Rod Stewart: Some Guys Have All the Luck
IF EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY, THEN GAZE UPON THIS MATURE MAN and his young bride. Their love is blond. It is real. You could touch it, except that he would probably punch you if you tried. They restrain themselves for the camera. Usually, they are playful, even slightly giddy. For instance, when she arrived at the altar to become his wife six months ago, she grabbed his buttocks, right there in the Presbyterian church, while relatives watched. “My hand somehow dropped down over his bum, and I couldn’t resist a little squeeze,” she would later say, and who could blame her? His is a very famous bum — one that he has incorporated into much of his work. Nevertheless, he is a reserved, elegant man, even though you might guess otherwise; she is a frolicsome palomino, all legs and spirit. Recently, she spoke of loosing her Great Dane upon his ex-girlfriend, the one who wishes to sue him for $25 million in palimony. “She’s the sort of person who gives blondes a bad name,” the missus announced, indignant as only a blonde could be.
This pose was struck in Stockholm, where most people are blond, even if they don’t want to be. Here he would entertain Swedes as part of a European sweep. For a man who enjoys all that is blond, Sweden naturally holds special significance. Indeed, it was the Swedish beauty Britt Ekland who first taught him to dye his own hair. So it is fitting that this is where he has submitted to portraiture. At once, he returns, with his new wife, to the cover of the magazine for which he and Britt Ekland also posed together sixteen years ago.
“I should say it’s about time they put a bit of class on the cover again,” he says, sounding like his old self, a wry fellow. “It’s usually scumbags on the cover. I’ve never heard of who’s on the cover sometimes.” He pauses to reflect upon this perceived incongruity, then concludes, “We must be paying somebody off.”
HE IS BACK, ONLY HE NEVER LEFT. “They say if you stay around long enough, you come around in fashion,” he likes to say. “You come around in a complete circle.” And so he has, with better clothes. Rod Stewart is forty-six, having done what he does for twenty-seven years. He has never gone away, which may not be as interesting as it is astonishing. Eventually, though, it’s the sort of thing you do notice. You notice that his eighteenth album, titled Vagabond Heart (after his own, perhaps), has outsold anything he has put forth in a decade. The single “Rhythm of My Heart” currently dwells in the upper reaches of familiarity. And last year’s retrospective set Storyteller/The Complete Anthology: 1964-1990 (the cover featured only a hank of his hair) threw his career into a new, estimable light, eliciting staunch critical praise, to which he is rather unaccustomed.
At the same time (and for a man of romance, how can it be coincidental?), he has been reborn in love and stands reformed, restless no more, unless on long plane trips. “I found what I’ve been looking for,” he says. By this he means that he has found his second wife, Rachel Hunter, born twenty-one years ago in New Zealand. She is, of course, an esteemed fashion model whose work with swimwear has delighted many. While looking for her, Rod Stewart has lived a large life, screwing up often, but always doing it suavely, as is his wont.
“The only revenge is living well,” he would tell me in his large manner while we dined in a large manor. Earlier I had flown to Stockholm to make sense of his large life and experience all of the raffish grandeur it affords. By the time we parted, days later in his mother England, I would understand much, including how he gets his hair to look like that. Secrets would spill forth, such as the lurid syntax of his most successful pickup line, for which he swears to have no further use. Myths would be exploded — the Truth, at last, about the fabled Stomach-Pump Incident — while new legends would be born. Here, then, is the rarefied world of Rod Stewart, a realm abundant with beautiful women, high testosterone, excellent wine, sturdy beer, stiff brandy, dull hangovers, Italian suits, expensive cars, clean upholstery, private jets, big houses, country pubs, thick steaks, good hygiene and sore throats.
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