Sir Rod Stewart with wife Penny in Las Vegas (Image: Getty)
The elderly man in a tracksuit and high-vis jacket filling in potholes in an Essex country lane is a far cry from the leopard print clad rock star we know and love… although the trademark spiky blonde hair remains wonderfully intact.
Sir Rod Stewart is rightly proud of his fine head of hair, so much so he dedicated a whole chapter to it in his best-selling 2012 autobiography, and vowed to “have a weave like Elton” if he ever lost it.
“The hair is part of the job. It is my signature,” he insisted, and fortunately, like his six-decade career, it shows no signs of receding.
As he celebrates his 80th birthday today – reportedly on a $150million superyacht with his wife Penny Lancaster and his children – Rod the Mod or the Caledonian Cockney may still be a hair raiser but he is certainly no longer the hell raiser he once was.
These days he is more likely to be tinkering with his model railway, or having a kick about with his kids on his own five-a-side football pitch, than snorting cocaine with models in nightclubs.
Sir Rod Stewart announces on social media he will play Glastonbury (Image: Rod Stewart Instagram)
His biographer Tim Ewbank tells the Daily Express: “Rod will be hugely grateful to have reached the age of 80, and somewhat surprised too, that he has come relatively unscathed through all the booze and drug excesses of the rock world that claimed so many of his contemporaries.
“In many ways he’s had a charmed life. He has survived a brush with thyroid and prostate cancer, and twice he has found himself staring down the barrel of a bandit’s gun. In 1974 he was lucky to escape with his life in Argentina when a gang of gun-toting thugs stormed a restaurant where he was dining and a shootout with police ensued. And he won’t have forgotten how a gangster relieved him of his Porsche at gunpoint in Los Angeles.”
After eight children with five women and affairs with some of the world’s most beautiful women, including Swedish actress and Bond Girl Britt Ekland, Ewbank believes Rod has come full circle.
“As he enters his ninth decade he is seemingly at peace with himself,” says Tim, author of Rod Stewart: The New Biography. “Much of that is due to his wife Lady Penny. After years of being linked with glamorous models and actresses, the north London lad has found contentment with his striking, but homely, family-minded Essex girl.”
Entertainment journalist and author Sean Egan, whose book Rod Stewart: The Classic Years, published by Backbeat Books two years ago, explains the enduring appeal of Rod’s music from his first hit as a solo artist, Maggie May in 1971.
Rod Stewart with his mum Elsie (Image: Rod Stewart – Instagram)
Since then he has had 10 number-one albums and 31 top-ten singles in the UK, six of which reached number one and 16 top-ten singles in the US, with four reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Egan explains: “It’s down to two things. One is the voice. It doesn’t really make sense that such a raspy, gravelly voice should be so appealing but it’s what makes it so good and so moving.
“The other thing is his sensitivity. He’s never been afraid to lay his feelings bare.“The thing that detracted from his talents was that trashy image in that period where he seemed to be drunk on fame but he’s been upfront about the fact that he had his cocaine period in the mid-Seventies and he’s expressed contrition about the way that he treated women in the past.”
Egan added: “Rod is undoubtably in very good nick for his age, possibly the result of the inadvertent keep-fit situation that comes from prancing around a stage for all your adult life.“He’s part of a generation that at one point nobody could ever imagine growing truly old but he seems to have genuinely grown up and found happiness with Penny.”
Penny, 53, at almost 30 years Rod’s junior, is a former underwear model turned TV presenter turned Special Constable and the mother of Rod’s two youngest children, Alastair, 19, and Aiden, 13, conceived via IVF treatment.
He is also father to Sarah, 60, with ex-girlfriend Susannah Boffey, (who was adopted) Kimberly, 45 and Sean, 44, from his marriage to Alana Hamilton, Ruby, 37, from his relationship with model Kelly Emberg, and Renee, 32 and Liam, 30, from his marriage to New Zealand model Rachel Hunter.
“I seemed to be hellbent on going down in history as the last of the Great Philanders”, Rod himself admitted in his autobiography.
But while Penny has finally tamed him, the football fanatic is still car mad with a fleet of luxury cars, which is why he was spotted mending the roads near his 10-bedroom, Grade II-listed mansion, Durrington House, on the outskirts of Harlow recently.
The working class lad and son of a Scottish plumber, who grew up above a newsagents on the Archway Road in North London with his four much older siblings, didn’t want to see one of his beloved five Ferraris damaged.
Mike Walton, who runs SMILER, the Rod Stewart official fan club said that aside from his huge catalogue of hit records, it is Rod’s love of cars, football, and of course women, that still makes him one of the lads at 80.
In fact he is the ultimate working class lad made good, having been discovered busking at a Twickenham railway station in 1964 by musician Long John Baldry. Stints in Steampacket, The Jeff Beck group and of course The Faces followed.
If he hadn’t been a rock star he might have been a professional footballer (he had trials for Brentford) – that other escape route for working class boys who failed their 11-plus.
Says Mike: “Rod has pretty much stayed the same over the years, despite all his fame, wealth and knighthoods.
“If you bump into him in the pub or an event he won’t be behind a red rope with 10 bodyguards around him, but at the bar talking football with fans. The only difference is these days he will probably be attending an event with the King and other members of the royal family the next night!”
The down to earth rocker fills pothole in the country lane outside his Essex mansion (Image: @sirrodstewart)
The superfan attributes Rod’s groundedness to his siblings as well as Penny and his children but his siblings.
“He was very close to his two brothers Don and Bobby and his sister Mary [sister Peggy died age 40 of MS],” he says.
“In fact, up until he passed away a couple of years ago his eldest brother Don was a very active member of the SMILER fan club team, often raiding Rod’s wardrobe for prizes for our conventions.
“Rod would add his own twist by writing ‘Useless Tie’ or ‘Please look after my jacket’ on the items.”
But it is the music his fans say continues, like the man himself, to stand the test of time.
“Rod’s voice is so unique and he is one of the best interpreters of other people’s songs too,” adds Mike. “A lot of people won’t even know hits like Sailing, First Cut Is The Deepest and I Don’t Want To Talk About It are covers as Rod has made them his own.
“Even today he is one of the best live acts around. In concert you will hear crowd pleasers like ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy’ alongside show stoppers like the Etta James classic ‘I would Rather Go Blind’ that showcases how good Rod’s voice still is.”
He says Rod’s milestone birthday will be marked with celebrations by his loyal fanbase across the world. “I’ll join in with them by raising a glass of Rod’s very own whisky ‘Wolfie’s’ to toast the number one rascal on his 80th birthday,” he laughs. And the great man will undoubtedly be having one himself.