Rod Stewart: From busking in the 1960s to starring at Glastonbury

From start­ing as a busker on the streets of Lon­don with gui­tarist Wizz Jones in the ear­ly 1960s and ris­ing to fame as the lead singer of the Faces, Sir Rod Stew­art arrives at Glas­ton­bury at the lat­ter stage of a stel­lar career.

The 80-year-old will appear at Wor­thy Farm in the Sun­day tea time leg­ends slot, where he is expect­ed to reunite with Faces and Rolling Stones gui­tarist Ron­nie Wood.

Faces drum­mer Ken­ney Jones also hint­ed to the PA news agency ear­li­er this year that he may join the pair.

Faces

Begin­ning from the ash­es of the dis­band­ed Small Faces in 1969, Sir Rod and Wood joined up with the bro­ken-up band’s key­board play­er Ian McLa­gen, drum­mer Jones and bass play­er and singer Ron­nie Lane, when Small Faces singer and gui­tarist Steve Mar­riott formed Hum­ble Pie.

Their first two albums First Step (1970), which still car­ried the old Small Faces name in the US upon its release, and Long Play­er (1971) saw lim­it­ed com­mer­cial suc­cess, but A Nod Is As Good As A Wink… To A Blind Horse, also released in 1971, sent them to num­ber two in the UK albums chart.

The sin­gle Stay With Me, tak­en from the band’s third LP, peaked at num­ber six in the UK charts and has gone on to become one of Sir Rod’s best-known songs, reg­u­lar­ly per­formed at his con­certs.

Fourth album Ooh La La (1973) saw lead sin­gle Cindy Inci­den­tal­ly reach num­ber two on the UK sin­gles chart, while stand­alone sin­gle Pool Hall Richard also reached the top 10 in the same year.

It was fol­lowed up with the sin­gle You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Any­thing (Even Take The Dog For A Walk, Mend A Fuse, Fold Away The Iron­ing Board, Or Any Oth­er Domes­tic Short­com­ings), which reached num­ber 12, but would be the last released by the band before they broke-up in 1975.

Sir Rod’s band­mates also backed him on his solo records released between 1969 and 1974, play­ing on his ear­li­est num­ber one sin­gles Mag­gie May and You Wear It Well.

Since their break-up, sur­viv­ing orig­i­nal mem­bers Sir Rod, Wood and Jones have reunit­ed to per­form on a num­ber of occa­sions, the most recent com­ing at the Brit Awards in 2020. The band are strong­ly rumoured to be releas­ing a new album next year.

Sir Rod’s career out­side of the band

Pri­or to join­ing the Faces, Sir Rod start­ed out as a folk singer busk­ing on the streets of Lon­don with Wizz Jones and went on to appear in a num­ber of bands dur­ing the mid-1960s, before first com­ing to pub­lic atten­tion as the singer in The Jeff Beck Group.

The band, formed in 1967 after Beck left The Yard­birds, where he first played with Wood, released the albums Truth and Beck-Ola. While he was in the Faces, the singer sang guest vocals for the Aus­tralian group Python Lee Jack­son on In A Bro­ken Dream, ini­tial­ly released in 1970.

Sir Rod released his first five solo albums while still a mem­ber of the Faces, con­tin­u­ing the rock and roll and folk sounds the band explored, before ven­tur­ing into pop with 1975’s Atlantic Cross­ing.

Sir Rod Stew­art and Jools Hol­land pose with their Offi­cial Num­ber 1 Album Award from Offi­cial Charts for Swing Fever (Offi­cial Charts Company/PA)

The album fea­tured top 10 sin­gles Sail­ing and a cov­er of The Isley Broth­ers’ This Old Heart Of Mine, with the for­mer reach­ing num­ber one in the UK sin­gles chart.

The singer has gone on to release 32 solo stu­dio LPs, pro­duc­ing num­ber ones such as Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?, Baby Jane and the dou­ble a‑side of I Don’t Want To Talk About It and The First Cut Is The Deep­est.

He most recent­ly released the album Swing Fever with pianist and TV pre­sen­ter Jools Hol­land last year, a col­lec­tion of clas­sic songs from the big band era such as Frankie And John­ny, Good Rockin’ Tonight and Pen­nies From Heav­en.

What has Sir Rod been doing late­ly?

Ahead of the release of Swing Fever, Sir Rod and Hol­land made a sur­prise appear­ance at St Pan­cras Inter­na­tion­al sta­tion to per­form at its piano, and is slat­ed to embark on a tour of “inti­mate” venues next year in sup­port of the record.

In a state­ment on Insta­gram, Sir Rod announced he would end “large-scale world tours” after 2025, when his US tour ends on August 15 at the Hol­ly­wood Casi­no Amphithe­atre in St Louis, Mis­souri, but ruled out retir­ing any time soon.

On Jan­u­ary 10, Sir Rod cel­e­brat­ed his 80th birth­day with wife Pen­ny Lan­cast­er, who he mar­ried in 2007, and their chil­dren.

He was recent­ly award­ed the life­time achieve­ment award at the Amer­i­can Music Awards (AMAs), where he was pre­sent­ed with the award by five of his chil­dren.

What will he play?

With Wood and pos­si­bly Jones in tow, fans should expect some clas­sic Faces hits such as Stay With Me, Cindy Inci­den­tal­ly and Pool Hall Richard, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a few fan favourites such as Too Bad, That’s All You Need and Three But­ton Hand Me Down.

It is almost cer­tain that mega hits such as Mag­gie May, You Wear It Well and Hot Legs will get an air­ing, how­ev­er the Faces reunion may ensure Sir Rod sticks to his pre-1975 mate­r­i­al.

Pre­vi­ous Glas­ton­bury per­for­mance

Sir Rod pre­vi­ous­ly per­formed on the Pyra­mid Stage at Glas­ton­bury in 2002, where he opened with his cov­er of Hand­bags And Gladrags, before going on to delve into the Faces cat­a­logue with Ooh La La and Stay With Me, and per­form cov­ers of songs by the likes of Tom Waits, Van Mor­ri­son and Tim Hardin.

He also played some of his biggest hits, Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?, Baby Jane and Young Turks, before fin­ish­ing with a sin­ga­long per­for­mance of Sail­ing.