by Rod Stewart
The place had rolling lawns and a lake and a paddock for horses and a large amount of privacy and, crucially, a flat-ish area off to one side which my trained eye immediately told me would lend itself to a long-imagined and deeply personal project of mine: the creation of a full-size football pitch. I bought it and we moved in, and I still remember the first meal Kelly and I ate in this newly acquired home, sitting in the bay window of a gorgeous, broad, wood-panelled room, with just a few items of furniture in boxes and wrappings around us, plus the snooker table that the owners had left behind, and, ahead of us, the exciting and romantic (if slightly expensive) prospect of making this place our own.
So, if everything was so perfect and so well set up, why did I end up floating off and fooling around with another woman? The woman was Kelly LeBrock, the film actress. It was nothing serious, just a fling. She invited me to a film premiere and I, by way of return, invited her to join me on a boating trip to Catalina Island whereupon a certain amount of alcohol was imbibed and relations of an intimate nature ensued. We decided afterwards that the outing had been such a success that we really ought to repeat it. And she was a lovely woman, a rose raised in England, and very fastidious about intimate cleanliness, as I recall. As soon as anything got going in that direction, one would be packed straight off to the showers, quicker than in a boarding school after games. But it was all conducted lightly, in the spirit of seizing the day and other things – altogether typical of the dalliances I used to have. When it came to beautiful women, I was a tireless seeker after experiences. ‘Miss Inbetweens’ was the phrase I had for them. And Miss Inbetweens would arise because the opportunity came very easily to me, and because the opportunity looked like fun, and because in those days I simply didn’t know how to resist. And also because I thought I could get away with it.
I’m not trying to cover myself in excuses here, but this was Kelly LeBrock. She was the star of the movie The Woman in Red. And what was The Woman in Red about if not the complete irresistibility of Kelly LeBrock? If, in the mid 1980s, you could have found me a solitary heterosexual man of sound mind, married, attached or single, who would have declined the opportunity to spend some time on a boat with Kelly LeBrock if he thought he could get away with it, I would have . . . well, I would have looked that person right in the eye and shaken him firmly by the hand because he was obviously a better man than me.
It turned out that I couldn’t get away with it, though. Kelly found out about Kelly. Kelly Emberg and I were eating at the Ivy in LA. Kelly LeBrock, whom I had not seen for some time, was on another table. Kelly LeBrock, daringly, perhaps even provocatively, sent the waiter over with a message. (Remember: this was an era long before the invention of texting.) On the scrap of paper, she had written, ‘I miss you.’ And Kelly (Emberg) read it.
Short of being found actually in flagrante (which, astonishingly, never happened to me: I wonder what odds you could have got on that), I could hardly have been caught more red-handed. And let me tell you, if you haven’t been there, after a hand-written note revealing your affair has been dropped onto a table in front of your girlfriend, then take it from me that it’s very difficult to find something appropriate and calming to say. You can’t really sit there and say, ‘Trust me, in a few years’ time we’ll look back and laugh about this.’ Nor can you very well fold the piece of paper back up again, drop it on your empty plate and say, ‘Well. Anyway. Coffee?’ I simply started up the usual train of utterly see-through denials and protestations of innocence, which continued as we left.
The worst of it was that, a year or so before this happened, Kelly E. had been offered a part in a John Hughes movie – had accepted it and gone through the whole rehearsal process, right up to the point of shooting the thing, only to be taken off the picture because another actress had suddenly become available. The film was called Weird Science and the actress who replaced Kelly was called . . . Kelly LeBrock. Kelly E. was not the sort of person to carry a grudge; in fact, she was the precise opposite of that sort of person. But I don’t suppose her feelings about my secret affair were especially improved by the coincidence.
Kelly went back to New York, extremely betrayed, confused and upset. I realised I had been an idiot to risk losing her and began calling her and pleading with her. trying to charm her into coming back. She stopped taking my calls, which drove me even more insane. I was on the phone to her assistant in tears at least a couple of times. Eventually I got to speak to her again, and I told her that I had been a fool and that I was serious about her and that nothing like that would happen again and that we should go to Spain that weekend and make everything better. She was meant to be doing a photo shoot for Tom Ford, but I persuaded her to drop it and come to Spain with me. While we were there we patched things up. And we decided we would have a baby, which would pull us together like we were supposed to be.
The conception may even have happened there and then, in sunny Spain. At any rate, towards the end of 1986, Kelly was pregnant. Pregnant with a girl. We both knew as much. Well, we didn’t know it. But we both said it. Kelly wanted to call her Ruby. I had a small problem with that. In cockney rhyming slang, the ancient vernacular of my home city, a ‘ruby’ is a curry: Ruby Murray – curry. So you might say, ‘Shall we eat in tonight, or shall we go out for a ruby?’ As I explained this to Kelly, I could see from the blank expression on her face that the confusion was unlikely to arise in America. Nor in many other places, really. And it was, I had to agree, a very pretty name. I set my objection aside. Ruby it was.
We went to tell Kelly’s parents. There I was, going down to Texas to inform some Texans I had never met that I was having a child out of wedlock with their daughter. I figured I would be lucky to get away without being shot or lynched, or possibly both at the same time. In fact, they were nice, understanding people. Kelly’s father was a giant, but gentle with it, fortunately. Her mother was more formidable – and had an amazing singing voice, as it turned out. Some years later we were in the Ritz hotel in New York for the new year, and she got up and sang and the hotel offered her a contract for a residency, on the spot. She declined it. Anyway, at that first meeting, I turned on the charm. There was talk of marriage, which seemed to settle a few nerves. And I meant it.
On 17 June 1987, at six in the morning, Kelly went into labour and we rushed in a panic to Cedars-Sinai hospital only to be told that the baby wasn’t going to arrive for at least another twelve hours. I was in the middle of shooting a video, so we agreed that I might as well go away and get on with it during this intermission and then come back to the hospital in the evening for the main event. At the video shoot, a few glasses were quaffed to celebrate the baby in advance, so I was in somewhat enthusiastic spirits when I returned to the hospital that evening. I had dutifully gone with Kelly to what seemed to me like several hundred birthing classes – done the breathing exercises, watched the videos, bought the pre-maternity T-shirt, you name it – so I considered myself amply prepared for the important events that were about to unfold. However, as I moved confidently towards the bed, a member of the medical staff put a firm hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Stand back, Mr Stewart. We’ll take over from here.’ Cost me hundreds of dollars, those classes.
And out came the lovely Ruby – with a broken clavicle, poor thing. And a conehead like you’ve never seen. Although maybe you have seen it because a member of the honourable fellowship of British press photographers managed to get into the hospital and photograph our newborn infant in her cot. Welcome to the world, Ruby.
Early the next morning, ecstatic, underslept and slightly hung-over, I rang Jim Cregan and bestowed upon him his first sacred duty as Ruby’s future godfather: to come down to the hospital with some bacon sandwiches because we were starving. Jim has yet completely to forgive me for making him walk through the corridors of one of Los Angeles’ most famously Jewish institutions smelling strongly of fried pork.
* * *
As the 1980s began, I faced musical challenges on a number of
fronts. As far as music critics were concerned, I was about as welcome as a hole in a parachute. ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ and the surrounding hoopla had convinced the music writers that I had been led astray for ever by the glitter of the disco ball and the Hollywood lifestyle and was irredeemable. It was only a pop record, of course, but if you had picked up a music paper at this time you would have thought I had opened a chemicals factory that was poisoning the water supply in a deprived area of the world.
I think I can put my hand up to a bit of a loss of focus at that time – say 1979 to 1981. I’m not entirely sure what the root causes were, but I suspect that too many late nights, too much partying, too much booze and a few too many dabs of recreational cocaine might have had something to do with it. Certainly the unignorable sign that things were awry was that although I had always been a bit of a stickler for punctuality in the workplace (and remain so today), in those turn-of-the-decade years, sessions were commonly booked for two in the afternoon and if I was there by five the band felt unusually blessed. It all went a bit fuzzy at the edges for a while, and when I eventually snapped to, a certain amount of slippage had taken place.
How would I have rationalised this behaviour to myself at the time? I think I would have felt that, as a rock star, I had an awful lot of drinking, shagging and general carrying-on to get done. And there are only so many hours in the day. If other aspects of the rock-star role – such as songwriting or rehearsing, say – were put to one side for a little while, then that was only inevitable, given the constraints of time that all of us face in our working lives.
And, incidentally, I never thought in this period that the ‘being a rock star’ aspect of being a rock star was beside the point, or even something I needed to apologise for. On the contrary, it seemed to me a) where an awful lot of the fun was, and b) exactly what one had signed up for in the first place. That was the deal, surely. If I hadn’t considered the drinking/shagging/carrying-on to be at least a part of my terms of employment – and if I hadn’t done my best to hold my end up as nobly as possible in those areas – I would have felt I was letting down the union.
Still, was this slightly loose approach to my business as a singer and recording artist reflected in any of my output as the 1970s blurred into the 1980s? Please do draw your own conclusions. (The relevant albums are available in the foyer after this performance for anyone who wants to conduct a critical re-evaluation.) All I can report is that ‘Passion’, on the Foolish Behaviour album, has the distinction of being my mum’s least favourite song of any that I wrote. In other words, it was a song not even a mother could love. And this was an area in which she tended to be pretty loyal.
Indeed, late in her life I took her to the Wimbledon Theatre to see a performance by Max Bygraves, whom she adored. Max very kindly came to meet her in her box before the show, and said, ‘Elsie, is there any particular song you would like me to sing for you tonight?’ And my mum said, ‘Can you do “Sailing”?’
Exit Max Bygraves, looking a little crestfallen.
Foolish Behaviour was recorded (like a fair bit of my stuff) at the Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles, where, very typically for the period, we had a lock-in and a seemingly limitless budget from the record company. That’s not always a recipe for creativity. Immediately, you’re thinking, ‘What’s the hurry? It’s not my money that’s being spent here.’ But, of course, it is your money in the end, because the record company is going to spoil the fun by deducting it from your royalties. Nevertheless, you don’t really think about that very hard at the time. Instead, you think, ‘Brilliant, a studio to play around in for as long as we need. Let’s spend fourteen days programming the drum machine.’ My recollection is that we were in there, recording Foolish Behaviour, for many years on end – although, to be honest, with the lapsing of time, I could be running a few albums together here. However, I do recall how there were doors at the back of the Record Plant for loading the gear into the studio, and that I grew very preoccupied, in a very coke-sozzled sort of way, with wondering whether I could get my Lamborghini through them. And happy days, because it turned out that I could. The car remained parked in the studio for about a week, as I recall, until I needed it to go home. We kind of recorded around it.
The fact was, I had been releasing solo albums at the rate of one a year for just over a decade. Foolish Behaviour was my tenth studio album, not including the four that I made with the Faces, an output that would have most of today’s young Johnnies on their backs and gasping for mercy. It’s not really surprising that the demand of getting a new album out annually, while being on the road for six months in the interim, was starting to tell and that a few threadbare patches were in evidence around the elbows.
I mentioned earlier my fear of the empty seat. On tour in 1981 and 1982, I was seeing a few of them. In America, I could always pull good crowds on the coasts. But in the 1970s I had grown used to filling venues across the middle of the country, too, and now those audiences seemed to be on the wane. So this needed addressing. If you lose the middle like that, you’re in trouble, because then the whole idea of doing a national arena tour becomes unsustainable and you have to go back to theatres – no big productions, no huge stage sets, no massive lighting rigs. And then, perhaps, it’s goodbye planes and hello tour buses. Could I have seen myself clambering back on a tour bus at this point in my career? Well, I’m sure I would have done it if I’d had to. But let’s just say I’d rather not have had to, if the option were there.
And I loved arena shows. I loved the scale of them, the theatricality of them, the atmosphere at them, the pure showbusiness of them. It was very fashionable at this time, among my peers, to deride stadiums and sports halls as places for rock music, to say they lacked intimacy and were emotionless and had no soul. My argument was the opposite of that. I reckoned that, if they felt cold and soulless, it was because you weren’t doing them right – weren’t using the theatricality, weren’t working hard enough to engage the audience and set the place properly on fire. I would have been gutted not to have been able to play arenas.
From September 1983 I was under new management and ready to roll up my sleeves. Quite literally: the rolled-up, or at any rate pushed-back, jacket sleeve was a big look at this time. Arnold, my new manager, worked up a strategy to try to point my recording career in the right direction; and, to get the touring side back on track, he brought in Randy Phillips, who was previously a music promoter at Stanford University and later the chief executive of AEG Live.
One of Arnold’s first moves was to enter into the lengthy period of diplomacy with Jeff Beck’s manager that ultimately brokered Jeff’s appearance – as mentioned in that earlier chapter – on the track ‘Infatuation’ from the Camouflage album, which came out in 1984, and then subsequently on the tour. Those negotiations were only slightly less complicated than developing a peace plan for the Middle East. Jeff, as we know, didn’t stick out the tour. But with ‘Infatuation’ I had a bona fide rock hit and a fairly emphatic statement, for anyone who needed one, that my so-called ‘disco era’ was over. Camouflage also contained a cover of Jeff Fortgang’s ‘Some Guys Have All the Luck’, which I had heard Robert Palmer do, and fancied a stab at, throwing in a little hook from Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry’s ‘Ain’t Got No Home’ for good measure, just to keep rhythm and blues fans on their toes. Even if the song hadn’t been good, I probably would have had to record it, just so that headline writers could use the title in stories about me.
The rhythm now became two years between albums, rather than one, which seemed a little less reckless and altogether more amenable. So two years separated Camouflage from Every Beat of My Heart in 1986 (or The Rod Stewart Album as it was imaginatively known in America). And the touring recovered. Every Beat of My Heart triggered the biggest tour of Europe I had ever done. And then Out of Order followed in 1988. I had sat back and left the production of records to others for a little while – mostly laziness on my part, if I’m being honest. Plus those guys were
getting paid a lot of money, so why not let them get on with it? But for Out of Order, I felt rejuvenated enough to get involved in that aspect of the process again. I co-produced it with Andy Taylor and Bernard Edwards. Bernard, of course, was a hero of mine, having been a member of Chic. Andy had been the guitarist in Duran Duran and, more recently, The Power Station. He and I wrote some good stuff together for that album. Actually, we wrote some good stuff apart, too. I remember shuffling off for weekly football practice one Wednesday night, and when I got back a couple of hours later, he had written the music for what became ‘Lost in You’. I added the lyrics.
The producers changed, but otherwise the usual rules applied. The band and I continued to arrive at the studio, at the beginning of an album, completely songless, and worked material up by bouncing ideas off each other in the sound room. And we continued to commence our recording sessions with a statutory stint in the bar next door. Indeed, the Entourage, the bar beside the Record Plant in its former location on West Third Street, became known as Studio E and we were in there so much that Chris Stone, the owner of the studio, eventually arranged to run a direct phone line between the control room and the bar. Chris then went one step further and constructed a pub for us inside the Record Plant itself, complete with bar stools, a pub piano and a dartboard. It was called The Dog and Clit. A snifter or two, and then one would adjourn to the control room.
This could easily look, from the outside, like shoddy or even unprofessional behaviour. But let me tell you, some of the best work of those days was done in the pub beforehand. Sometimes we would be able to compose entire songs in there, simply by discussing them. ‘Why don’t you do this . . . and then I’ll do that . . . and then we’ll have a kind of whatsit underneath it . . .’ ‘Forever Young’, which was one of the most successful songs I recorded in this period, was composed almost entirely in the Dog and Clit. I had taken the title from the Dylan song, which I wanted to rework, and Jim Cregan, Kevin Savigar and I talked it all out and then went in the studio and recorded it.