ROD STEWART : THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

'Ridiculously funny and astonishingly candid, Rod Stewart’s memoir is the rock autobiography of the decade’ Daily Mail `One of the most entertaining, revealing, captivating books of the year’ Independent Rod Stewart was born the working-class son of a Scottish plumber in North London. Despite some early close shaves with a number of diverse career paths, ranging from gravedigging to professional football, it was music that truly captured his heart – and he never looked back. Rod started out in the early 1960s, playing the clubs on London’s R&B scene, before his distinctively raspy voice caught the ear of the iconic front man Long John Baldry, who approached him while busking one night on a railway platform. Stints with pioneering acts like the Hoochie Coochie Men, Steampacket, and the Jeff Beck Group soon followed, paving the way into a raucous five years with the Faces, the rock star’s rock band, whose offstage antics with alcohol, wrecked hotel rooms and groupies have become the stuff of legend. And during all this, he found a spare moment to write `Maggie May’, among a few others, and launch a solo career that has seen him sell an estimated 200 million records, be inducted into the Hall of Fame twice, and play the world’s largest ever concert. Not bad, as he says, for a guy with a frog in his throat. And then, there is his not-so-private life: marriages, divorces and affairs with some of the world’s most beautiful women – Bond girls, movie stars and supermodels – and a brush with cancer which very nearly saw it all slip away. Rod’s is an incredible life, and here, thrillingly and for the first time, he tells the whole thing, leaving no knickers under the bed. A rollicking rock ’n’ roll adventure that is at times deeply moving, this is the remarkable journey of a guy with one hell of a voice – and one hell of a head of hair.

Review (The Bookbag) : There is only one Rod. One of the first things I noticed about this book was that his surname did not appear on the spine or the front cover of the dust jacket – only on the inside flaps. However, as someone whose career has kept him a household name for over four decades, it is probably superfluous anyway. The youngest of a large family, born in Archway Road, North London, at the end of the Second World War, Roderick David Stewart had a succession of shortlived jobs while nursing aspirations to become a professional footballer. Strange though it may seem, he disliked music at school. Not till he was given an acoustic guitar on his fifteenth birthday, and later heard the first Bob Dylan album, did the bug start to bite. After busking on the Aldermaston CND marches, something he went on less out of a desire to protest than to indulge in fumblings with the opposite sex, he realised that he had a talent for entertaining. As yet he did not see it as a lifelong career, and in the light of subsequent history, it is interesting to note his views that when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had their first major hits, everybody thought that pop music was just a fad which would soon disappear. Almost by accident he joined one band after another, coming close to hitting the big time as vocalist with the Jeff Beck Group. At the end of the sixties, two things happened almost simultaneously. He was offered a deal for a solo album, which proved a moderate success and led to several more, and he also ended up in another band. When Ronnie Wood, who had been Jeff Beck’s bassist, went to jam with the rather rudderless Small Faces, at a loose end since the departure of front man Steve Marriott, it was clear that they had 'a singer-shaped hole'. After going to see them at rehearsal, Rod was offered the chance to fill it, and despite reservations on the part of two of the others, he had the job. It was a strange twist of fate which led 'Maggie May', a song its creator came close to leaving on the cutting room floor, being included on his third solo album as an afterthought and as the B-side of a single. After an American radio presenter decided he liked the song better than the A-side, it went into the stratosphere on both sides of the Atlantic, taking the album and Rod’s career with it. This for me was where the book came alive. He is perfectly honest about his briefly dual career as a solo artist and simultaneously front man with the Faces, who always nursed the suspicion that he was keeping the best songs for himself and passing the second-best on for group albums. On a good night on stage, he admits, they were great – and on a bad night, they were terrible. But then Ronnie Wood was headhunted by the Rolling Stones, and the Faces were no more. Instead of being the end of Rod’s career, it was little more than the beginning. Looking back on over forty years near the top, his success has been extraordinary. Starting off as a folksinger with leanings in the direction of soul and rock’n’roll, he went in several different musical directions one after another, and never really fell from favour. He admits that the disco diversion of 'Da Ya Think I’m Sexy' lost him some credibility, but it had little if any impact on his fan base and subsequent albums, although 'a bit of a loss of focus' in the early eighties thanks to too much partying, booze and cocaine might have done far more damage to his track record than it did. Always just as keen to reinterpret the songs of others as write his own, many years later his decision to record standards from the Cole Porter and Irving Berlin era brought him a whole new audience. An uncanny ability to kickstart his career more than once was not always matched by the same good fortune in other areas. He is honest enough about the failures of various marriages and other relationships, and the fact that with his roving eye he probably deserved all he got. A medical check-up in 2000 revealed a cancerous growth which was dealt with in the nick of time, followed by several months of complete rest, the fear that his voice might not return, and gentle vocal exercises to coax the chords back into operation before he was given the all-clear. And last but not least, he certainly raised a few laughs from this reader at least with stories of various Rod Stewart lookalikes who nearly got him into trouble one way or another, not least the highly plausible impersonator who was permitted to drive a Ferrari out of a New York showroom before a final security check and a traffic violation put paid to any hopes of getting a free motor on false pretences. I was pleasantly surprised when reading this book to find him coming across as quite self-effacing in places. It is as if he has never quite been able to believe his luck that a lad from a humble London family managed to become one of showbiz’s most bankable personalities, and sustained a high profile year in year out. Anybody who has ever fallen under the spell of one of his records or more will relish this read about life at the top – and about staying there. It is well written, very informative, moving at times – and a good deal of fun. If this book appeals then you might also enjoy Ronnie by Ronnie Wood, a memoir from the Rolling Stones' guitarist who formerly worked with Stewart in the Jeff Beck Group and The Faces.

Review (Beatles-Freak's Reviews) : I found my copy of Rod: The Autobiography by Rod Stewart (or should I call him Sir Roderick David Stewart? Nah, I’m an American) on the discount rack at my local Barnes & Noble store for $6.98. The book was originally published in October 2012 and you can find a hardcover copy on Amazon for under $2. After quickly thumbing through the index and seeing that The Beatles appear 8 times in this book, I decided to give it a go. Also, according to the index, Lennon gets one mention, McCartney gets 5 mentions, Harrison gets 1, and Ringo zero. This would lead one to believe that since Rod was born in London in 1945, just two years after George Harrison and started his music career in the mid 1960’s, that he would talk of The Beatles early influence and his encounters with them along the way. But…one would be wrong to assume that. The Fab Four only get mentioned in passing in the ego-driven autobiography. Yeah, it’s his story, so that would make sense…but Rod takes it to a new extreme! Let’s just say that the nickname Rod “The Mod” Stewart, is not short for “THE MODEST”! This book should be renamed to Rod: The Brag Book. Despite his attempts at admitting to the wrongs he’s done throughout his life and career, in my eyes it came off more as a former frat boy’s locker room bragging about his drug fueled party days and the who’s who list of the women and Playboy models he’s bedded (he actually brags about cheating on one Playboy model with another Playboy model). As he gets older, he finds new and more awkward ways of making his readers cringe, like the Christmas dinner at his house in 2000 when all his baby mommas (seven kids by four different women) and ex-wives came over to cook! I guess this was the Stewart family version of Sister Wives…. Rod does try to dispel some of the rumors that have followed him throughout his career. The first two rumors I had never heard (but I’ve never been a huge Rod Stewart fan), but the last one was a huge one on my list of celebrity rumors that I had heard back in the late ’70s, early 80’s about him having his stomach pumped of A LOT of semen! Kudos to him for having the guts to bring this up, but I get the impression he enjoyed telling the story. Rod Stewart fans are going to love this book…Beatles Freaks not so much as it seems to be a book about his sexual conquests, his hair and his model train collection! And let’s not forget his first big hit song, Maggie May! He’s going to remind you every other chapter that wrote the song Maggie May and it’s about losing his virginity. (In my best Jan Brady voice…) Maggie May! Maggie May! Maggie May! And for that reason… I rate this book, 2 out of 4 Beetles!

Review (Ash Clifton) : One of the many things I learned from Rod Stewart’s memoir, Rod: The Autobiography, is that the technical process of recording a studio album is very strange. For instance, the lead singer usually records his vocal track in a soundproofed room, by himself, wearing headphones so that he can listen to the band’s instrumental track. It seems a very sterile and artificial process–not at all what one pictures when imagining a rock singer at work. And so I was impressed to learn that Stewart has always rejected this technique, insisting on recording all tracks directly with his band: When we were recording, I liked to be in the sound room with the band, walking around with a microphone in hand, so that I could look them in the eye, interact with them, perform with them, basically. I think it slightly startled the engineer, who was more used to having the singer isolated behind screens, or in an entirely separate vocal booth. I remember hearing how Frank Sinatra had once been parked by an engineer behind a screen in a recording studio and he had made them take it down. In order to sing, he needed to feel the sound of the orchestra hit him in the chest. I guess this was my own version of that. It’s interesting that Stewart draws a comparison between himself and Sinatra. As I learned from James Kaplan’s fine bio of Sinatra, the great crooner himself exerted tremendous effort when preparing for one his recordings. He was known to read the song lyrics aloud to himself, almost like prose. He felt he had to discover the emotional truth of the lyric before he could sing it, and if that truth was not forthcoming, he would nix the song. Similarly, Rod Stewart’s particular form of genius lies in his ability to find the vibe in a song, the tragedy or the thrill lurking somewhere in it. This is true both of his famous covers (“Train to Jordan”) and in his own work—especially his early masterpieces like “Maggie May” and “Every Picture Tells a Story.” Like all great musicians, Stewart is able to create songs that penetrate the heart. When he sings the hopelessly sad, conflicted lyrics of Maggie May, for instance, he forces us to think back to our own first loves, in all their exhilarating tragedy. In short, Stewart is a hell of a good singer, as his two-hundred million album sales can attest. How many other rock singers have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…twice? As Stewart himself puts it: “Not bad for a bloke with a frog in his throat.” Besides being a great singer, Stewart has always been a very good athlete. He was almost hired as a professional football player while in his teens, and he has continued to be an avid amateur player even now, well into his 60s. After reading his book, it occurred to me that athleticism forms a kind of theme running through his story. It spilled over into his all-out, balls-to-the-wall singing style, not to mention his legendary concert performances (which are equaled only by Mick Jagger’s for pure kinetic physicality). A strong aspect of athleticism also obtains in Stewart’s incredibly prolific sex life (for which he is almost as famous as for his singing). In his lighthearted, slightly apologetic tone, Stewart recounts his many, many love affairs with women whose relative physical beauty ranged the full gamut from gorgeous to really gorgeous. Early in the story, for example, he leaves his drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend for the world-famous sex symbol Britt Ekland. Then, later in the book, comes this passage: I started dating Bebe Buell, a former Playboy centerfold who had recently finished an affair with Todd Rundgren, the American rock musician. Things might have gone better with Bebe if I hadn’t brought her to London for a week and then, while we were there, grown rather distracted by Marcy Hanson. At this point, I was technically two-timing a Playboy model with another Playboy model. Such is the dizzying montage of fame and sex that Stewart relays in witty, slang-infused detail. The entire book, in fact, reads like a wonderfully funny bar story. Take this passage, for instance, where Stewart frankly talks about his second most famous asset: his hair. The bouffant stayed with me and then evolved into the spiked top during the Jeff Beck Group days. I developed this look in tandem with Ronnie Wood, who was also in that band and had the same kind of hair, although his is a bit thicker than mine. Ronnie and I used to do each other’s barnet in that period—in hotel rooms or at each other’s parent’s house. And we didn’t go in for some amateur, pudding-bowl setup, either. We had this method of pulling the hair down between thumb and forefinger and chopping at it with the scissors—very professional. And we’d stop all the time to check it in the mirror. We’d take ages doing it, ages, to get it right for each other. What a wonderful bond that is between two men. Most blokes would have been sabatoging each other’s hair, “Yeah, that looks all right, leave it.” Not us. In case you didn’t already know. “Barnet” is short for “Barnet Fair”, which is Cockney rhyming slang for “hair”. And it’s exactly this kind of detail—frank, funny, and decidedly British—that makes Stewart’s book so much fun. It also goes a long way toward making the reader forgive some of his rather atrocious personal behavior. I previously described his tone as “apologetic,” and it is, but only regarding episodes of outright infidelity and dishonesty. As to the matter of his epic promiscuity itself—as well as his Herculean appetite for booze and cocaine—he remains cheerfully unrepentant. And, incidentally, I never thought in this period that the “being a rock star” aspect of being a rock star was beside the point, or even something I had to apologize for. On the contrary, it seemed to me (a) where an awful lot of the fun was, and (b) exactly what one had signed up for in the first place. That was the deal, surely. If I hadn’t considered the drinking/shagging/carrying-on to be at least a part of my terms of employment—and if I hadn’t done my best to hold my end up as nobly as possible in those areas—I would have felt I was letting down the union. I must admit he has a point. Sports superstars and rock legends have a lot in common. They give ordinary people a supreme, almost mythological symbol of the life force at its purest. If there was something superhuman about Michael Jordan in his prime, there was something similarly larger-than-life about Rod Stewart in the 1970s. He poured everything he had into every song, not to mention every boozer and “shag.” While not exactly transcendent, Stewart is always “living in the moment,” as the Buddhists would say, and he is usually enjoying the hell out of it. Even so, the book feels a little bit too good to be true, at least in the emotional sense. One wonders how much grief and heartbreak Stewart has left out of his book. The only emotional crisis he discusses at any length is his famous divorce from Rachel Hunter (another world-famous beauty). Hunter was the first of Stewart’s long list of lovers to dump him outright, and their subsequent divorce ravaged him physically and emotionally: We said goodbye, quietly and painfully, and Rachel flew off to New Zealand with the kids too see her family. It was only when I was back in Los Angeles, on my own in the house we had shared, and realizing that our relationship was genuinely over, that the misery really came over me. It was like some kind of nineteenth-century romantic fever. For four months, I was beside myself. I lost twelve pounds in weight. I felt cold all the time. I took to lying on the sofa in the day, with a blanket over me and holding a hot water bottle against my chest. I knew then why they call it heartbroken; you can feel it in your heart. Of course, it’s difficult to conjure much sympathy for a (then) forty-five-year-old millionaire whose much younger wife has left him, but Stewart is so candid and genuine in his telling that I actually felt sorry for him. This is this kind of emotional magic trick that Stewart has played all his life. He makes you care for him, even though he probably doesn’t deserve it. Or does he? For all his hedonism and serial adultery, there is one aspect of his life to which Stewart has always remained faithful: his music. During an incredible burst of creativity in the early 1970s, Stewart recorded some of the best songs of the decade. He was also the front man for The Faces, a role that probably would have secured him a place in rock history even if not for his amazing solo work. Stewart2 By his own admission, there has only been one of his albums that could reasonably be called a sell-out: 1978’s Blondes Have More Fun. That was the one with “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” the disco number even Stewart describes as an artistic mistake. But hey, it was the 1970s. Everybody sold out in the 70s, even The Rolling Stones. (And, although he does not call attention to it in his book, he donated all of the royalties from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” to UNICEF.) Like The Stones, Stewart quickly redeemed himself by crafting some great songs in later years, such as “Forever Young” and “Downtown Train.” Stewart also seems to have settled down at last, finding marital happiness with his current wife, Penny Lancaster. In recent years, he has recaptured some critical and commercial success with his “Great American Songbook” series of records. These latest records are an unabashed foray into pure nostalgia, but they are still beautifully crafted and inventive interpretation of great songs. Stewart, of course, has never had a problem with covering other artists. These days, it’s more likely that younger artists are covering him.

Title : The Autobiography

Author : Rod Stewart

Language : English

Publisher : Century

Publication Date : February 14, 2013

Print Length : 384 pages