The big interview: Rod Stewart

Stewart’s outing as a model railway enthusiast sits at odds with his public image. For the last four decades, he has rarely been seen without a leggy blonde on his arm. Having moved out to Los Angeles, he’s become a walking advert for the Californian lifestyle and, while he’s committed various fashion faux pas in his time, he has never knowingly worn an anorak.

Yet when it comes to miniature tracks, it seems Stewart just can’t get enough. Upstairs in his Beverly Hills mansion there’s a miniature version of New York’s Grand Central Station, including at the last count 100ft of track, period locomotives and lines of tiny passengers impeccably dressed in 1940s fashion; at his home in Essex he has a layout of England’s old East Coast line and if ever looks preoccupied while on tour, more than likely he’s distracted by the trunk he calls his travelling workshop.

“It’s a hobby perhaps bordering on an obsession, but I love it,” he says, his husky voice as animated talking about railways as it is when delivering another rendition of Maggie May. “I was born in Highgate and grew up in a house opposite a shunting yard, that’s where it all began. I consider my model railway a masterpiece and you know there a lot of us out there. Jools Holland, he’s another one, my partner in crime I guess, and wherever I go I have to make sure I pack the next lot of buildings I’m working on. I brought a load back to the UK the last time I was there, it’s my travelling workshop.”

When Stewart returned to the States in March, he took with him more than a few newly-completed railway buildings. While here, his wife Penny Lancaster gave birth to their second son Aiden, brother to five-year-old Alastair, who Stewart says has just grown out of Thomas the Tank Engine, but isn’t yet old enough to work the computerised Grand Central Station.

At 66 and with six other children, he has more experience than most at raising children, but when we speak Aiden is suffering from colic and Stewart admits he’s not a natural with babies.

“I’ve just put Aiden down and he’s great, really great, but if I’m honest I enjoy fatherhood a little bit later down the line. I’m better with them when they are a little older and not screaming all the time, but Penny is very kind to me. I get up in the morning having had a perfect night’s sleep, she’s had none at all, but is sat there breastfeeding with a big smile on her face.”

Stewart might not yet make it onto any Father of the Year list, but he has the easy contentment of a man who not only has nothing to prove, but when it comes to his career has earned the freedom to do pretty much what he likes.

From his early days in the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces, through the 1980s Spandex period to his more recent reimaginings of American songbook classics, Stewart has not only been one of music’s few constants, but an artist unafraid to make what on the surface seem like unusual career choices.

The seeds of his phenomenally successful solo career were sown in the Kool Kats skiffle group he formed as a teenager with school friends and, when he appears at Elland Road in June it will be exactly 40 years since the release of Every Picture Tells a Story, the album which set the standard for everything which followed.

“Forty years and the rest of it. Some may fall out of love with the business or it falls out of love with them, but I’ve never fallen out of love with music. I hate the word reinvention, I’ve just always done what feels right at the time.

“Analyse it, I get paid to stand on stage, sing the songs I love and perform. No wonder I’m happy.”

There was a point a few decades back when Stewart was in danger of being subsumed by Kenny Everett’s leopard print caricature, but his back catalogue of 30 or so albums, not including compilations, has more breadth than the infuriatingly catchy Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? would ever suggest. Among the collection is a substantial blues output, a wealth of rock classics, and the American Songbook period alone resulted in five albums. The project was undoubtedly a labour of love for Stewart, a reminder of his early days listening to his parents’ Al Jolson records before rock ‘n’ roll made its presence felt in the Stewart household.

However, beyond his own long-held desire to record classics like It Had to Be You and My Funny Valentine, he’d also come to realise that, much like himself, there are some songs which transcend generations.

“There are songs which were around when I was growing up, which seem to have passed into everyone’s consciousness. Penny wasn’t born when most of them were first recorded, even I wasn’t born when some of them were recorded, but somehow we can all sing along with them and I guess that’s what makes a real classic.”

After duetting with the likes of Elton John on Makin’ Whoopee and Queen Latifah on As Time Goes By, Stewart called time on the American Songbook project and, in between recording two blues albums with his old bandmate Jeff Beck, he is now preparing for the UK tour.

“I can’t wait. We have a 13-piece band on stage and it’s a chance to get up there and belt out a few numbers.”

Appearing at Elland Road will also be a chance to marry his love of music with his passion for football. The story goes that he was on the brink of becoming a professional footballer before his head was turned by music. It’s not, says Stewart, a lifelong Celtic fan, quite the full picture.

“That story always gets overblown. I went down to Brentford for trials at exactly the same time I realised that music was what I wanted to do in life, so it was never really on the cards. I did the football to keep my dad happy. He played football, my uncle played football, it was part of growing up, but my heart wasn’t ever in it.”

While his father may have been disappointed never to have seen his son pull on the green and white hoops, Stewart says his family was unfailingly supportive in those early days when he worked in his brother’s print shop in between gigs.

“The cliché of ‘why don’t you get a proper job’ occasionally reared its head, but that’s parents for you. They always supported me and it was my dad who brought me my first guitar. I was 13 or 14 at the time and actually wanted a model railway station, but he passed the guitar to me and said, ‘Son, I think there might be some money in this’. When I was 15 my two older brothers bought me a better guitar and it just went on from there. It’s having family like that which makes success really worth it when it eventually comes.”

With his eldest children now making their own way – Ruby his daughter from his relationship with model Kelly Emberg has followed in his musical footsteps while Renée his daughter from his marriage to Rachel Hunter is a dancer – Stewart says he hopes he is good parent, albeit an unconventional one.

When he was starting out he lived for a while in a beatnik houseboat in Shoreham-on Sea, played the harmonica in dingy clubs in Paris and Barcelona and, while he is now comparatively settled, the yearning for a nomadic lifestyle has never really left him.

“I was never a regular nine to five kind of man, and while I would have stayed with the Faces if the wheels hadn’t fallen off the whole thing, I like being able to do my own thing.”

For tax reasons he can only spend 90 days a year in the UK, but he keeps up to date with what’s happening here by tuning into the radio.

“I know people find it surprising, but when I’m at home I tend not to listen to music. I prefer Talk Sport.”

When we speak, controversy over violence at Old Firm games has been brewing and you suspect Stewart has come close to picking up the phone to call the station. “It’s been blown out of all proportion. I’ve been going to Old Firm games for 30 years and I don’t think football is the catalyst for trouble. Alcohol may be, but not football. It’s a complete misconception.

“When I’m back I’ll always try to catch a match, and I do miss Britain. I miss the sarcasm and the cynicism, but I couldn’t do without the Californian sunshine where the kids can paddle in the pool. I guess I’m lucky, I have the best of both worlds.”

To book tickets for Rod Stewart at Elland Road on June 3, call 0844 873 7354 or online at www.seetickets.com. For all corporate hospitality packages, including seats within the first five rows of the stage, call 0871 344 1919 or email [email protected]