How Rod Stewart Went From King Of The Mods To Sovereign Of Swing Music

Beginnings as a singer: “People loved me playing the old American folk songs”

In the early 60s, the fervour of rock’n’roll began to influence folk music. A new generation of folk artists – also influenced by Beat literature, US blues and Bob Dylan – embraced countercultural lifestyles in performances around the coffee shops of London. Stewart was among them, travelling and busking with folk innovator Wizz Jones across the UK and Europe during the early 60s. “People loved me playing the old American folk songs,” Stewart has said. “They’d say, play that one by Woody Guthrie. And that was the start.”

Stewart also began widening his musical tastes to take in soul music. There was Sam Cooke, his first soul love. Later, there was Otis Redding, who Stewart saw live, and who had a profound impact on him. “Otis played at a theatre in North London with Carla Thomas, Booker T And The MGs and all the Stax people. Otis only did about 25 minutes – Try A Little Tenderness, Day Tripper and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. He was steaming. A huge man. When he walked on the stage, you felt his presence.” Stewart never forgot these loves, and would cover Try A Little Tenderness in 1988, on his Out Of Order album.

As for his own musical career, aside from the busking, Stewart was now becoming a name-around-town. He auditioned with legendary production maverick Joe Meek, and was in the running to sing with an early line-up of The Kinks. But his first professional gig was with The Dimensions (soon renamed Jimmy Powell And The Five Dimensions), who hired Stewart as a harmonica player and, on paper at least, a singer. “[Powell] never used to let me sing though,” Stewart recalled in 1970. “He was the singer and that was that. I was the harmonica player, except I didn’t know how to play it. I always used to blow instead of suck.”

It was around this time, too, that Stewart developed his own distinctive visual style. Sharp suits and – most noticeably – spiked blonde hair got the young man noticed, by both fellow musicians and appreciative ladies. The secret to the Stewart coiffure has been credited variously to sugar water, mayonnaise and his sisters’ hairspray. He still sports a version of the barnet today. “Get the hairdryer, put a bit of product in it, dry it upside down to make it all stand up, then put a bit of wax on, which didn’t exist when I started this haircut, making it stand up using sugar and water,” he said in 2021. “I started it, so I’m gonna finish it.”

Rock rebellions and Faces: “I couldn’t be in a better band than I’m in now”

After leaving The Five Dimensions in 1964, Stewart joined forces with British bluesman Long John Baldry – again on harmonica duties – and also began to demo his own material. In 1964, his first single, a version of the blues standard Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, came out on Decca. It featured John Paul Jones, who would go on to fame as part of Led Zeppelin.

However, Stewart had a strong idea of what he wanted to use his powerful voice for, and it wasn’t commercial pop. Rejecting the more mainstream songs Decca offered him, he instead joined the R&B revue Steampacket, a legendary collective that boasted Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and Long John Baldry within their ranks.

“There wasn’t anything of this type in England before [us],” Auger said in 1965, just as Steampacket were garnering attention. “I felt a move in this direction in the R&B field would be a good thing.” The group supported The Rolling Stones, gaining respect for their blistering live shows, but did not release anything at the time. Each member had their own solo or group commitments, and competing contracts caused difficulties. Stewart left Steampacket, returning to his own releases, and also spent time in the band Shotgun Express.

But it was getting together with Jeff Beck in 1967 when “Rod The Mod” – as he was now becoming known – really set himself on the path to artistic satisfaction and popular success. The band also contained a young guitarist called Ronnie Wood.

“Ronnie’s got an innate sense of rhythm, and riff writing,” Stewart said in 2015. “Whereas Jeff… the sounds he gets out of his guitar. He’s an entrepreneur of the guitar.” But Beck wasn’t easy to work with. “Let me put it this way,” Stewart said, diplomatically. “He didn’t have the personal touch with the musicians.” However, the musical chemistry was perfect. Stewart, finally, was gaining a suitable musical bedrock for his vocal style. Truth, the 1968 Jeff Beck album featuring Stewart on vocals, has been hailed as a prototype for heavy metal.

It was in his work with Beck that the famous Stewart voice first got major attention. He tried to describe it himself in 1976: “It’s not a gravel voice,” he said. “It’s got much more warmth. I always feel my voice is like black velvet. A combination of black velvet on sandpaper.”

Following a second album with Beck, Beck-Ola, Stewart left. But it so happened that another trailblazing British group was disintegrating at the same time. Small Faces were mod and psychedelic innovators, but they had just lost singer, guitarist and co-founder Steve Marriott to Humble Pie. The group had already recruited Ronnie Wood on guitar in June 1969. Two months later, Stewart joined as singer.

The new line-up brought a radically different energy, and the band was now, simply, Faces. They would become legends. “I couldn’t be in a better band than the one I’m in right now,” Stewart said in 1970.

Early 70s success: “I didn’t know what I was getting into”

Rod Stewart had signed a solo contract with Mercury Records while he was still in Jeff Beck’s band; Faces were signed to Warner Bros. This meant, for a while, Stewart held down two parallel careers, with considerable bleed between the two. For instance, Faces appeared alongside Stewart when he performed his solo hit Maggie May on Top Of The Pops in 1971.

Faces were barrier-busting, hard-living, and an extraordinary live force. While their debut studio album, 1970’s First Step, had its moments, it was the second, the following year’s Long Player, that really brought out the group’s unruly, energetic personality. Had Me A Real Good Time was almost a statement of intent: co-written by Stewart, Wood and Ronnie Lane (who had been a member of Small Faces), its decadent swagger has rarely been matched.

“It was definitely a blind plunge,” Stewart said in 1970 of joining the group, “because I didn’t know what I was getting into. I was more impressed with them as people – I said, ‘What a nice bunch of guys – I’ll join that band!’” He went on to state something that Faces became infamous for: “We’re good drinking partners. We do drink a bit too much.”

The solo albums Rod Stewart released while still a Face – the group split up in 1975 – often featured Faces musicians. For example, the title track to Gasoline Alley, Stewart’s second album under his own name, was co-written with Ronnie Wood. Meanwhile, Faces would perform Stewart’s solo material live; the in-depth box set Faces At The BBC contains a scorching version of The Temptations’ (I Know) I’m Losing You, which Stewart included on his 1971 solo album Every Picture Tells A Story.

At the time – and despite record-company pressure – Stewart stated he had “no desire” to fully go solo. Enjoying the camaraderie and liking his bandmates as people, it was only when these relationships started to break down that Stewart left Faces. He had tasted solo chart success, especially with Maggie May and You Wear It Well, but he was now ready to enter the world of the astronomically famous.

A solo star: “Everything about it is different”

Rod Stewart’s 1975 solo album, Atlantic Crossing, was a defiant break with his recent Faces past. Recorded in the US, with some sessions taking place at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, the album found Stewart working with producer Tom Dowd and Stax house band Booker T And The MGs. “Musically it’s a breakthrough,” Stewart said in 1976. “Everything about it is different. Everything. And you never know how it’s going to be accepted. It might fall flat on its face.”

Atlantic Crossing didn’t fall flat; instead, it gave Stewart his biggest-ever hit, Sailing. This song was recorded contrary to Stewart’s usual routine. Tom Dowd woke the singer at 10am one day, asking him down to the studio immediately. “I was like: ‘You’re joking, recording at 10.30 in the morning. I need a drink to calm the old nerves,’” Stewart remembered in 2012. “There was nothing [alcoholic] to be had anywhere and I was terrified to sing without [a drink]. I’d never sung anything in a studio without having a drink – let alone a big old anthem. And I’d never sung anything, anywhere that early in the morning. Got it in six or seven takes, though.”

Atlantic Crossing was followed by another smash album, A Night On The Town. This album contains one of the finest songs Stewart has ever written, The Killing Of Georgie (Part I And II), about violent homophobia – a topic very, very rarely addressed in conversation, let alone in song, in the mid-70s. It was based on someone Stewart knew.

“I was surrounded by gay people at that stage,” Stewart has said of the song. “I had a gay PR man, a gay manager. Everyone around me was gay. I don’t know whether that prompted me into [writing the song] or not. I think it was a brave step, but it wasn’t a risk. You can’t write a song like that unless you’ve experienced it. But it was a subject that no one had approached before. And I think it still stands up today.”

Megastardom: “A bit young and feverish”

Into the later part of the 70s, Rod Stewart became a constant chart presence. His albums and singles of this time are dripping with confidence, and his voice is at its peak. He could combine strutting hits – such as Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? – with Scarred And Scared, which deals with the last thoughts of a murderer condemned to hang. Both were on the same album, 1978’s Blondes Have More Fun.

Stewart had his ear to new sounds. Blondes Have More Fun drew from disco, and he was also intrigued to see where the punk revolution was heading. Although his 1977 No.1, I Don’t Want To Talk About It, kept Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen from reaching the UK top spot, Steve Jones, of Sex Pistols, was a Faces fan. Jones has picked Faces’ 1971 album A Nod’s As Good As A Wink… To A Blind Horse as one of his essential records.

Stewart, in turn, was open to the influence of punk. Young Turks’, on his 1981 album, Tonight I’m Yours, was a deliberate effort to bring this influence into his work. “Rod said, ‘I want something that’s a bit punky, a bit young and feverish,’” drummer Carmine Appice, a regular Stewart collaborator, who worked on Young Turks, has said. “So Duane [Hitchings, synthesiser, electric piano] and I came up with Young Turks, gave it a try, and he loved it.” While Young Turks wasn’t raw like punk, it did capture the early electro feel of new wave, and was another big hit.

Although he was commonly seen to be living a life of luxury, with glamourous girlfriends and stacks of money, Stewart relied on his family to keep him grounded. “I brought a bottle of wine in when I was back [home] last time,” he said in 1978. “I opened it up and I said, ‘Mum, we have to decanter the wine,’ and she said, ‘What?’ I said, We have to decanter. We have to pour it into a decanter. She said, ‘Well, what’s that?’ I said, ‘It’s like a big vase.’ And she said, ‘We’ll take the flowers out of the vase on top of the television and put it in there.’ I said, ‘No, we can’t do that,’ and she said, ‘Oh, there’s an empty milk bottle outside. Why don’t you put the wine in the milk bottle?’ Little things like that really bring you back to square one.”

Later years and musical mellowing: “I was bursting to sing it”

The 1983 single Baby Jane was yet another No.1 for Stewart – his sixth. He was a 60s survivor who was able to confidently adapt his sound and image to the video age. In this, he shared a lot with Tina Turner. The two had performed together on Saturday Night Live in 1981. “Did you see the way she moved?” a breathless Stewart said after their shared performance of Stewart’s Hot Legs. Their connection endured, and they released a duet, It Takes Two, in 1990.

Stewart continued to enjoy substantial success, but as the 80s drew on, his work became noticeably more reflective. Every Beat Of My Heart, his big hit from 1986, was about his experience of returning to the UK following a long period away. Wistful in sound as well as pensive in its theme, it ushered in a new era for Stewart, who began leaning into his cracked vocals – not as evidence of hard living, but as scars of experience.

“Five years ago I was in a bit of a lull,” Stewart confessed in 1993. He felt too mature to be singing some of his early hits (and also wanted to dial down his reputation as a womaniser – “I was a bit obnoxious about it in those days,” he confessed). But Stewart knew he still had plenty to offer.

He found a renewed joy in old acquaintances, among them Jeff Beck, with whom he reconnected in the 80s. “It’s only in hindsight that we realise how good we were, the Beck group, and what a landmark those first two albums were,” Stewart said of Truth Beck-Ola. He also performed again with Faces in 1986, during the encore of his Wembley Stadium show that summer.

The real turning point came in 1990, when Stewart recorded the Tom Waits song Downtown Train to enormous critical and commercial success. The song was presented to him by the head of his label, Rob Dickins. “He said, ‘I want you to listen to this,’ and he played me a song. When it finished, he said, ‘Don’t say anything.’ And then he played it through again. When it finished the second time, he again said, ‘Don’t say anything.’ And then he played it a third time. By then I was wishing I had written it. And I was bursting to sing it.”

Swingin’ into the millennium: “I don’t know what the secret is to still being here”

Understanding the power of his older voice and presence, in more recent years Stewart has reinterpreted the songs of his youth. This began with his popular The Great American Songbook series of the 2000s, made up of Stewart’s versions of well-loved standards (including Al Jolson songs he heard, all those years ago, hiding under the piano), and has continued via a run of intriguing and varied releases throughout the years that followed.

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You’re In My Heart, from 2019, was a particularly captivating project. Performed with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, it featured vocals from some of Stewart’s most famous songs – including Sailing and Maggie May – with new orchestral arrangements. Handbags And Gladrags, from Stewart’s debut album, An Old Raincoat Won’t Let You Down, sounds especially poignant in this setting.

Stewart’s 2024 release, Swing Fever, was a collaboration with Jools Holland, and it saw the pair create fresh, delightful takes on jazz and popular music standards. It wasn’t only the tunes that brought the pair together, but another all-consuming passion. “We were very aware of each other’s love of model railroads,” Stewart has said. “When we meet up with each other to talk about music, it’s always, trains first. ‘So, what’s happening with your layout?’ ‘I’m building this…’ And then we get down to the music…

“The connection between 50s rock’n’roll and swing is very, very close,” Stewart continued. “They merge into each other. There’s a couple of tracks on the album very close to rock’n’roll. In fact, they are rock’n’roll.” Good Rockin’ Tonight is undoubtably one of those tracks: in its Swing Fever version, it’s good times, it’s simple pleasures, it’s memories of being together with friends and loves over the years.

Influence and legacy: “Maybe I put on a good show, have a distinctive voice”

Today, Rod Stewart is happy in himself, and proud of – if a little intrigued by – his enduring appeal. “When I first came into the business, I thought, I’ll be happy if this lasts a couple of months,” he said in 2019. “I don’t know what the secret is to still being here, though. Maybe I put on a good show, have a distinctive voice, an army of songs, and some very loyal fans, and as long as people still want to hear them, I’m going to be there.”

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