Rod Stewart: Still The Same

(CBS)  When Rod Stewart played a sold out, one-night show at London's Royal Albert Hall, it was a victory lap of sorts. Complete with costume changes, a big band orchestra, and swooning women of all ages, Britain's bad boy of pop with the famous punked out hair, was performing in the hallowed halls of royalty.

Some could say that Stewart had arrived: he was reinventing himself as a crooner and selling tickets and albums as easily as he did thirty years before. He said he keeps himself motivated simply because he loves music.

"I mean I love it," he told Sunday Morning correspondent Elizabeth Kaleden. "That's why I don't want to retire. You'll have to push me overboard to get me out of the way."

Stewart got his start in the 1960's, but had grown up a wild lad from North London who's only goal in life was to play professional soccer. One of five children who's parent's owned a newsstand, he turned to singing on the streets when his father gave him a guitar one year. He never studied singing formally.

"When I was in school they used to have music lessons, I'd make out sick and runaway," he said. "The teacher, mean bastard that he was, used to pick on me 'cause I didn't know how to sing, so he'd make me sing in front of the class. He'd say 'come on Stewart, get up and sing this one lad.' Invariably, I'd be missing from school lessons."

Stewart said he figured out that he could sing in his unique raspy style when he was about 19 or 20. Heavily influenced by American R & B artists like Sam Cooke, Muddy Waters and Otis Redding, Stewart initially struggled to find his own style.

"I was getting turned down by all the record companies because they said my voice and my whole look was too rough," he said.

His early bands saw some success, but Stewart's luck really changed in 1971 with the hit that made him a household name: "Maggie May." It was a song he wrote about an ill-fated love affair with an older woman catapulted him to fame. To this day it remains one of a handful of songs to be a number one hit in both the United States and Britain at the same time.

Stewart's solo career took off with a long string of hits – and some misses – that captured the style of the 70s and 80's. He seemed to have a gift for moving effortlessly from genre to genre, taking hordes of smitten female fans with him.

His life became the stuff of tabloid legend and gossip magazines delved into his marriages and love affairs with a number of leggy blonde beauties, among the most famous, his ex-wife, model Rachel Hunter.

He pushed the envelope with his clothes and embraced the spandex-clad disco years with gusto.

"I'm proud of it," he said of his outfits of yesteryear.

But the disco years were hard on Stewart's image. Punk and new wave were the hot emerging sounds and Stewart's critics were unforgiving, proclaiming him a hack and a has-been. Still, his fans have always come to the rescue. "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" became his biggest selling single and through the 90's attendance at his live performances broke records.

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