He may be 60 but Rod Stewart is revelling in his new-found rock respectability.
After 14 nominations he was finally rewarded with a Grammy for his Great American Songbook album.
And he admits he is so proud of the award, he plans to keep it next to him – always.
Talking to the Record from Australia where he is touring, Rod said: ‘I intend to take it with me everywhere I travel.’
Stardust…The Great American Songbook Volume III was his first American No.1 in 25 years since 1979’s Blondes Have More Fun.
But Rod wasn’t able to celebrate his No.1.
He was in court last year arguing that he should be allowed to keep the cash advance he’d been given by tour operators for a South American tour – despite cancelling it a month before it was due to start in 2002.
In November Rod was ordered to repay the pounds 426,400 back to promoters. He said: ‘It was a bit of an unfortunate week, actually, because I had to appear in court.
‘I had a court case going on, because I had to cancel a concert in South America. And I had knee surgery up in Vail, Colorado, so that was five days, and when it was No. 1 I didn’t have a chance to celebrate it.’
The Celtic and Scotland-daft singer is probably more concerned about his problem right knee than the money – especially as it might mean he won’t be able to play football again.
But he has been kicking balls into the audience during his tour of New Zealand and Australia so things are looking up.
The football fanatic even has his own football pitch in Epping Forest, Essex and plays with a team of ex-pats when he is living at his main home in Los Angeles.
He said: ‘The knee surgery was for all those years of playing football. It’s the cartilage – there’s nothing left in the knee now. I’ve got a 75 per cent chance of playing again, but if I don’t I’ll have to hang up my boots, as they say.’ It was the third operation Rod – an apprentice with the Brentford Football Club in Middlesex when he was a teenager – has had on his knee and he likens it to the cancerous lump he had removed from his throat in April 2000. It stopped him singing for nine months He said: ‘This is the third surgery I’ve had on the knee.The muscles shrink and the same happens with your voice, because they cut through your neck almost. It’s scary. And you have to retrain your voice to sing; the muscles have to get their memory back.’
When Rod revealed the bombshell news of cancer he worried that it would change his singing voice.
But he’s more bullish now. He added: ‘Although it was cancer, I can’t say I had this huge battle with cancer. I was in and out of hospital in 24 hours. If you’re going to have a cancer, have thyroid cancer, because it’s the easiest one to get rid of.
‘But yeah, I suppose you do obviously stop and think. It does change your life.
‘It scares the living daylights out of you. Your livelihood and the thing you love to do, the singing, can be taken away so easily from you.’
Rod has enjoyed a leisurely celebration for his 60th birthday. He hired a yacht and took Penny, his children and his best mate and two of his kids on a sun-kissed holiday around the Caribbean.
Now he’s gearing up for his world tour which started in New Zealand before going to Australia and crossing over to America next month.
The ever-stylish rocker has graduated from the tight jeans and spandex, trading them in for understated, exquisitely cut pin-striped suits and tuxedos.
But the newly Grammy–annointed Rod has admitted slipping on women’s knickers so he doesn’t get visible panty lines.
He admitted wearing women’s underwear, including ex-girlfriend Britt Ekland’s, and says they were the secret of his sexy look.
Back in the Seventies, he was infamous for his figure-hugging clothes and even then the Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? star made sure it was only the bulges he wanted to be seen that were on show.
He said: ‘I don’t get many underpants and things like that thrown at me.
‘But then I used to wear them myself back in the old days. I wore them back to front because you didn’t get any panty lines that way. And I wasn’t the only one who did, either.’
He may have turned 60 last month, but Rod is still one of the surviving old guard of rock. Like Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney and Elton John, he still gets his picture in the paper, mostly with stunning girlfriend Penny Lancaster, 33……and despite the upgrade in his outerwear and revelations about his underwear Rod The Mod is still sporting the same rather hairstyle after four decades. And he’s proud of the mop.
He said: ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? It refused to go any other way but standing straight up. I’ve tried many other hairstyles but it just doesn’t work.
‘And it’s not really high maintenance at all. I just wet it down and dry it upside down, and the individual hairs speak to each other and they all fall into line.’
Rod’s haircut is still being copied, but when he got it back in 1968 did he think it would change rock haircuts forever?
Laughing Rod said: ‘No, not at all. But I want to have it on record that Woody copied me. We were talking about that just recently.’
His old diehard rock fans haven’t deserted him, but Rod has pulled in an entirely new audience.
He said: ‘It’s hard to analyse who’s out there, but definitely a lot of new people.’
2002’s It Had To Be You…The Great American Songbook and 2003’s As Time Goes By…The Great American Songbook,Volume II were Rod’s idea. He claims he offered them to former record label Warner Bros. 25 years ago but they turned him down because they didn’t see him as a ‘standards singer’.
Then he split with Warner and made It Had To Be You, touting it around labels like DreamWorks before Clive Davis at J Records took it.
Rod realises it could have killed his career which had already taken a hammering with the release of Human which charted at No. 9 in the album charts. Its second single Don’t Come Around Here failed to chart.
Rod admitted: ‘I didn’t know until after we’d done the first album what a risk I had taken.
‘Because if it hadn’t sold there would have been no turning back for me.’
And despite the Grammy win, Rod claimed he will only do one more.
He said: ‘Only one more, which we’ve got the songs for already.
‘Everybody’s giving me songs. I could really go on for another 30 years doing these albums.’
He revealed that his musical beginnings were steeped in the songs that he’s now covering.
He said: ‘This wasn’t a real stretch for me to do this kind of music.
‘Al Jolson has always been my favourite singer.I saw the Jazz Singer when I was about six and it had a lasting impression.’
His five children – Kimberley and Sean (from his marriage to Alana Hamilton), Ruby (from his relationship with Kelly Emberg, and Renee and Liam (from his marriage to Rachel Hunter) all claim to like the new music Rod is doing.
He said: ‘But I’m certain they say that just to please me.They call them Dad’s jazz albums.
‘My kids listen to strange music, they listen to Janis Joplin and Cat Stevens and it’s really quite odd.’
The show will be split between his rock material and his standards material and at the end will close with Wild Mountain Thyme backed by big screen images from Braveheart. Girlfriend Penny is also touring with him and this time he seems happy to be just a boyfriend, rather than a husband.
And thanks to football, he’s escaped the drink and drugs that have sometimes wrecked the lives of his closest friends, such as Elton and Ronnie Wood.
He said: ‘I’ve always played football; I’ve never wanted to abuse anything.
‘I’ve always said, well, no, I can’t go mad Saturday night because I’m playing football Sunday morning, and that’s the way I’ve always been. Football has been a huge part of my life. I love it.’
And dodgy knee or no dodgy knee, will he still be kicking footballs into the audience throughout this tour?
He laughed: ‘Yeah, I shall be doing that, with a bad knee even, I shall be doing it.
Yeah, f*** ’em.’
