Uncut Magazine - Ultimate Music Guide: Rod Stewart & The Faces (Issue 55, 2024)

A legendary story about the footballer George Best concerns a room service delivery of caviar and the English papers to his Spanish hotel room. The waiter wheels his trolley into a suite where he discovers the sportsman reclining on a bed, where he is sipping a glass of champagne in the company of the recently-crowned Miss World. The bed is covered with large denomination banknotes, the result of the previous night’s substantial win at the casino. The headline on one of the papers is: “Best: where did it all go wrong?”.

As you’ll read in this latest Ultimate Music Guide, in shops a week tomorrow, it wouldn’t be a stretch to retell this anecdote replacing George Best with Rod Stewart. After all, Rod’s career brought him a similar level of massive success – and many of the same fringe benefits. The incredible 60 years of his life in music so far have also been characterised by an exceptional talent, glamorous companions and untold wealth – but as with the footballer, there has always been a small constituency who feel Rod has acquitted himself in a manner which is not quite what they had in mind for him.

Rod, to his credit, has paid them no mind, and in this magazine we hitch a ride in a selection of expensive cars to enjoy the music, and the journey. From the uproarious rock ‘n’ roll of the Faces (there’s a free poster with every issue!), to the nostalgic anthems and Dylan covers of his early solo successes, to tax exile, disco, and the rewards he has found in the Great American Songbook (a destination where Dylan has recently followed him). Even to the (brief) Faces reunion. Along the way we meet supporters, the doubters, and the gentlemen of the tabloid press. We also meet the director of his most recent pop video, the artist Jeremy Deller, who tells us about Rod and his unwavering commitment to the rock star calling.

There might have been some occasional missteps along the way, but the times on balance, have really all been good. “I enjoyed being Jack The Lad…” Rod tells Uncut in 2018, rounding off his sentence with a rhetorical question. “…Wouldn’t you?”