By Barry Egan
Sunday Jun 14 2009

In a 2008 Esquire interview, Steven Van Zandt remembered how as a kid running into band rehearsal one day in 1968 he said, "You're not gonna believe this, but Rod Stewart is white! They said, Get outta here. They didn't believe me. There was just not that many places you could see pictures of people. There wasn't MTV and we never heard any white person sing like that. We knew he was black."

Mick Jagger appeared to share that opinion. In 1968, the Rolling Stone roue informed his manager Andrew Loog Oldham that he wanted to produce this singer well known on the London R&B circuit called Rod.

Working In A Coal Mine and Come Home Baby came out of those sessions with Jagger in charge behind the console. As well as Rod on main vocals, you also had co-vocalist PP Arnold along with an exalted backing group consisting of Ronnie Wood, Keith Emerson and Keith Richards. The tracks never officially saw the light of day, but they are alleged to have been some of the best songs Rod ever recorded.

Back in the day, they used to say that Rod Stewart was rock's best interpretive singer -- a once-raw artist with a touch of Sam Cooke who created a rootsy combination of folk, rock, blues and country. He is still a vocalist of enthralling subtlety and expression who can dig unexpected emotions from basic melodies. We tend to overlook this because of his exploits as a blonde-acquiring Don Juan. So listen to, for instance, Rod's 1989 interpretation of Tom Waits's classic Downtown Train, which brought him his first Grammy nomination, or You Wear It Well, Maggie May, or his unforgettable version of Cat Stevens' The First Cut Is the Deepest. I defy anyone to listen to these songs without feeling something deep down in your stomach.

The soulful sexagenarian with the gravity-defying hair, so the story goes, had to be rushed to hospital in the late Seventies to have his stomach pumped after a particularly fruity soiree with a bunch of S&M sailors in LA. (The story has been ripped off from Kenneth Anger's book Hollywood Babylon, in which the early movie star Clara Bow is infamously alleged to have pleasured the entire USC football squad, the 'Thundering Herd', including the future film icon John Wayne).

"That story spread all around the f**king world!" Rod told Rolling Stone magazine in 1991. "It was so laughable, it never really hurt me. What could it have been? A fleet of f**king sailors on the piss?"

The residents of the Holiday Inn in Florida in the late Sixties perhaps thought Rod and Ronnie Wood and the rest of The Faces group were just that when they made their acquaintance. "There was a kids' train at this Holiday Inn that went "round the swimming pool," remembered Rod last year, "and we drove it off the tracks and nearly got it into the pool. The next night we had to go on to Tampa, and we knew we wouldn't be able to check into the Holiday Inn as the Faces, so we said, 'Let's be Fleetwood Mac, they'll never know.' And it worked very nicely -- except that Fleetwood Mac got banned from the Holiday Inn, too!"

Rod is certainly not devoid of a sense of humour. He refers to Elton John as Sharon -- a reference to Elton's bad-wig days. Elton in return can't resist remarking on Rod's Concorde-like hooter -- he wears it well.

"I didn't come up with Sharon, actually," he claimed. "The guy who discovered me and helped Elton on his way -- Long John Baldry -- it was him who decided Elton was gay and he came up with 'Sharon'. So it was Phyllis and Sharon -- Elton became 'Sharon' and I became 'Phyllis'." Rod has been called worse. At school, he was called 'hunchback' and 'long nose'. In 1961, Rod, was at a transport cafe on the A127 with friends. Some truckers picked on Rod's long hair, shouting 'Oi! Jesus!' To their amusement, recalled folk singer Val Berry, "Rod dropped to his knees, waved his hands in the air and screamed 'Hallelujah!'"

"I remembered Rod from the Hoochie Coochie Men where he wore a blazer and striped trousers, which contrasted with the R&B crowd, most of whom dressed like slobs," recalled drummer Micky Waller.

He was certainly a character, as is generally gleaned from the story of how his career in the music business began.

"I had been to see The Yardbirds or The Stones, an' I was goin' back to Waterloo... John (Long John Baldry) was standing on the other platform," Rod recollected recently. "I was yodelin' and singin', playin' harmonica" with a mate of mine, an' John came over the bridge and said, 'I'm forming a new band. Would you like to join in?'" [ Hootchie Cootchie Men,] I said yes: I was paid £35 a week, which in those days was like gettin' 200 quid a week..."

Having sold in excess of 200 million records now, Rod has doubtless long since exceeded that weekly wage. He still retains his working-class qualities. A few years ago, he rounded on comedian Russell Brand for making a joke about sleeping with Rod's daughter, Kimberly Stewart.

"He might be a bit of a player," Stewart fumed, "but he mustn't boast like that. I never did."

You also had to admire Rod's candour and vulnerability when he broke up with wife Rachel Hunter.

The break-up, he recalled, knocked him sideways. "Oh, it did. And it came at the worst possible time. I was just about to start the tour, and then this huge bombshell dropped. I don't know how I carried on. It's amazing what human resilience can do. I stopped drinking -- before, I would always have a drink before I went onstage, but I just said, 'I've really got to stay grounded and in control of myself here, if you start drinking, you're going to get all teary.'"

Born in North London in 1945, a war baby and Super Scot, Roderick David Stewart -- like his friend, fellow Caledonian kilt-wearer Alex Ferguson -- has never been better. His love life and his career are on a high. The only pity is his beloved Scotland won't qualify for the World Cup in South Africa. Rod, whose home in Essex has its own full-sized soccer pitch, has supported Celtic since 1971, when he was invited to have dinner with Kenny Dalglish, who had just signed for the club.

"I've met the queen and a load of film stars and that hasn't fazed me at all," Rod said recently. "But when they had a gathering of the Lisbon Lions" -- the nickname given to the Celtic team that won the European Cup at the Estadio Nacional in Lisbon, Portugal on May 25, 1967, defeating Inter Milan 2--1 -- "and they were all there that moved me. We went to a game with them on the Parkhead pitch and I was absolutely speechless. To sit in the dressing room with them was a fantastic experience."

For the record, all Rod's family were English except Bob Stewart Snr his Scottish father.

There are some drawbacks to being possibly Celtic's best-known fan: a few years ago, he flew on his private jet "all the way to f***ing Portugal to see my team get beat", by Benfica in the Champions League.

"Everything was absolutely marvellous until the game started. Then, as we say, they all went pear-shaped. And I'm Celtic's most famous supporter, so when the other team scored their first goal, the whole stadium looked at me like I'm responsible. It was horrible."

But not as horrible as Paris Hilton's cover of Do Ya Think I'm Sexy , of course. Or indeed his former job as an apprentice gravedigger at Highgate Cemetery. There is an apocryphal story that this particular job involved an initiation ceremony where Rod was temporarily shut in an occupied coffin. It is said that the experience cured him forever of the fear of death.

Rod Stewart plays at Thomond Park, Limerick, on Saturday July 4 and at the RDS Arena, Dublin, on Sunday July 5. Tickets are on sale from all usual outlets nationwide.

- Barry Egan

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