‘I wish they wouldn’t call it the tea time slot’

Mark SavageMusic CorrespondentMark Allan / BBCRod Stewart is the primary artist to headline Glastonbury and play the Sunday afternoon “legend” slot”Do you know I can run 100 meters in 19 seconds?”Rod Stewart, Sir Rod Stewart, is boasting about his bodily prowess. And why not?On the age of 80, he is nonetheless cavorting world wide, enjoying offered out reveals, recording new music and even writing a e-book about his beloved mannequin prepare set.This weekend, he’ll play the coveted “legends” slot on Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage… though the previous headliner is not 100% blissful about his billing.”I simply want they would not name it the tea time slot,” he complains.”That appears like pipe and slippers, would not it?”He is additionally persuaded organisers to increase his set, securing an hour-and-a-half slot after initially being provided 75 minutes.”Often I do nicely over two hours so there’s nonetheless a load of songs we can’t be capable to do,” he says. “However we have been working at it. I am not gonna make any bulletins between songs. I will do one quantity, shout ‘subsequent’, and go straight into the following one.”I will get in as many songs I can.”Getty ImagesThe star is affectionately generally known as “Phyllis”, because of a nickname coined by Elton John (aka Sharon)It is not like he is wanting alternative. Sir Rod has one of many all-time traditional songbooks, from early hits with the Faces corresponding to Keep With Me and Ooh La La, to his solo breakthrough with Maggie Could, the slick pop of Do Ya Assume I am Horny and his reinvention as a crooner on songs like Downtown Prepare and Have I Informed You Currently.The final time he performed Glastonbury, in 2002, he was considered as an intruder – sitting awkwardly on the invoice beside the likes of The White Stripes, Coldplay and Orbital.At first, “the gang was cautious” of the musician, who ” taking himself too critically”, mentioned the BBC’s Ian Youngs in a overview of the present.However a peerless setlist of singalongs received them over. By the tip of the evening, 100,000 individuals had been swaying in time to Crusing as in the event that they had been genuinely adrift on the surging tides of the Atlantic.Amazingly, Rod has no reminiscence of it.”I do not keep in mind a factor,” he confesses. “I accomplish that many concert events, all of them mix into one.”One explicit present does stand out, although. On New 12 months’s Eve 1994, Sir Rod performed a free gig on Brazil’s Copacabana Seashore, drawing a crowd of greater than three million individuals.However it wasn’t the record-breaking viewers that made it memorable.”I used to be violently sick about an hour earlier than I used to be alleged to go on,” he confesses.”I might eaten one thing horrible, and I used to be in a rest room going, ‘huerrrgurkurkbleaggggh'”I did not suppose I used to be going to make it however fortunately they bought a physician to kind me out.”Carl De Souza/ShutterstockRod Stewart final performed Glastonbury in 2002, when tickets price £97 and solely 140,000 festivalgoers may entry the positioning. We’re speaking to the star a couple of month earlier than Glastonbury on the Devonshire, a relaxed, old-school boozer simply off Picadilly Circus that is turn into the favoured hang-out of everybody from Ed Sheeran to U2.It is a bit too early for a drink, although, so Sir Rod orders up a venti espresso, shooing away an over-eager assistant who makes an attempt to stir in his sugar.He is wearing a cream jacket and black denims, which sit above the ankle to point out off his box-fresh, zebra-striped trainers. His white shirt is unbuttoned far sufficient to show a diamond-encrusted necklace with the crest of his beloved soccer membership, Celtic.After which there’s the hair. A bleached blonde vista of windswept spikes, so well-known that it earned a complete chapter within the singer’s autobiography.Steve Marriott of The Small Faces as soon as claimed that Sir Rod achieved this gravity-defying barnet by rubbing mayonnaise into his scalp, then rubbing it with a towel.This, says the musician, is utter “bollocks”.”Nah, nah, nah. I used to make use of sugared sizzling water, earlier than the times of hair lacquer. And I could not afford hair lacquer, anyway.”However what actually units Sir Rod aside is that voice.Raspy, soulful, uncooked and expressive, he is one in all rock and roll’s greatest interpretive singers. There is a cause why his covers of Cat Steven’s First Minimize Is The Deepest or Loopy Horse’s I Do not Wanna Speak About It have eclipsed the originals.So it is a shock to be taught that he was found not for his vocals, however his harmonica abilities.That fateful evening in 1964, he’d been at a gig on Twickenham’s Eel Pie Island, and was drunkenly enjoying the riff from Holwin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightnin’ whereas he waited for the prepare house, when he was overheard by influential blues musician Lengthy John Baldry.”As he described it, he was strolling alongside platform 9 when observed this pile of rubble and garments with a nostril declaring,” Sir Rod recollects.”And that was me enjoying harmonica.”On the time, he “wasn’t so certain” about his singing voice. However, with Baldry’s encouragement, he began to develop his signature sound.”I wished to all the time sound like Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, in order that’s the best way I went,” he says. “I suppose I used to be making an attempt to be completely different from anyone else.”PA MediaThe singer has greater than 60 hit singles, together with seven UK quantity ones, throughout his again catalogueSir Rod started his ascent to stardom with the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces, a boisterous blues-rock outfit closely impressed by the Rolling Stones – each on and off the stage.They had been frequently so drunk he’d neglect the phrases to his personal songs, he admits. Within the US, the group acquired a 40-year ban from the Vacation Inn lodge chain after racking up a $11,000 invoice (£8,000 – or £54,000 in 2025 cash) for trashing their rooms.”We solely did it as a result of the Vacation Inns would deal with us so badly, like we had been the scum of the earth,” he says.”So we might get our personal again by smashing the inns up. One time we truly bought a few spoons and chiselled by way of the partitions to 1 one other’s rooms.”However we used to e-book in as Fleetwood Mac, in order that they’d get the blame.”How come he by no means succumbed to drink and medicines, like a lot of his contemporaries?”I by no means was a very druggy particular person, as a result of I performed soccer on a regular basis and I needed to be match match,” he says.”I’d use the phrase dabble. I’ve dabbled in medicine, however not anymore.”Maybe a extra damaging pressure was the singer’s womanising.He wrote You are In My Coronary heart for Bond lady Britt Ekland, however they break up two years later, attributable to his persistent unfaithfulness.His marriage to Alana Stewart and relationship with mannequin Kelly Emberg ended the identical manner.”When it got here to lovely girls, I used to be a tireless seeker of experiences,” he wrote in his memoir.”I did not know the way to withstand. And likewise… I assumed I may get away with it.”He thought he’d settled down after marrying mannequin Rachel Hunter in 1990, however she left him 9 years later, saying she felt she had “misplaced her identification” within the relationship.The break up hit Sir Rod exhausting.”I felt chilly on a regular basis,” he mentioned. “I took to mendacity on the couch within the day, with a blanket over me and holding a sizzling water bottle towards my chest.”I knew then why they name it heartbroken: You possibly can really feel it in your coronary heart. I used to be distracted, nearly to the purpose of insanity.”Getty ImagesRod Stewart with 5 of his eight kids, and future spouse Penny Lancaster on the 2003 American Music AwardsHowever, since 2007, the star has been fortunately married to TV presenter / police constable Penny Lancaster, with the couple reportedly renewing their vows in 2023.Final week, they celebrated their 18th marriage ceremony anniversary with a visit on the Orient Specific from Paris, the place they met in 2005, to La Cervara in Portofino, the place they held their marriage ceremony ceremony, in a medieval monastery.As of late, Sir Rod says, household is his precedence.”I’ve bought eight youngsters all collectively, so typically I will get up within the morning and see all these messages, Stewart, Stewart, Stewart, Stewart… and it is all the youngsters. It is simply beautiful.”His youngest, Aiden, is now 14, and changing into an historian of his dad’s work.”He is gone again and listened to all the pieces I’ve executed, bless him,” says the star. “He is aware of songs that I do not even keep in mind recording!”InstagramSir Rod and Penny Lancaster celebrated their 18th marriage ceremony anniversary with a visit on the Orient ExpressHis Glastonbury look coincides with the discharge of a brand new best hits album – his twentieth. (“Is it actually?” gasps Sir Rod. “Oh gawwwwd.”)So how does it really feel to look again over these 5 many years of music?”Oh, it is super,” he says. “It is a feeling that you’ve got executed what you got down to do.”I do not contemplate myself a very good songwriter,” he provides. “I battle with it. It takes me ages to write down a set of lyrics.”So I do not suppose I am a pure songwriter. I am only a storyteller, that is all. A humble storyteller.”Possibly – however this humble storyteller goes to attract a crowd of hundreds when he performs the Pyramid Stage on Sunday afternoon.”You understand, it is great,” he concedes. “I will be in good voice. I will get pleasure from myself. I do not care anymore what the critics suppose.”I am there to entertain my individuals.”