Rod Stewart Biography

Rod Stewart’s career began in 1964, when he performed with the group The Hoochie Coochie Men. Eventually, the band began to tour with the Rolling Stones under their new name, Steampacket, until in 1996, when Jeff Beck invited Rod Stewart to front the Jeff Beck Group. The offer would become Stewart’s big breakthrough. After the band broke up, Rod Stewart sang for the next six years with the Faces, and simultaneously began a solo career.  

“Maggie May” was Rod Stewart’s first number one hit in 1971.  After the Faces released their final album, Stewart focused on his solo career full force. His next album, Atlantic Crossing, experienced some success, and by 1978 Rod Stewart was experimenting with a different sound with the single “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.”  Between 1982 and 1988, Rod Stewart scored three Top Ten hits and by the 1990’s, with the assistance of MTV, he became an official superstar.

In the late 1990’s, Rod Stewart began to record very successful covers of songs by a variety of artists, including Primal Scream, Mike Scott, and Oasis. In the new millennium, Stewart has moved to singing highly successful covers of artist such as Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and other classic songwriters.

Today in the new millennium, Rod Stewart continues to perform and record. His  twenty-fourth album, Still the Same… Great Rock Classics of our Time, was released in 2006 and immediately found a home at number one on the Billboard charts. A few years later, in 2009, Stewart released Rod Stewart Sessions 1971-1998, a collection of previously unreleased tracks. Between 2010 and 2015, Stewart released the albums: Once in a Blue Moon (an album covering a variety of classic songs, including Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back”); Time (2013); and Another Country (2015.) He also enjoyed a Vegas residency show—Rod Stewart: The Hits—which began its run in 2011, and only wrapped recently in 2017.

Rod Stewart is considered one of the era’s most legendary rock stars. Stewart inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and ten years later received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. So far in his career, he has sold over 100 million records and recorded sixty-two hit singles, thirty-one of which have hit the Top Ten. Rod Stewart has been ranked by Billboard Magazine as one of the most successful artists in their Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists, and by Rolling Stone as one of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.