‘I want they would not name it the tea time 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, taking part in bought out exhibits, recording new music and even writing a ebook about his beloved mannequin practice 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 feels 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.

“Normally I do nicely over two hours so there’s nonetheless a load of songs we can’t have the ability to do,” he says.

“However we have been working at it. I am not gonna make any bulletins between songs. I am going to do one quantity, shout ‘subsequent’, and go straight into the following one.

“I’ll get in as many songs I can.”

It is not like he is wanting selection. 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 Attractive and his reinvention as a crooner on songs like Downtown Practice and Have I Advised 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 group was cautious” of the musician, who ” taking himself too critically”, stated the BBC’s Ian Youngs in a evaluation of the present.

However a peerless setlist of singalongs gained them over. By the tip of the evening, 100,000 individuals have been swaying in time to Crusing as in the event that they have been genuinely adrift on the surging tides of the Atlantic.

Amazingly, Rod has no reminiscence of it.

“I do not bear in mind a factor,” he confesses. “I achieve this many concert events, all of them mix into one.”

One specific present does stand out, although. On New 12 months’s Eve 1994, Sir Rod performed a free gig on Brazil’s Copacabana Seaside, 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 imagined 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 assume I used to be going to make it however fortunately they received a physician to type me out.”

We’re speaking to the star a few month earlier than Glastonbury on the Devonshire, a relaxed, old-school boozer simply off Picadilly Circus that is turn out to be the favoured hang-out of everybody from Ed Sheeran to U2.

It’s kind of 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 indicate 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 an entire 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 among rock and roll’s greatest interpretive singers. There is a motive why his covers of Cat Steven’s First Reduce 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 taking part in the riff from Holwin’ Wolf’s Smokestack Lightnin’ whereas he waited for the practice dwelling, 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 taking part in harmonica.”

On the time, he “wasn’t so positive” about his singing voice. However, with Baldry’s encouragement, he began to develop his signature sound.

“I wished to at all times sound like Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, in order that’s the way in which I went,” he says. “I suppose I used to be attempting to be totally different from anyone else.”

Sir 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 have been repeatedly so drunk he’d neglect the phrases to his personal songs, he admits. Within the US, the group obtained 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 have been the scum of the earth,” he says.

“So we would get our personal again by smashing the resorts up. One time we truly received a few spoons and chiselled by way of the partitions to at least one one other’s rooms.

“However we used to ebook in as Fleetwood Mac, in order that they’d get the blame.”

How come he by no means succumbed to drink and medicines, like lots of his contemporaries?

“I by no means was a very druggy individual, 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 harmful 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, as a result of his persistent unfaithfulness.

His marriage to Alana Stewart and relationship with mannequin Kelly Emberg ended the identical means.

“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 might 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 id” within the relationship.

The break up hit Sir Rod arduous.

“I felt chilly on a regular basis,” he stated. “I took to mendacity on the couch within the day, with a blanket over me and holding a sizzling water bottle in opposition to my chest.

“I knew then why they name it heartbroken: You’ll be able to really feel it in your coronary heart. I used to be distracted, virtually to the purpose of insanity.”

Nonetheless, 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 wedding ceremony anniversary with a visit on the Orient Categorical from Paris, the place they met in 2005, to La Cervara in Portofino, the place they held their wedding ceremony ceremony, in a medieval monastery.

Lately, Sir Rod says, household is his precedence.

“I’ve received eight youngsters all collectively, so generally I am going to 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 things I’ve carried out, bless him,” says the star. “He is aware of songs that I do not even bear in mind recording!”

His Glastonbury look coincides with the discharge of a brand new biggest hits album – his twentieth. (“Is it actually?” gasps Sir Rod. “Oh gawwwwd.“)

So how does it really feel to look again over these 5 a long time of music?

“Oh, it is great,” he says. “It is a feeling that you have carried out what you got down to do.

“I do not contemplate myself a very good songwriter,” he provides. “I wrestle with it. It takes me ages to put in writing a set of lyrics.

“So I do not assume 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 1000’s when he performs the Pyramid Stage on Sunday afternoon.

“You understand, it is fantastic,” he concedes. “I will be in good voice. I am going to take pleasure in myself. I do not care anymore what the critics assume.

“I am there to entertain my individuals.”