Rod: The Autobiography

Pocketböcker. Random House UK. 2013. 378 sidor.

"Ridiculously funny and astonishingly candid, Rod Stewart's memoir is the rock autobiography of the decade". ("Daily Mail"). "One of the most entertaining, revealing, captivating books of the year". ("Independent"). Rod Stewart was born the working-class son of a Scottish plumber in North London. Despite some early close shaves with a number of diverse career paths, ranging from gravedigging to professional football, it was music that truly captured his heart - and he never looked back. Rod started out in the early 1960s, playing the clubs on London's R&B scene, before his distinctively raspy voice caught the ear of the iconic front man Long John Baldry, who approached him while busking one night on a railway platform. Stints with pioneering acts like the Hoochie Coochie Men, Steampacket, and the Jeff Beck Group soon followed, paving the way into a raucous five years with the Faces, the rock star's rock band, whose offstage antics with alcohol, wrecked hotel rooms and groupies have become the stuff of legend. And during all this, he found a spare moment to write 'Maggie May', among a few others, and launch a solo career that has seen him sell an estimated 200 million records, be inducted into the Hall of Fame twice, and play the world's largest ever concert. Not bad, as he says, for a guy with a frog in his throat. And then, there is his not-so-private life: marriages, divorces and affairs with some of the world's most beautiful women - Bond girls, movie stars and supermodels - and a brush with cancer which very nearly saw it all slip away. Rod's is an incredible life, and here, thrillingly and for the first time, he tells the whole thing, leaving no knickers under the bed. A rollicking rock 'n' roll adventure that is at times deeply moving, this is the remarkable journey of a guy with one hell of a voice - and one hell of a head of hair.


".amiably and self-knowingly told... the tone pitched right and the jokes good.He writes articulately about music: where a drummer sits on the beat, or what makes a song bombproof. It's the work of someone who really knows his craft, and loves it." Guardian "Behind the rock'n'roll persona, vividly portrayed in his new memoir, is a self deprecating man of manners...highly entertaining." The Sunday Times "Quite the life you've led... the stories in here, I mean, I blushed a little" Graham Norton "It really is a rollercoaster ride...It's a proper book. It's not frothy. It's not candy flossy...It is no holds barred. You wrote it yourself, it's so obvious. It's your voice all the way through" Chris Evans "...the book is funny, vivid and even, at times, self-critical..." Daily Telegraph