The Big Read: Rod Stewart

Rod Stewart pictured last year in Las Vegas.

Bringing you our favourite features from 2014. If you missed them the first time around, now’s the perfect time to catch up. And remember to come back tomorrow for the next instalment.

Fresh from the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and a Vegas residency, Rod Stewart is returning to New Zealand. He talks to Russell Baillie about his hilarious autobiography and his best album of self-penned stories in ages.

Where are you? In Vegas?

I'm in ... . Florida. I'm out in Palm Beach, Florida.

It sounded that you had to check.

I'm actually having my hair cut. My hairdresser is just cutting my hair as I talk to you.

Can I suggest a whole new style?

No, too late for that. It won't go anywhere else but what it does do, is it has to stand up.

You're coming back to New Zealand. Is that like coming to visit 10,000 ex-in-laws?

No, not at all. Mate, it's funny you should say that because my daughter Renee is leaving in a couple of days to come down there to shoot a commercial.

Compliments on last year's book - it was hilarious - and the album too. They were two out of the bag.

Thank you. The book was really funny, wasn't it?

It was terrific. What's brought on this purple patch?

It's like all careers. It has its ups and downs and no one's career, no matter what business you are in, is plain sailing all the way. I started putting the book together and that inspired me through people I was talking to, friends and family, and I realised I had quite a lot to write about.

So the book the fed the album

Yes.

Rod: The Autobiography.

Some of the songs on Time, like It's Over, are brutally honest too.

I didn't set out to be as honest and as frank as I could. I firmly believe that is the way you should write songs. There is nothing there that has exposed me or that people didn't know about me. My life has been an open book. There is nothing in there I am embarrassed about. I wrote a song about divorce, one about my dad and one about my first love affair.

There's a fine line between sentimentality, nostalgia and insight and those songs tread that line quite well.

They do. There is nothing wrong with all of those three. If you can get them all in one song there is nothing wrong with that at all. If it gets to people's hearts, then you have done the job.

Which is what some of the standards you did on the four American Songbook albums have long done.

Everybody knows those songs. They all grew up with them. I never dreamed in a million years they would sell. I think we're up to 26 million worldwide. It really is a phenomenon. I did it as a labour of love. But the outcome and success is baffling. ...

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- nzherald.co.nz