoke, and Jimmy [Page] and Eric spoke very highly of him.

BA: Beautiful. Wow. Can you give me a funny story or a story from back in the day that nobody would know about you and Jeff?
RS: Jeff was a great guy, but he wasn’t a great bandleader. I mean, you have to look after your band. I remember when me and Ronnie (...)

→ Read the entire interview in rampstyle #31.