History records that the last time Sir Rod Stewart played Glastonbury – headlining the main Pyramid Stage in 2002 – he wore a boxy white suit jacket, black dress trousers, sensible dress shoes, plain white shirt and a natty yellow striped tie that was loosely knotted just so.
“Yeah, won’t be doing that again,” sniffs the man sitting in front of me. The occupant of the Legends slot at the world’s greatest music festival this year is dressed in a checked white two-piece suit, box-fresh baseball boots, snakeskin belt and statement shirt emblazoned with the image of a bird in a tree. It’s unbuttoned to the nipples, the better to show off a shiny piece of jewellery with the crest of his football team, Celtic. I know he loves the club and, 60 years and 120 million record sales into his career, he’s not short of a bob or two, so is that custom-made bling?
Meanwhile, the Rod barnet remains a magnificent construction, an age- and gravity-defying explosion of canary yellow. I ask if his dad had hair like that, meaning as thick and fulsome, but Rod thinks I’m referring to the rock ’n’ roll nature of his follicles. “No, he didn’t! He was a f***ing plumber! No, I started this haircut... well, me and Ronnie both started it together,” he says of old mucker and Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, who sports a similar bird’s-nest thatch.
As for this year’s Glasto clobber? “I’m not sure yet, but I’ve got the band all decked out in proper outfits. They all wear white jackets and black ties, and the girls wear sequins. It’s a bit more Las Vegas than it’s been before because, obviously, I’m doing my residency,” he says of his long-running engagement in Sin City’s Caesars Palace. “I’m up to 217 shows, which is amazing.”
Breaking down his 12-piece band, half of them women, the Grammy- and Brit-winning man knighted in 2016 for services to music and charity says: “They’re all drop-dead gorgeous, but they’re very talented. And it just levels out the egos of the men. They’re always light-hearted and they keep me young – ooh!” titters the once serial squirer of women who has been married to third wife Penny Lancaster for 18 years.
At the RT photoshoot in London, Rod is a few days out from a return to Vegas and the resumption of his residency (although, as it transpires, he has to cancel his Vegas shows and further, pre-Glastonbury US dates due to a bout of flu). It’s a long-running commitment that presented a bit of a speed bump when discussions began with the festival about his return this year.
And to be clear, he’s not scrimping. The band are being treated to Premium Economy, and he’ll be flying in his usual manner – “I haven’t flown commercial for 20 years.”
Anyway, the “PJ” is a well-earned but necessary practicality for a musician who’s been touring all his life. “You gotta get there in comfort. You book the best hotels. I’ve been to every major city in the world, and because I’m a keen model railroader, the hotels will set me up with a spare room, with a table, so I can build my models. I don’t take the whole set with me, because it’s in a room [in his Essex mansion] that’s 40 feet long. But I’ll take a project, like a building to make, and bring all my tools and my paints. It’s lovely, and I don’t waste any time.”
That said, Rod recently found himself appraising the rider provision in his dressing room. “I looked at it the other day and I thought, what is all this s**t doing here? All I need is a few bottles of wine and some crisps, and that’s it. And there’s all these bloody things! What am I gonna do with them? No houmous, but big piles of bananas and apples! And when you think the whole world’s bloody starving. I gotta do something about that. Thank you for reminding me.”
The booze remains for medicinal reasons, too. “I always have a little gargle before I go on: rum and coke. Been drinking that 40 years. I never drink it any other time… The vocal cords need a lot of looking after. I mean, they’re absolute gold. I warm up for an hour, warm down for half an hour. And when I feel I’m losing my voice, I go into what they call ‘voice rest’ and wear a little card around my neck that says ‘I can’t talk. Don’t talk to me.’ And it’s remarkable how your voice will come back.”
But looking after himself is a year-round job, “I don’t wait until I start touring”. Rod’s competitive footballing days are over after having a replacement right knee. (“What’s it made of? Metal. Well, not metal it’s carbon fibre or some bollocks.”) But at home in Essex, next to the five-a-side pitch where he’ll still have a kickabout with his youngest sons, Alastair, 19 and Aiden, 14, he’s had a 100m running track installed. “I can do it in 19 seconds. And the record for an 80-year-old is 14 seconds. I’ll never get it to that. But I’m trying. There’s all the little techniques – where you put your arms and where they finish. How high you can get your heels to your bum. They could knock a second off. I’m working on that.”
A stint working in Highgate Cemetery followed but didn’t last very long – “and I never dug any holes, because they used to do ’em with a little tiny digger”. But it was followed by a job in a funeral parlour. Well, to be clear, “above a funeral parlour. We were beatniks and all had long hair, so we couldn’t get jobs. So my mates set up a picture framing business. And downstairs was a funeral parlour, and to get a job in the framer’s, you had to lay in the coffin for ten minutes. They’d nail you in. That was the initiation. F***ing awful experience!”
“I can’t believe [Joe] Biden’s got it,” he adds. “What’s happened there? Did he avoid check-ups because he thought he could run for President again, or what? It’s terrible.”
Would he still count him as a friend? “No, I can’t any more. As long as he’s selling arms to the Israelis – and he still is. How’s that war ever gonna stop?” he adds, voice rising. “And we should stop selling them as well. What did Starmer say yesterday? They dropped the talks on trade? What f***ing difference is that gonna make? Someone’s gotta do something. What Netanyahu is doing to the Palestinians is exactly what happened to the Jews. It’s annihilation, and that’s all he wants to do – get rid of them all. I don’t know how they sleep at night.”
Whether he’ll play that song at Glastonbury, he isn’t saying. But he will say that he has some tough choices to make about his set list. In 2002 he started with Handbags and Gladrags and ended, 22 songs later, with Sailing. This time?
“But I’m really looking forward to it. And it is a different gig. It’s like when you’re playing a cup final: you’re trying to treat it like another game. But, of course, it’s not. It’s special.”
So, what can RT readers tuning in at home expect to see? “It’ll be glamorous, it’ll be sexy. Not me – I’m talking about the other members of the group! And we’ve got a little orchestra coming on to play with us. And we may have some bagpipes…”
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