Rod Stewart

• 1. A Beach Full of Strangers

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  Rod Stewart, the British singer with the raspy voice, stood on Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro on the 31st of December 1994 and sang to 3.5 million people. Nobody paid to get in. That crowd earned him an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest free rock concert attendance in history.

  Few performers ever face a sea of people that wide. This one has sold more than 120 million records worldwide, which places him among the best-selling music artists of all time.

  How does a voice like that travel from the streets of North London to a beach in Brazil? Why did a man who became famous inside other people's bands spend years singing other people's songs? And what did his rise cost the friends who started out beside him? The answers begin with a boy and his father's football dreams.

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• 2. Highgate Boyhood

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  Roderick David Stewart was born at home at 507 Archway Road in Highgate, North London, on the 10th of January 1945. He was the youngest of five children of Robert Joseph Stewart and Elsie Rebecca Gilbart, arriving eight years after his nearest sibling. His father was Scottish and had been a master builder in Leith, Edinburgh. His mother was English and had grown up in Upper Holloway. The couple married in 1928 and had two sons and two daughters in Scotland before moving south to Highgate.

  When Robert Stewart retired from the building trade, he bought a newsagent's shop on the Archway Road, and the family moved into the rooms above it. The household was neither rich nor poor. As the baby, Rod was spoiled, and he has called those years "fantastically happy". At Highgate Primary School his record was undistinguished, and he failed the eleven-plus exam. That sent him to William Grimshaw Secondary Modern School in Muswell Hill, later renamed Fortismere School.

  On the walls of the Stewart home hung pictures of the Scottish players George Young and Gordon Smith, put up by Rod's brothers. His father had played for a local amateur team and managed others. Rod was the most gifted footballer in the family and an Arsenal supporter. He played with natural athleticism and an almost reckless aggression, captained his school team, and appeared at centre-half for Middlesex Schoolboys. His quieter hobby was railway modelling.

  The family also adored the singer Al Jolson, and they sang and played his hits around the house. Rod collected his records, saw his films, read books about him, and took lessons from the way Jolson treated an audience. Rock and roll arrived in 1956 with Little Richard's "The Girl Can't Help It", and he later watched Bill Haley & His Comets in concert. In January 1959 his father bought him a guitar. The first song he learned was the folk tune "It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Worried Song". The first record he bought was Eddie Cochran's "C'mon Everybody". In 1960 he joined a skiffle group of school friends called the Kool Kats, which played songs by Lonnie Donegan and Chas McDevitt.

  Stewart left school at 15 and worked briefly as a silk-screen printer. His father pushed him toward professional football, and in the summer of 1960 he went for trials at Brentford, then a Third Division club. Some longstanding accounts say he signed there. In his 2012 autobiography he says he never did, and that the club never called him back. He weighed his options and decided, in his words, "I plumped for music". He joked that football and singing were the only two things he could do.

  That decision soon had him working briefly as a labourer at Highgate Cemetery, a job that became part of his personal legend.

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• 3. Busking and Beatniks

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  On Denmark Street in 1961, Stewart went with a group called the Raiders to audition for the well-known record producer Joe Meek. Meek ended the session by making a rude sound. Stewart kept earning money wherever he could, working in the family shop, delivering newspapers, and taking jobs at a North Finchley funeral parlour, as a fence erector, and as a sign writer.

  Folk music pulled him in next. He listened to Ewan MacColl, Alex Campbell, Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, the debut album of Bob Dylan, and above all Derroll Adams. He drifted toward beatnik attitudes and left-wing politics, and for a while he lived on a beatnik houseboat at Shoreham-by-Sea. From 1961 to 1963 he joined the annual Aldermaston Marches for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was arrested three times at sit-ins for the cause, at Trafalgar Square and Whitehall.

  In 1962 Stewart had his first serious relationship, with a London art student named Suzannah Boffey. He moved to a bed-sit in Muswell Hill to live near her. She became pregnant, but neither Rod nor his family wanted him to marry. The baby girl was given up for adoption, and the relationship ended.

  Also in 1962, Stewart began busking with the folk singer Wizz Jones at Leicester Square and other spots around London. Stewart took up the harmonica, which was fashionable then. Over the next 18 months the pair took their act to Brighton, then to Paris, where they slept under bridges over the River Seine, and finally to Barcelona. Spain deported Stewart for vagrancy in 1963. He had attended school with three members of the embryonic Kinks, and the band briefly considered him as their singer.

  In 1963 Stewart embraced the Mod lifestyle and started building the spiky rooster hairstyle that became his trademark. Sugar water or his sisters' hair lacquer, backcombing, and the pressure of his own hands kept it in place against the winds at Highgate Underground station. Disillusioned with rock and roll, he went to see Otis Redding in concert. That night pulled him toward rhythm and blues and soul, the music that would shape his next few years.

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• 4. Rod the Mod

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  In October 1963, Stewart joined a rhythm and blues group called the Dimensions as harmonica player and part-time vocalist. It was his first professional music job. He still lived at home and worked in his brother's painting and picture-frame shop. A few weeks later the Birmingham singer Jimmy Powell hired the group, which became Jimmy Powell & the Five Dimensions and included the bassist Louis Cennamo.

  The band played weekly at the famed Studio 51 club on Great Newport Street, where the Rolling Stones often headlined. That residency introduced Stewart to the London rhythm and blues scene, and watching Mick Jagger on stage helped his harmonica playing. Relations with Powell soured over who did what in the group, and Stewart left. A popular legend says he played harmonica on Millie Small's 1964 hit "My Boy Lollipop". He probably did not. It was more likely Peter Hogman of the Dimensions, though Powell has also claimed the credit.

  At Twickenham railway station in January 1964, Stewart was waiting for a train after seeing Long John Baldry and the All Stars at Eel Pie Island. He was playing "Smokestack Lightnin'" on his harmonica when Baldry heard him and invited him to sit in with the band. Learning that Stewart also sang, Baldry offered him £35 a week, after first winning the approval of Stewart's mother. At nineteen, Stewart quit his day job. He slowly shed his shyness and nerves, and he sometimes appeared on the bill as "Rod the Mod" Stewart, a nickname inspired by his dandyish grooming and dress. Baldry praised him to Melody Maker magazine, and the group held a weekly residency at the Marquee Club in London.

  Stewart made his recording debut in June 1964, uncredited, on "Up Above My Head", the B-side of a Baldry and Hoochie Coochie Men single. Meanwhile he started a solo career alongside the band. Decca Records scouted him at the Marquee, and he signed a solo contract in August 1964. For his first single in September, he turned down Decca's suggested songs as too commercial. He insisted that the experienced session musicians, among them John Paul Jones, learn a couple of Sonny Boy Williamson numbers he had just heard. "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" came out in October 1964, and Stewart performed it on the television show Ready Steady Go!. It did not chart.

  That same October, a row with Baldry ended Stewart's time with the Hoochie Coochie Men. The two later patched things up and became lifelong friends. By July 1965 the manager Giorgio Gomelsky had assembled Steampacket, with Baldry, Stewart, Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll, Micky Waller, Vic Briggs and Ricky Fenson. It was designed as a white soul revue in the mould of The Ike & Tina Turner Revue. The group's first appearance supported the Rolling Stones, and that summer it toured with the Stones and the Walker Brothers, finishing at the London Palladium. Watching the audience react to the Stones gave Stewart his first taste of crowd hysteria. Steampacket never recorded, because its members belonged to different labels and managers, though Gomelsky taped one Marquee rehearsal.

  In November 1965, a 30-minute Rediffusion television documentary about the Mod scene, titled "An Easter with Rod", spread his image more widely. His solo attempts at Columbia, an EMI label, went nowhere. "The Day Will Come" came out that same month, and his version of Sam Cooke's "Shake", with the Brian Auger Trinity, followed in April 1966. Both failed and drew poor notices. Stewart had spent nearly two years listening almost only to Cooke. He later said, "I didn't sound like anybody at all... but I knew I sounded a bit like Sam Cooke, so I listened to Sam Cooke." He called the "Shake" recording a "crossing of the water".

  Stewart left Steampacket in March 1966. He said he had been sacked, while Auger said he had quit. In May 1966 he became co-lead vocalist, alongside Beryl Marsden, of Shotgun Express, whose members included Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green and Peter Bardens. The band released one unsuccessful single in October 1966, "I Could Feel The Whole World Turn Round", and then broke up. Stewart later dismissed it as a poor copy of Steampacket. "I was still getting this terrible feeling of doing other people's music," he said.

  Only the emerging rasp in his voice set him apart from the other hopeful London singers, and a guitarist with a reputation was about to put that rasp to work.

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• 5. Beck, Faces, Breakthrough

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  In February 1967, the guitarist Jeff Beck, fresh from the Yardbirds, recruited Stewart as vocalist and sometime songwriter for his new group. There Stewart first played alongside Ronnie Wood, whom he had met in a London pub in 1964. The two quickly became close friends. The first year was messy, with frequent changes of drummer and conflict over manager Mickie Most's wish to shrink Stewart's role. In March 1968 Stewart's solo single "Little Miss Understood" appeared on Immediate Records and did not sell.

  The group toured Western Europe in spring 1968 and was nearly destitute. Then assistant manager Peter Grant booked a six-week American tour that began in June 1968 at the Fillmore East in New York. It was Stewart's first trip to America, and at the opening show he suffered such stage fright that he sang from behind the amplifiers. A quick shot of brandy got him out front. The tour was a success all the same. Robert Shelton of The New York Times praised "the interaction of Mr. Beck's wild and visionary guitar against the hoarse and insistent shouting of Rod Stewart". New Musical Express reported standing ovations and takings equal to those of Jimi Hendrix and the Doors.

  The group's first album, Truth, appeared in August 1968 and reached number 15 on the US albums chart by October, though it failed to chart in the UK. Stewart co-wrote three of its songs and credited the record with building the sandpaper quality of his voice. The second album, Beck-Ola, came out in June 1969 in the US and in September in the UK, as the group fell apart. It also made number 15 in the US and reached number 39 in the UK. In July 1969, Stewart left after Wood's departure. "In the two and a half years I was with Beck I never once looked him in the eye," he recalled. Even so, he credited that period with shaping his sense of phrasing.

  The Mercury Records A&R man Lou Reizner had signed Stewart to a solo contract on the 8th of October 1968, though legal complications delayed recording until July 1969. In May 1969, Steve Marriott left the Small Faces. Wood took over on guitar in June, and on the 18th of October 1969 Stewart followed his friend and became the singer. With Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan and Kenney Jones, the new line-up renamed itself Faces.

  Stewart's first solo album arrived in 1969 as An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down, and in the US it was titled The Rod Stewart Album. It set the template for his solo sound, mixing folk, rock and country blues with a British working-class feeling. It held original songs, "Cindy's Lament" and the title track, along with Ewan MacColl's "Dirty Old Town" and Mike d'Abo's "Handbags and Gladrags". Faces released First Step in early 1970, and the band quickly built a strong live following. Stewart's second solo album, Gasoline Alley, followed that autumn and brought mandolin into the sound. That year he also sang guest vocals for the Australian group Python Lee Jackson on "In a Broken Dream". His payment was a set of seat covers for his car. Re-released in 1972, the song became a worldwide hit.

  In September 1971, Every Picture Tells a Story made Stewart a household name. Radio began playing "Maggie May", co-written with Martin Quittenton, which had been the B-side of the minor hit "Reason to Believe". The album and the single sat at number one together in the UK, US, Canada and Australia, which had never happened on a chart before. "Maggie May" spent five weeks at the top of the US singles chart. A striking mandolin part by Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne drives it, and it appears among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. The album also held "Mandolin Wind", the soul-edged "(I Know) I'm Losing You", and a cover of Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time". Its title track, written by Stewart and Wood, tells the picaresque adventures of its singer over a largely acoustic arrangement.

  Meanwhile Faces released Long Player in early 1971. The band's only US Top 40 hit, "Stay With Me", came from their third album, A Nod Is as Good as a Wink...To a Blind Horse, in late 1971. Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols named Faces as a main influence on British punk. By 1972, as Faces toured extensively, tension was growing because Stewart's solo career outshone the band. His album Never a Dull Moment, released that year, followed the Every Picture formula. It reached number one in the UK and number two in the US. Its single "You Wear It Well" went to number one in the UK and number 13 in the US.

  Rolling Stone's 1980 Illustrated History of Rock & Roll later praised this early solo work for two qualities, warmth and modesty. It wrote, "If ever any rocker chose the role of everyman and lived up to it, it was Rod Stewart." The same entry said that Stewart had since become a "bilious self-parody" who sold more records than ever.

  The final Faces album, Ooh La La, reached number one in the UK and number 21 in the US in 1973. According to Ian McLagan, Stewart skipped the first two weeks of sessions and then objected to the keys. McLagan said, "We cut the track for 'Ooh La La' three times before he eventually passed on it, leaving it for Woody to sing." The band toured Australasia, Japan, Europe and the UK in 1974. Stewart released Smiler in late 1974, his last original album for Mercury. After the double compilation The Best of Rod Stewart, he moved to Warner Bros. Records. In 1975 Faces toured the US twice, with Wood joining the Rolling Stones' American tour in between, and the band broke up at the end of that year. The Faces name outlived the split, and in 2012 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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• 6. Los Angeles Stardom

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  In 1975 Stewart moved to Los Angeles and recorded Atlantic Crossing for his new label, with the producer Tom Dowd and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section behind him. The album went to number one in the UK and returned him to the Top 10 of the Billboard album chart. Its first single, a cover of the Sutherland Brothers' "Sailing", topped the UK chart but reached only the Top 60 in the US and Canada. A year later it re-entered the UK Top 10 as the theme for a BBC documentary series. It remains his biggest-selling single in the UK.

  In 1976 Stewart covered the Beatles' "Get Back" for the musical documentary All This and World War II. Later that year "Tonight's the Night" held the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 for eight weeks, with a video starring the actress Britt Ekland. It came from A Night on the Town, which reached number two on the Billboard album chart and became his first platinum album. The record labelled its two halves the "fast side" and the "slow side", a habit begun on Atlantic Crossing. In 1977 his cover of Cat Stevens's "The First Cut Is the Deepest" reached number one in the UK. "The Killing of Georgie (Part 1 and 2)", about the murder of a gay man, was a Top 40 hit.

  John Lennon claimed in 1980 that "The Killing of Georgie" copied his song "Don't Let Me Down". When asked about it for The Guardian in 2016, Stewart replied, "It does sound like it, … Nothing wrong with a good steal!"

  Foot Loose & Fancy Free arrived in 1977 and featured his own band, the original Rod Stewart Group, with Carmine Appice, Phil Chen, Jim Cregan, Billy Peek, Gary Grainger and John Jarvis. It reached number two. "You're in My Heart" reached number four in the US, and "Hot Legs" and "I Was Only Joking" drew heavy airplay. By then Stewart's look had taken on a glam edge, with make-up and spandex.

  In 1978, "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" took him to number one in both the UK and the US. Its disco sound carried it to number five on the Billboard black charts. It led Blondes Have More Fun, which reached number one on the Billboard album chart and sold three million copies. Critics disparaged the song as a departure from his earlier work. Stewart admitted his look had become "tarty" but said the lyrics tell a third-person, slice-of-life story, not unlike his earlier songs, and are not about him. The Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor sued because the refrain matched his earlier "Taj Mahal". Stewart gave his royalties from the song to UNICEF and performed it at the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly in 1979.

  A turn to new wave came in 1980 with Foolish Behaviour, whose single "Passion" reached number five in the US. In August 1981 MTV launched in America with several Stewart videos in heavy rotation. That year he added synthpop touches on Tonight I'm Yours, which went platinum and produced the Top 5 hit "Young Turks". On the 18th of December 1981, he played the Los Angeles Forum alongside Kim Carnes and Tina Turner in a concert broadcast worldwide by satellite.

  The anti-apartheid movement criticised him for breaking a widely observed cultural boycott by playing the Sun City resort in Bophuthatswana on his Body Wishes (1983) and Camouflage (1984) tours. Between 1982 and 1988 he placed four singles in the US Top 10, including "Infatuation" and "Love Touch". "Baby Jane" was number one in the UK, and it remains his last UK chart-topping single. "Infatuation" featured his old friend Jeff Beck on guitar. A reunion with Beck produced a successful take on Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready", but a joint tour fell apart after a few dates. In 1986, "Every Beat of My Heart" reached number two in the UK.

  In January 1985 he sang to a vast audience at the Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro, a first look at the kind of crowd he would later draw in Brazil.

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• 7. Songbooks and Second Winds

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  In 1988, Out of Order brought Stewart back, produced by Andy Taylor of Duran Duran and Bernard Edwards of Chic. Four of its songs, "Lost in You", "Forever Young", "Crazy About Her" and "My Heart Can't Tell You No", reached the top 15 of the Billboard Hot 100. "Forever Young" turned out to be an unconscious revision of Bob Dylan's song of the same name, and the two artists agreed to share royalties. It reached number 12 in the US and earned a 1989 Grammy nomination for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. Stewart performed it at the 1988 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles.

  The Out of Order tour hit South America and Mexico in 1989 with sell-out crowds. On the 9th of April, 80,000 people came to Corregidora Stadium in Querétaro, and on the 12th of April, 50,000 packed Jalisco Stadium in Guadalajara. At River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires, which seats more than 70,000, the audience topped 90,000, with several thousand more outside. Firehoses were turned on the crowd to prevent heat prostration.

  His version of Tom Waits's "Downtown Train" reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1990. It came from the four-CD set Storyteller - The Complete Anthology: 1964-1990. The 1991 album Vagabond Heart brought "It Takes Two", a duet with Tina Turner that reached number five in the UK. It also brought "Rhythm of My Heart", which peaked at number five in the US, and "The Motown Song" at number ten.

  At the 1993 Brit Awards in London, Stewart collected the prize for Outstanding Contribution to Music and brought Faces on stage for an impromptu reunion. That year he also recorded "All For Love" with Sting and Bryan Adams for the film The Three Musketeers. It reached number one in the US and number two in the UK. With Ronnie Wood, he recorded an MTV Unplugged special that included four songs from Every Picture Tells a Story. Van Morrison's "Have I Told You Lately" topped the Billboard adult contemporary chart and reached number five on the Hot 100. The resulting album, Unplugged...and Seated, reached number two on the Billboard 200. In 1994 he entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, with Jeff Beck presenting him.

  By the early 1990s Stewart had largely stopped writing his own songs. He said he was not a natural songwriter and that the tepid response to his recent efforts offered no reward. In 1995 he released A Spanner in the Works, which included Tom Petty's "Leave Virginia Alone". His 1998 album When We Were the New Boys, the last for Warner Bros., included songs by Oasis and Primal Scream and reached number two in the UK. That year he also recorded Diane Warren's "Faith of the Heart" for the film Patch Adams. In 2000 he moved to Atlantic Records, releasing Human in 2001, and then signed with Clive Davis's new J Records label.

  By 2002 he had sold over 100 million records. In the 1930s and 1940s standards of the Great American Songbook, he found a new path. Growing up, he had heard songs by Cole Porter, Gus Kahn and George and Ira Gershwin at home. The first volume, It Had to Be You: the Great American Songbook, reached number four in the US in late 2002. The fourth volume, Thanks for the Memory, added duets with Diana Ross and Elton John. Stardust: the Great American Songbook 3 arrived in late 2004 and gave him his first US number one album in 25 years. It sold over 200,000 copies in its first week. It included a duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Dolly Parton and a version of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" with Stevie Wonder. It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2005.

  In late 2006 Stewart returned to rock with Still the Same... Great Rock Classics of Our Time, which debuted at number one on the Billboard chart with 184,000 copies in its first week. In October 2009 he released Soulbook, a collection of soul and Motown covers. His first Christmas album, Merry Christmas, Baby, came out on the 30th of October 2012. According to IFPI, it was the seventh best-selling album worldwide that year. "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" topped the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, spending five weeks at number one. That tied the record for the longest-leading holiday title in the chart's 51-year history. It also gave him the second-largest gap between number ones in the chart's history. October 2012 also saw publication of Rod: The Autobiography.

  In May 2013, Stewart released Time, a rock album of his own songs. He described the years before it as "a dark period of twenty years" and said that writing his autobiography gave him the push to write music again. Time entered the UK Albums Chart at number one, setting a British record for the longest gap between an act's chart-topping albums. His last number one there had been Greatest Hits Volume 1 in 1979, and his last studio chart-topper was A Night on the Town in 1976.

  In November 2019, Stewart released You're in My Heart: Rod Stewart with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, produced by Trevor Horn. It reworked his hits with orchestral arrangements and added a new recording of "It Takes Two" with Robbie Williams. The album stayed at number one in the UK for three weeks and became his tenth UK chart-topping album, making him only the fifth British act with ten or more. The release coincided with his biggest-ever UK stadium tour. His 31st studio album, The Tears of Hercules, followed in November 2021, and Swing Fever, recorded with Jools Holland's Rhythm And Blues Orchestra, arrived in February 2024. That same month Irving Azoff's Iconic Artists Group bought his catalogue for close to $100M. In November 2024 Stewart was confirmed for the Glastonbury Legends slot in 2025-23 years after his last appearance at the festival.

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• 8. Trains, Turf and Titles

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  In his Los Angeles home, Stewart built a model railway layout measuring 23 by 124 feet in HO scale. It is modelled on the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads of the 1940s and is called Three Rivers City. Its mainline run is 900 feet, controlled by a Digital Command Control system from Digitrax. Model Railroader magazine has put it on its cover story in December 2007, December 2010, February 2014, June 2017, December 2024 and January 2025. In 2007 he said that appearing in a model railroad magazine meant more to him than appearing in a music magazine. A smaller layout at his UK home is based on Britain's East Coast Main Line. In a 2014 article he told an anecdote about mixing red scenery material into his grass mix, and confirmed that he is colour-blind. He told Railway Modeller magazine in 2019 that the hobby is "addictive".

  Football stayed with him too. Before returning to the UK, he turned out for LA Exiles, a team of mostly English expatriates that also included Billy Duffy of the Cult, in a senior league in Palos Verdes, California. His father supported Hibernian, but Stewart supports Celtic and mentions the club in "You're in My Heart". He backs the Scotland national team, and he has said his 1970s attachment to Manchester United came from its many Scottish players, among them Denis Law. In 2015 he presented Celtic with the trophy after they won the Scottish League Cup Final.

  In May 2000, doctors diagnosed Stewart with thyroid cancer, and he had surgery that same month. A benign vocal cord nodule had been reported earlier. The operation threatened his voice, and he had to learn to sing again. Since then he has raised money for the City of Hope Foundation, which works toward cures for cancer, especially in children. In September 2019 he revealed that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2017 and had been given the all-clear after treatment.

  Stewart has eight children by five mothers. His first marriage, to Alana Stewart, began in 1979. His second, to Rachel Hunter, ran from 1990 until their divorce in 2006, after they separated in 1999. On the 16th of June 2007 he married Penny Lancaster-Stewart at La Cervara, a medieval monastery in Portofino, and the couple honeymooned aboard the yacht Lady Ann Magee. Of his divorces he once said, "Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and just give her a house." His son Liam played professional ice hockey. In September 2002 his son Sean was sentenced to three months in jail for attacking a man outside a Los Angeles restaurant. In January 2020 Stewart and Sean were arrested after an incident at a Florida hotel, and in 2021 both pleaded guilty to simple battery, with no jail time, probation or fine.

  Stewart is a car collector who owns one of the 400 Ferrari Enzos. In 1982 he was car-jacked on Sunset Boulevard while parking a $50,000 Porsche, which was later recovered. In March 2022 he and others filled in potholes on a country lane near his Essex home, saying an ambulance had burst a tyre and his Ferrari could not get through. A neighbour, Dominic Zaria, praised him, but the county council warned that residents who make their own repairs could become liable for accidents. The Sunday Times Rich List of 2021 estimated his fortune at £215 million, making him the 12th wealthiest person in the British music industry. He lives in Durrington House, a Grade II listed property in Essex. In February 2023 he paid for a day's worth of MRI scans at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow to help cut waiting lists.

  Honours accumulated over the years. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on the 11th of October 2005 and entered the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006. He was appointed CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. At his investiture that July he said, "We're the only country in the world to honour the common man." He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity. Guitarist Steve Cropper ranked him alongside Otis Redding as "the finest singer with whom he had ever worked". Rolling Stone placed him at number 49 on its 2023 list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. Stewart says James Brown once called him music's "best white soul singer".

  His politics have shifted. In 1970 he voiced support for the anti-immigration Conservative politician Enoch Powell. In January 2023 he called himself "a Tory for a long time" yet urged Rishi Sunak's government to stand down. He called Brexit "an enormous mistake". In June 2025 he voiced support for Reform UK and Nigel Farage. In November 2022 he said he had turned down a Qatar concert the year before, despite an offer of "over $1m", because of the country's human rights record.

  In May 2023 he joined Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton, Kirk Hammett and Johnny Depp on stage at the Royal Albert Hall for the Jeff Beck tribute concerts, standing once more beside the guitarist whose band first took him to America.

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