Sir Rod Stewart is set to perform on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury next year. At 80, he will be rocking his signature spikey hair and raspy voice to the legends slot on Sunday afternoon, where he has promised to “take the stage again to pleasure and titillate”.
Stewart has said he will be ending his run of “large scale world tours” after his fittingly named One Last Tour shows next year. But Rod the Mod is insistent that this won’t be the end of his performing days. “I have no desire to retire. I love what I do, and I do what I love,” Stewart posted on Instagram. “I’m fit, have a full head of hair, and can run 100 metres in 18 seconds at the jolly age of 79.”
The rock singer last headlined Glastonbury in 2002, alongside Coldplay and Stereophonics, where he played plenty of his greatest hits – and most famous covers. Some of them are bound to turn up again 23 years later, and even the festival’s younger attendees will probably have heard some of these classics.
It might be a confusing name to younger listeners, given that the proverbial young Turks never get a mention in the lyrics – hence why this 1981 song is sometimes referred to as “Young Hearts Be Free”.
The music video is semi iconic, featuring young people dancing around Los Angeles getting up to rebellious things like synchronised dancing, jaywalking and jumping on cars. Its new wave synth-pop sound should translate nicely to a sunny afternoon at Glasto.
Stewart once said that he’d consider cutting his 1978 hit Hot Legs from his setlists because it was a “shagging song”. But presumably never went through with it because that’s the theme of an awful lot of his songs. Anyway, Hot Legs is a timeless tale about a booty call, where a leggy young (potentially, uh, too young) girl is coming round to have her wicked way with Stewart. The music video is equally objectifying. It’s aged a lot more poorly than Stewart.
The First Cut is the Deepest
Originally a Cat Stevens song, Stewart’s 1977 cover spent four weeks at the top of the UK charts. There’s no particular romance attached to the song for Stewart. “I didn’t write it; I just made it famous,” he told the Times in 2018. Although he did admit his heart was first broken when his 24-years-younger second wife, model Rachel Hunter, left him in 1999.
It caused a hullabaloo back in the day, not for the saucy lyrics but because Stewart dared to do (gasp) disco in 1978. Intended as something of a spoof, it’s a loving send up of Saturday Night Fever and a clarion call for chirpsing each other at the club. Stewart did get dinged for some – he says unintentional – plagiarism when Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor pointed out the chorus sounded awfully familiar. Stewart had in fact heard his song, Taj Mahal, at Rio Carnival. It was all settled amicably, and Stewart donated the royalties to UNICEF.
Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)
While not Stewart’s most overtly horny songs, this 1975 love song did get the singer into hot water over it’s suggestive lyrics. “C’mon angel, my heart’s on fire/Don’t deny your man’s desire/You’d be a fool to stop this tide/Spread your wings and let me come inside.” The BBC initially banned the song from the air before being forced to lift the ban in response to public demand.
Another number one for Stewart came with his 1983 song Baby Jane, a ballad about getting dumped by a woman who is off to mix in better company. Stewart wrote the number himself, and it shows off his vocal range with some cracking instrumentals that include a fabulous sax solo.
This wasn’t an initial winner for Stewart when he first released it in 1969. But when it became the theme song for The Office in the Noughties it saw a resurgence in popularity, and even got its own cover from Stereophonics. Now it’s a core part of Stewart’s setlist; he even opened his last Glastonbury performance with it.
This 1991 Stewart cover is a rousing crowd pleaser thanks to canny use of the Scottish favourite Loch Lomand, complete with a bagpipes solo. It went to number one in Canada and Ireland. While Stewart is English-born, he is a big fan of Celtic football team – and Scotland’s hospitality.
Another cover that proved a hit for Stewart, this time of The Sutherland Brothers 1972 song Sailing. It was Stewart’s biggest UK hit and charted around the world. Recording the song at the ungodly hour of 10.30am was reportedly a challenge for the rocker. “I’d never sung anything in a studio without having a drink – let alone a big old anthem. And I’d never sung anything, anywhere that early in the morning,” he recalled in his 2012 memoir. “Got it in six or seven takes though.“
The song that launched Stewart’s solo career in 1971, Maggie May remains one of his best known and best loved hits. Originally a B-side, it spent five weeks at the top of the UK charts.
The theme – a young man being seduced away from his studies by an older woman – would probably cause a lot of discourse about problematic age gap relationships and grooming were it released today. Stewart has said the inspiration for the song came from his first sexual experience at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in 1961 at the tender age of 16. “I lost my not-remotely-prized virginity with an older (and larger) woman who’d come on to me very strongly in the beer tent,” he wrote in his 2012 memoir. “How much older, I can’t tell you, but old enough to be highly disappointed by the brevity of the experience.”
Still, despite the dodgy lyrics and backstory, it’s a banger of a tune.