Singer Rod Stewart, who helped British rock conquer the world with a string of megahits, turns 80 on Friday — with no plans to decelerate.
Stewart, together with his distinctive spiky blond hair and raspy voice, dominated pop charts in the course of the Seventies and Eighties with hits like “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and “Young Turks”, notching up greater than 250 million report gross sales worldwide.
He additionally made headlines for a prolific love life that included relationships with a string of fashions and actresses together with Britt Ekland.
Despite his landmark birthday, Stewart says he has no plans to retire.
“I love what I do, and I do what I love. I’m fit, have a full head of hair and can run 100 meters in 18 seconds at the jolly old age of 79,” he wrote final yr.
The star will play the legends slot on the famed Glastonbury music competition this summer time.
Although his forthcoming European and North American tour dates can be his final large-scale venture, he has mentioned he plans to focus on extra intimate venues sooner or later.
He will headline a brand new residency in Las Vegas from March to June.
A tour can also be slated for 2026 for “Swing Fever,” the album he launched final yr with pianist and ex-Squeeze band member Jools Holland.
As he has approached his ninth decade, Stewart has additionally made headlines for quirkier causes similar to his ardour for mannequin railways and his battle with potholes which have prevented him from driving his Ferrari close to his dwelling in japanese England.
The singer, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2016, has been married thrice and has fathered eight youngsters. His third spouse is mannequin and tv persona Penny Lancaster.
Stewart’s story started in north London on 10 January 1945, when Roderick Stewart was born right into a middle-class household.
After a “fantastically happy childhood”, he developed a love of music when his father purchased him a guitar in 1959, and he fashioned a skiffle band with faculty associates a yr later.
He joined the band Dimensions in 1963 as a harmonica participant, exploring his love of people, blues and soul music whereas studying from different artists similar to Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger in London’s blossoming rhythm and blues scene.
Stewart’s profession took off in 1967 when he joined the famend guitarist Jeff Beck’s eponymous new band, which additionally included future Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, permitting him to develop his uncooked and soulful vocal type and stagecraft whereas exposing him to a U.S. viewers.
He and Wood took up the provide to affix mod pioneers Small Faces following the departure of their singer Steve Marriott in 1969 — the band quickly altering its title to The Faces — shortly earlier than Stewart launched his debut solo album.
It was his 1971 third solo launch, “Every Picture Tells a Story”, that confirmed him as one of many world’s most profitable artists, reaching primary in Britain, Australia and the United States, the place it went platinum.
The album helped outline Stewart’s rock/people sound, that includes heartfelt lyrics and heavy use of bizarre devices such because the mandolin, significantly outstanding on the album’s standout hit “Maggie May”.
“I just love stories with a beginning, middle and end,” he as soon as mentioned.
Focusing on his solo profession after 1975, Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” launched in 1978 was to not everybody’s style.
“Once the most compassionate presence in music, he has become a bilious self-parody -– and sells more records than ever,” Rolling Stone journal mentioned in 1980.
Never one to be cowed by the critics, Stewart defended this part, telling an interviewer that audiences “absolutely love it, so I had the last laugh”.
Richard Houghton, creator of the ebook “Tell Everyone — A People’s History of the Faces” mentioned that Stewart had “possibly the most distinctive voice in rock music”.
The singer had efficiently mixed writing traditional songs of his personal similar to “Maggie May” or “You Wear It Well” with taking different folks’s songs — from Bob Dylan to Tom Waits — and making them his personal .
More lately, there had been 4 albums of the “classic songs of the 1930s from his Great American Songbook catalogue”.
Houghton mentioned audiences might count on to see a lot extra of Stewart.
“He’s like all entertainer. He loves the highlight. He’s not going to take a seat at dwelling watching the tv when someplace all over the world there is a crowd wanting to listen to him sing ‘Mandolin Wind’ or ‘First Cut Is The Deepest’ yet one more time.
“Rod will keep singing until the day he drops,” he added.
© 2025 AFP