Rod Stewart

Gritty-voiced singer and sometime songwriter Rod Stewart earned the tag "vocals extraordinaire" during his first stint with the Jeff Beck Group, and maintained it during his subsequent tenure with the Faces and his commercially more successful solo career. After garnering initial critical acclaim for his unerring choice of cover material, Stewart in the late 1970s became known as a jet-setting bon vivant and bottled-blond sex symbol who put on stellar live performances but often indulged in self-parody on albums. For five decades and counting, Stewart's self-mocking charm and seemingly effortless but heartfelt vocal style have consistently kept him on the top of the pops.

The son of a Scottish shopkeeper, Stewart was born and raised in London but considers himself a Scot. After a short stint as an apprentice to a pro soccer team, Stewart joined a series of London bands — Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions, the Hoochie Coochie Men, Steampacket, and Shotgun Express. In 1967 Jeff Beck enlisted Stewart as vocalist for the Jeff Beck Group. Beck was especially popular in America, where the new group first toured in 1968. Petrified by the first-night audience at New York's Fillmore East, Stewart sang the opening number from backstage. Truth (1968) and Beck-Ola (1969), established Stewart as a rough-and-ready rock & roll vocal stylist.

In 1969 while still with Beck, Stewart signed a contract with Mercury. His solo debut, The Rod Stewart Album (Number 139, 1969), was recorded with Mick Waller and Ron Wood of the Jeff Beck Group, plus Small Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan and guitarist Martin Quittenton. Stewart's material was a grab bag of gentle folk songs, bawdy drinking songs, a taste of soul, and a couple of barrelhouse rockers. The album sold modestly — Jeff Beck Group fans considered it too subdued — but critics were impressed by Stewart's five original songs. Planning to form a new band with Stewart and the Vanilla Fudge's Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice, Beck disbanded his group. That project finally materialized in 1972, long after Stewart and his buddy Wood had joined the Small Faces, soon redubbed the Faces. Stewart spent the next seven years dividing his time between that band and a solo career, recording a Faces album for each of his own.

In 1970 the Small Faces recorded First Step, Stewart recorded Gasoline Alley (Number 27, 1970), and together they toured the United States twice. In the studio with the Faces, Stewart was but one of a quintet of equals merrily banging out rock & roll. On his own, he was different; the moody Gasoline Alley amplified his reputation as a sensitive, emotionally compelling singer and storyteller. When Every Picture Tells a Story came out in June 1971, the response was swift and strong. In October, the album was simultaneously Number One in America and Britain, the first record to do so. Its first single, "Maggie May," a Stewart-Quittenton song, was the second record to do the same. Before "Maggie May" had faded, Stewart followed up with a gritty version of the Temptations' "(I Know) I'm Losing You" (Number 24, 1971). Never a Dull Moment (Number Two, 1972), with his own "You Wear It Well" (Number 13, 1972), was also a hit.

With two gold albums, Stewart's role in the Faces became strained. Late in 1974, Mercury released Smiler (Number 13, 1974), Stewart's last album for the label. Stewart hired veteran American producer Tom Dowd and Muscle Shoals session musicians to record his Warner Bros. debut, Atlantic Crossing (Number Nine, 1975). In 1975 he moved to L.A. to escape British income taxes and was soon the toast of the Beverly Hills celebrity set. Stewart retained Dowd and the American studio musicians for the double-platinum A Night on the Town (Number Two, 1976), his first effort to outsell Every Picture, largely on the strength of the biggest single of 1976, "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)," which topped the U.S. chart for eight weeks.__

The Faces had by now fallen apart, and Wood was a fullfledged Rolling Stone. Stewart formed a new, American touring band. The hits kept coming: raunchy rockers like "Hot Legs" (Number 28, 1978), romantic ballads like "You're in My Heart (The Final Acclaim)" (Number Four, 1977), and even a Number One disco hit with "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" (1979) from the Number One album Blondes Have More Fun, which eventually sold 4 million copies.

Of his 1980s work, Foolish Behavior, Tonight I'm Yours, and Out of Order all went platinum, and Stewart released Top Ten singles throughout the decade, among them, "Passion" (Number Five, 1980), "Infatuation" (Number Six, 1984), "My Heart Can't Tell You No" (Number Four, 1988), and "Downtown Train" (Number Three, 1989).__

Just as his major hits covered the topics of love and sex, Stewart's penchant for blond model wives is also well known. After a much publicized liaison with Britt Ekland, Stewart got married for the first time in 1979 to George Hamilton's ex, Alana, with whom he had two children. Following their divorce, Stewart took up with model Kelly Emberg and had a child with her. In 1990 he tied the knot with Australian supermodel Rachel Hunter, with whom he fathered two more kids. That marriage also ended in divorce. In 1986 Stewart and a re-formed Faces gathered for a performance at a London benefit for Faces' bassist Ronnie Lane, who had developed multiple sclerosis. Out of Order (Number 20, 1989), coproduced by Chic's Bernard Edwards and former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor, was better received than much of his 1980s output, boosting a revival in Stewart's critical reputation that blossomed with the 1990 career overview, Storyteller. The next year he released Vagabond Heart (Number 10, 1991), his highest charting album since Blondes. The Number One single from the movie The Three Musketeers, "All for Love" (1994), featured vocals from Bryan Adams, Sting, and Stewart.

Stewart played MTV's Unplugged show with Ron Wood joining him, resulting in 1993's multiplatinum Unplugged...and Seated (Number 2). That year also, he again rejoined the Faces for a show at the BRIT Awards, at which he received a Lifetime Achievement Award. While Stewart in the 1990s sold all his future royalties to a Wall Street firm for $15 million, his commercial success was haphazard. The acoustic-oriented A Spanner in the Works (1995) only went gold and didn't yield a Top 40 single, while platinum sales returned with 1996's If We Fall in Love Tonight (Number 19). When We Were the New Boys, with edgy fare by Oasis and Primal Scream, was Stewart's self-produced, critically hailed 1998 return to his rocking roots. Soon after, he underwent throat surgery to remove a cancerous nodule on his thyroid gland. "Faith of My Heart" from the Patch Adams soundtrack, exemplified his later, smoother style and scored in the Top Ten on Adult Contemporary radio in 1999.

His 2001 release, Human, a foray into contemporary soul, debuted on the Billboard chart at Number 50. It Had to Be You (Number Four, 2002) became an adult contemporary hit, and was followed by As Time Goes By, (Number Two, 2003) Stardust, (Number 1, 2004) and Thanks for the Memory (Number Two, 2005). These releases completed the four-volume collection The Great American Songbook Box Set at the end of 2005. He continued to do covers records, with Still the Same: Great Rock Classics of Our Time (2006) featuring a cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" as its single. In November 2008 Warner Bros. launched a Stewart reissue campaign releasing The Definitive Rod Stewart, which spanned material recorded between 1971 and 2004 as Stewart toured the world.