by Rod Stewart
At the beginning of the 1985–6 season it was politely suggested to Lionel, a music publisher by day, that his best playing days were behind him and that he should concentrate on management. Concentrate he did. From here on, Lionel’s assistant in the office was solemnly told that all calls relating to football should be given priority over calls about music publishing. Simultaneously, a revolutionary approach to recruitment was put in place. Lionel had noticed that the British expats weren’t an entirely reliable source of playing staff: one week they would be there, and the next they wouldn’t because they had been clobbered by immigration.
So Lionel began scouting for squad reinforcements among a more stable talent pool: the indigenous students at UCLA. Some of these guys were in the college soccer team and playing at national student level, and some of them would eventually graduate to Major League Soccer, but Lionel would entice them by the simple measure of paying them. Out of his own pocket, I should add. Appearance fees, win-bonuses, goal-bonuses – whatever it took. There was one season when Lionel estimated that he had sunk $30,000 into wages for the Exiles.
The Exiles duly prospered, reaching the semi-final of a US national cup competition in New York. I was unable to play because of a concert in Atlanta the previous night, but I flew up the coast the following morning, arriving near half-time, with the score level at 1–1 and everything to play for against a side of rather frighteningly focused expat Greeks. Unfortunately, I had brought with me, to share the big-match excitement from a seat on the bench, two strippers of my acquaintance from the fabled Atlanta Gold Club, a popular post-show haunt for me and the band in those times. Despite being off work, neither of these women had chosen to wear much – and certainly not much in the way of skirts. Fatally distracted, the Exiles fell 4–1 behind and had two men sent off, bringing the glorious cup run to an end. I still blame myself.
God, could we take ourselves seriously, though. I had heard about these vitamin injections: B12 shots. They were supposed to do marvellous things for energy levels. So I arranged for a doctor to come up, pre-match, and administer them to the entire squad. This produced a memorable scene: the team lined up, shorts around ankles, as the doctor moved from one backside to the next with his syringes. Did it make a difference? Not one little bit. But you have to experiment with these things if there’s any chance that they could yield that vital extra 1 per cent.
That said, fitness tended to take a back seat after games. Victory and defeat alike were toasted in high style, and several squad members down the years ended up with DUIs on their records as a result of the imbibing they did after Exiles games. The team’s favoured post-match cocktail was the Mudslide: vodka, coffee liqueur and Baileys. We would get them lined up on the bar, but no one was allowed to touch them until the drinks had been blessed with the singing of the official Mudslide anthem: ‘Mudslides, mudslides . . .’, sung to the tune of ‘Amazing Grace’. And any excuse for an awards dinner was eagerly taken – black tie for preference, and nearly always round at my place in Carolwood Drive, with trophies, speeches, the works.
The Exiles were extreme, laddish, deluded, obsessed to the point of madness and, as far as I was concerned, along with the sunshine, one of the best things about living in LA.
The other big asset I owed to Lionel – and, again, it played no small part in my eventual complete assimilation into America – was access to English football on television. Lionel had one of the first satellite television systems, involving a ridiculous nine-foot-wide dish parked in his garden. This vast plate of metal looked as though it ought to be contacting Mars but was actually just beaming football games from England. It was supposed to be for bars, but somehow Lionel had wangled it for his home use, and I got him to wangle it for me, as well. The signal, I think, was being bounced from London to Ireland, from Ireland to Canada and from Canada to Los Angeles, and on one out of three matches the chain would break somewhere on the journey and the picture would go down, leaving Lionel and I ringing each other up in frustration. ‘Have you got it? ‘No. Have you?’
These days there is more English football on American television than there is on English television. When I arrived in the country, there was nothing. An early method of keeping in touch during the big games involved ringing my dad in London. He would then carefully position the phone receiver next to a radio broadcasting the commentary. This, of course, resulted in alarmingly high phone bills. However, the bills were so alarmingly high that I would sometimes be able to ring the phone company and say, ‘I think this must be an error. There’s an entry on here for an international call lasting more than an hour and a half . . .’ And the phone company would agree that it did indeed seem most unlikely, and deduct the charge.
The absence of football bit deepest in the first months of 1975 when, in order to qualify as a tax exile, I was obliged to spend twelve months outside the United Kingdom and was not even allowed a fleeting visit. Accordingly, I may be one of a very small number of people who have flown 5,000 miles from Los Angeles to Ireland specifically in order to watch Scotland on telly. It was for the annual Home Championship game: England v. Scotland at Wembley. No way was I going to miss it. I invited the family in England to join me in a Dublin hotel and turned the occasion into a reunion party. Final score: 5–1 to England. Quite a long way to go for a pasting, I guess. Indeed, if you break it down, I had travelled 1,000 miles per England goal. Ah, well. It was good to see my family.
Fortunately, by the time Scotland got round to exacting their revenge, beating England 2–1 at Wembley it was the summer of 1977 and I was free to travel to Britain again. That precious victory over the Auld Enemy on their own turf caused thousands of Scotland fans to pour over the advertising hoardings onto the pitch after the game. The scenes would become notorious when a fan called Alex Torrance was filmed climbing onto one of the crossbars and briefly sitting astride it before it snapped, duly triggering a serious debate in the media about whether this was perfectly acceptable elation or outright football hooliganism. My own feeling was that it was elation, but then I speak as someone who was on the Wembley pitch at the time.
I said to my dad, as everybody ran forward on the final whistle, ‘I’m going on.’ He said, ‘No, you’re not.’ Too late. At the edge of the pitch a policeman stopped me. I lifted the hat I was wearing and showed my face a bit more. The policeman looked a little more closely and said, ‘Oh, it’s you. On you go then, I suppose.’ And on I ran.
Great to feel the fabled turf beneath one’s feet, although, to be honest, once you were on there, there wasn’t a lot to do really, except bounce around a bit with some blokes who were possibly even more pissed than you were. However, mid-bounce, I suddenly found myself grabbed and hoisted upwards, and the next thing I knew I was on somebody’s shoulders, being carried aloft in triumph. So touching.
Back in the stand, I went to see what the time was and found only a naked wrist where my Cartier watch had been. Mugged! Not long after, though, a kind gentleman in Edinburgh got in touch to say that he thought he had my watch. As indeed he had. The watch was returned in full working order and nothing further was said about the matter. That’s the brilliance of Scottish football fans; the best in the world, by common consent. Even when they’re dishonest, it’s not for long.
Other fans that day didn’t get off so lightly. Charges were pressed against a number of supporters who had torn up patches of the Wembley turf to take home as souvenirs. But in the marvellous words of one of those grass thieves, who defended himself in court: ‘Yous haven’t got a team, so yous dinnae need a pitch.’
I continued to play for the Exiles as often as I could right through the early 1990s, until age caught up with me and I was obliged to seek a team in an older league. And in all those years of service, I don’t remember once being made a target on account of who I was, or getting clattered by an opponent just for the hell of it. Indeed, the only time that ever happened to me was back in dear old Blighty, on the pitches at Highgate Woods, circa 1971, just
as I was beginning to get famous. A guy came crashing into me at a corner, gave my nose an almighty clunk with his elbow, left me face down in the mud and said, ‘Why don’t you stick to fucking singing?’ In football, this is what is known as ‘letting the opponent know you’re there.’ My dad, less than sympathetic, and perhaps not entirely up on the latest medical breakthroughs, suggested brown paper and vinegar for the wound. That was when my nose acquired the distinguished shape it so nobly retains today.
Fully forty years later, in 2011, a surgeon offered to straighten the hooter. He reckoned he could insert two fingers into the nostrils and crack it back into place, rectifying the damage. ‘But it might change your voice,’ he added.
Somehow I found it in myself to say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
CHAPTER 15
In which our hero falls heavily for a supermodel, buys another house and meditates on the effects and advantages of big hair; and of matters variously frivolous and disturbing.
SO, IN SEPTEMBER 1983, after a busy day of failed subterfuge involving a model in a leather jacket, Rupert Murdoch and a mildly delayed flight on Concorde, I eventually headed out for a dinner in New York, arranged under slightly false pretences, with Kelly Emberg.
The date was for 8.30. As time wore on, Kelly was lying on her bed in her apartment in Greenwich Village, with her dress on, thinking of giving up and going to sleep.
Finally at around ten, I call up from the lobby. When she steps out of the elevator I perform a running jump and arrive at her feet on my knees. She says, ‘Who do you think you are – Rod Stewart?’ And in that moment I realise that I am already pretty hooked on Kelly Emberg.
We go to Christos Steak House on E. 49th, one of those old, traditional, former Mafia haunts, with blood-red leather booths and pictures of Lana Turner on the walls. She is a 24-year-old supermodel and I am 38-year-old singer and she only really knows roughly what I look like from one of her sister’s albums – has a vague prior impression of sticky-up hair and a big nose. She is the face of a hundred magazine covers from Vogue to Cosmopolitan, not to mention a veteran of that great annual work of sporting literature, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. She poses for a living, and yet she is so natural and sweet and just about the least affected person I have met in my life. Texan, as it happens, like Alana. I seem to have developed a thing for Texans.
At one point the conversation threatens to get bogged down slightly when I move on to that famous first-date-clinching topic, writer’s block. Always wows ’em. Or maybe not. What can I say? I was really beginning to suffer with it at that time and it was in my mind a lot. I would taunt myself with questions: why weren’t songs coming? Where was the material? When was the last time I had written anything good? I used to beat myself up about it all the time.
Still, Kelly doesn’t seem too put off. She certainly doesn’t start looking round the room distractedly while I’m talking about it. Nor does she begin yawning loudly, humming, or making animal shapes out of her napkin.
After dinner, we drive back to her apartment and I walk her to the elevator. I say, ‘Can’t I come up?’ And she says, ‘No, you can’t.’ And I say, ‘I just thought maybe I could.’ And she says, ‘No, you can’t.’ So I plead with her to let me see her tomorrow. But she says she is busy. She’s going to Pennsylvania where she is in the middle of doing up a house and someone is coming to give her an estimate for some work. And I say, ‘Please don’t go. Cancel it. I’ll call you.’ And she laughs and gets into the elevator.
And then I drive back to the Mayfair Regent and a hotel suite containing a slumbering Kara Meyers.
Dear Lord. Who did I think I was? Rod Stewart?
* * *
The following morning, Kelly waited until eleven, gave me up as a hopeless case and caught a bus to Pennsylvania. I didn’t call until one and, in any case, I had a wife to fly home to in Los Angeles and a photograph inside the New York Post to discuss. (It mostly showed Kara Meyers’ very long legs disappearing into a taxi, but the evidence was substantially incriminating.)
Nevertheless, I was intent. I called again the next day. Kelly told me she was going to Dallas to do a catalogue shoot. I told her I would be there. She laughed and said, ‘I’m not holding my breath.’ I flew there for no other reason at all and checked into the Mansion on Turtle Creek Hotel. She was in the Best Western. I rang her and said, ‘Come and stay over here. It’s nicer.’ She said, ‘I’m not staying in your room.’ I said, ‘I’ll get you a room of your own.’
I booked her a room and left in it a bouquet of flowers the size of a hedge, and a note: ‘For the fabulous one.’ And when I knew she had moved her stuff across from the Best Western, I knocked on the door and got ready so that when she opened it I was down on my knees on the threshold, offering in my outstretched hands a toilet roll and saying, ‘For you.’
Even in Dallas we ended up having dinner and fun and nothing else. I had to court her. She had a boyfriend and she took a lot of persuading to leave him. Over the next weeks, I called her constantly. I would find out where she was working and turn up there and surprise her. I went to photographers’ studios and blagged my way in. I gatecrashed the shoot for a Maybelline commercial and sat at the back trying to distract her. And then I would persuade her to come out to lunch or dinner, or just walk around with her, saying stupid stuff. ‘You see this crack in the pavement? We may never have this moment with it again.’
I was head over heels. She was so together. She took flights – on her own. I never did this. There was always an assistant with me. Never a bodyguard, because I have never felt I needed one of those, but always someone alongside me. And sometimes she would go to the cinema by herself. Again, I couldn’t have imagined doing that. She had this fabulous way of talking on a laugh, she was always up, she was as sentimental as anything; she was clearly someone who didn’t have a bad bone in her body. At dinner one time, even before we had consummated the relationship, I told her, ‘I think I’m going to marry you.’ She said, ‘Are you crazy? That’s completely nuts.’ But I really thought it.
Eventually we were an item. For two years, our relationship was long-distance, split between New York and LA. Kelly had her career and she had her apartment in Manhattan and she was too smart and organised to set it all aside casually. But even in that period, the longest we went without seeing each other was ten days. In New York we would go to the theatre and hang out with her model friends, Kim Alexis and Christie Brinkley. Which was no particular hardship, I have to say. And then, at the weekend in LA, she would come to watch me play football and go out with the boys afterwards and we would drink Mudslides until we were cross-eyed. She never had any problem being around my friends, nor with any of the raucousness and stupidity that would frequently break out. The boys in the band adored her, welcoming her warmly to the Under the Table Supper Club (a formal dining society in which, at various points in the evening, everyone would slide under the table and hide from the waiter). The band also had a bit of a thing at this time for dining in restaurants trouser-less – and occasionally, it must be admitted, underwear-less – with nudity concealed from the waiter and other diners by the tablecloth. And Kelly seemed perfectly comfortable with that, too. Nothing fazed her.
This was the 1980s, the era of big hair. It was simply in the air at that time: the circumference of your hairdo expanded by at least four inches in about 1982 and stayed that way for three or four years, whether you wanted it to or not. It was something to do with the economy, probably. Anyway, my hair had certainly never been bigger than it was in 1983. Kelly, too, when I first saw her on the screen in Portfolio, had truly massive hair. She didn’t always wear it that way, though. And when she didn’t, I would spend a lot of time teasing it and fluffing it, trying to make it bigger. It seemed to me just wrong to be living in the 1980s and not trying to maximise the bigness of your hair.
We began spending a lot of time together in England. I hadn’t owned a house there since I had sold Cranbourne Court, the giant c
ountry pile where I had lived with Dee Harrington until the mid 1970s. I had kept that house for a little while after I moved to America and members of my family had gone to live there and look after it. But it was way too big – possibly even dangerously big. One day my sister Mary went up in the attic and accidentally knocked the ladder down behind her. And, my parents being pretty deaf by then and the house being so huge, Mary couldn’t attract anybody’s attention and was stranded up there for hours. It could have been the last we ever saw of her.
This was the period when my dad had access to my former driver, Big Cyril, and to my six-door, tinted-windowed Rolls-Royce, which had once belonged to Andrew Loog Oldham, the former manager and producer of the Rolling Stones. Dad would depart from Cranbourne Court in his suit, tie and carpet slippers and, driven by Big Cyril, head for the betting shop in Ascot. Or at least that’s what he did until the day he landed a really stinky bet, copping several thousand pounds on a tiny stake, and was quietly advised by the management (who now suspected him of being some kind of insider) that they no longer wished for his business. If Dad couldn’t use the bookies in Ascot, then Cranbourne Court really had lost its purpose.
In 1986, though, in the pages of Country Life magazine, I found the Wood House, a lovely late nineteenth-century English manor house in the countryside not far north of London. It stood in what had once been the vast estate belonging to Copped Hall, now derelict and away on the horizon, a huge mansion and a former hospital for wounded army officers. This part of Essex had been Winston Churchill’s constituency when he was an MP, and the legend was that he had stayed at the Wood House and that during the Second World War he had stood at its upstairs windows and watched German bombing raids on London, back when I was a newborn and Adolf Hitler was at the end of his tether, trying and failing to kill me.