Rod Stewart, CBE

Sir Roderick David Stewart, CBE is better known as Rod Stewart, is a British rock singer, songwriter and stage performing legend.

Born and raised in London, he is of Scottish and English ancestry. Stewart is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold over 120 million records worldwide.

What I do now is all my dad's fault, because he bought me a guitar as a boy, for no apparent reason. ... I wrote some of my best love songs ever when I was unhappy and my saddest love songs when I was very much in love. When I wrote 'You're in My Heart', which is an uplifting song, I had just broken up with-Now who had I broken up with?

He has had  nine number-one albums in the UK Albums Chart and his tally of 62 UK hit singles includes 31 that reached the top ten, six of which gained the No.1 position. Stewart has had 16 top ten singles in the US, with four reaching No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart came to prominence in the late 1960s and the early 1970s with The Jeff Beck Group, and then with Faces, though his music career had begun in 1962 when he took up busking with a harmonica. Stewart's early albums were a fusion of rock, folk music, soul music and R&B.

I've always been able to get inside a song really easily, and if it's my song, I can make it seem honest.

I'll sing over some chords, searching, what does [the music] conjure up, where's the melody taking you? I deliberate over the lyrics, I really do. I'll come up with one line in a day, and then it might be a couple of days before I come up with the rhyming line. It's never been easy for me.

In 1994, Stewart staged the largest free rock concert in history when he performed in front of 3.5 million people in Rio de Janeiro.

As a solo artist, Stewart was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and was inducted a second time into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of Faces.

From the late 1970s through the 1990s, Stewart's music often took on a new wave or soft rock/middle-of-the-road quality, and in the early 2000s, he released a series of successful albums interpreting the Great American Songbook.

He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity.

Well, I have a CBE and I accepted it with glee because it's not bestowed on you by the royal family, it's not bestowed on you by the government, you have to be nominated by the public.

On 28 September 2018, Stewart released his 30th studio album, Blood Red Roses, on Republic Records.

Stewart collaborated with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for the release of You're in My Heart in November 2019. The album contains new versions of the hit songs Maggie May and It Takes Two featuring Robbie Williams.

There's still plenty of lead in this pencil, but I only write to one person now.

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