Rod Stewart still doing it his way
Rod Stewart has a few regrets but really, he wouldn't change a thing in his life, the rocker tells Michael Hann
We are talking about soul music. Rod Stewart is telling me what a disaster his 2009 covers album Soulbook was. "It was a cock-up," he says, his raspy voice made raspier still by a developing cold, "simply because you can't beat the originals. You'll never beat the originals because they're still on the airwaves."
He didn't hear Cliff Richard's soul album from 2011, then? Stewart looks a little astonished. "He didn't do a soul album." He did. Revue-style live show, too, with Percy Sledge, Freda Payne and James Ingram on the stage with him. Stewart looks even more astonished. "Really?" Yup. He looked a bit out of his depth, though. "Oh, bless him."
At 68, hair still spiky and sandy, skin the colour of antique furniture, Stewart remains a musician, then. If he is better known for countless things that have nothing to do with music - a list of statuesque, blonde partners (including three wives) longer than that of Cyprus' creditors; a selection of myths and legends ranging from him having been an apprentice professional footballer to his having invented a way of taking cocaine anally - then it should be remembered that no one would know any of those stories if the music hadn't captured the public imagination in the first place.
The couple of albums he made with the Jeff Beck Group in the late 1960s laid down the template that was then developed and coloured by Led Zeppelin. The solo albums he made for Mercury in the early '70s were perfect fusions of his musical loves - soul, folk, rock - and the second side of his 1971 album Every Picture Tells a Story is as perfect a 20 minutes as rock has produced. The Faces, the group that ran concurrently with those albums - and with whom he would be delighted to reunite next year after everyone's schedules are clear, developed a reputation, through the booze fumes, as the surest guarantee of a good time that live music had to offer.
Songwriting's never been a natural art for me; it's always been a bit of a struggle. I just thought it had got up and left me
The problem for many listeners lies in the 40 or so years since. Which is a long time, even if they have been punctuated with the occasional gem. Never mind that Every Picture and its attendant single, Maggie May, both topped the US and UK charts simultaneously - Stewart never seemed afraid to lower his standards in search of hits.