Rod Stewart, the rock legend behind “Maggie May” and “Do You Think I’m Sexy,” has spent more than six decades at the top of the music world, but his journey has been marked by profound personal loss, illness, and fractured relationships. Now approaching 80, the singer faces the most difficult question of his storied career: whether to keep performing or step away. Born in January 1945 in Highgate, London, Stewart was the youngest of five children in an Anglo-Scottish household. His father Robert ran a corner shop, while his mother Elsie held the family together.
Life was modest, and an early disappointment marked him deeply. At age 11, he failed the 11-plus exam, a defining educational setback in postwar Britain, and was sent to a secondary modern school. Football offered an escape. By his mid-teens, Stewart captained his school team and dreamed of playing for Arsenal.
His father, a former semi-professional player, encouraged him from the touchline. But in 1961, at age 16, a trial with Brentford ended in silence. No contract was offered. Stewart later called football his first love, and the rejection left a wound he carried for decades.
With that dream closed, he drifted through odd jobs, including a grim period digging graves at Highgate Cemetery. He later said those days gave him his first real understanding of mortality. Two passions sustained him during this bleak stretch: model railways, which gave him a sense of control, and music. In 1959, his father bought him a battered guitar, and Stewart discovered he could shape his loneliness into song.
At 18, he began busking in London, armed with a harmonica and guitar. He joined a small R&B group, the Dimensions, in 1963, playing smoky pubs for spare coins. Three years later, guitar prodigy Jeff Beck pulled him into the Jeff Beck Group. It was a breakthrough, but Stewart often felt overshadowed, dismissed by critics as “Jeff Beck’s singer.
” He later described those years as a blessing and a curse, feeling like a shadow in someone else’s fire. In 1969, at 24, Stewart released his first solo album, “An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down. ” Two years later, “Every Picture Tells a Story” made him a global superstar, helped by the massive hit “Maggie May. ” He went on to achieve number one singles in six consecutive decades, a feat matched by few artists in history.
Behind the success, however, the cost was severe. By the mid-1970s, tensions with his bandmates in the Faces had grown into open fractures. Accusations surfaced that he had abandoned them. Stewart admitted years later that success divided him from the very people he loved.
At the same time, critics mocked him as a sellout, and tabloids painted him as a champagne-soaked caricature. His most private wound predated his fame. In 1963, at 18, Stewart became a father for the first time. His daughter Sarah was born into circumstances he felt unable to handle.
He had no home, no stable career, and let the newborn be adopted. The decision broke him. “It broke my heart,” he later said. “I didn’t know who I was yet.
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Sarah was raised by loving adoptive parents but grew up knowing something was missing. After her adoptive parents died, she reached out to her biological father in 2007. By then Stewart was in his 60s and she in her 40s. Their reunion was emotional, described by Stewart as a loss he could never get back.
Sarah said meeting him felt like touching a part of herself she had long searched for. Stewart has been married twice and had several long-term relationships. In 1979, he married actress Alana Hamilton. They had two children, Kimberly and Sean, before divorcing in 1984.
Sean later struggled with addiction and legal troubles, a painful ordeal for his father. Stewart reflected that fame made it hard to hold his home together. In the late 1980s, he had a daughter, Ruby, with model Kelly Emberg, but that relationship also ended. In 1990, he married 21-year-old New Zealand supermodel Rachel Hunter.
They had two children, Renee and Liam, before divorcing in 1999. Stewart said her departure destroyed his faith in love. In the early 2000s, he met Penny Lancaster, a model and photographer who became the steady presence he had been seeking. They married in Italy in 2007.
Together they have two sons, Alastair and Aiden. Stewart said Penny gave him peace that fame never could. His health has also tested him. In 2000, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
Surgery left him unable to sing for months, and he feared his voice was gone. He slowly rebuilt it. In 2016, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which he kept private for years before revealing it in 2019 and urging men to get tested. Despite everything, Stewart continued performing.
He has estimated wealth of around $300 million and sold his catalog for $100 million, but has admitted money cannot buy youth or silence the fear of time. He now has eight children and several grandchildren, and he has said he treasures the family time he once missed. As he approaches 80, Stewart has announced what he calls his last great rock and roll run, a global tour before he turns toward jazz and swing. He continues to perform not for charts, but to defy silence itself.
The question remains whether he will eventually lay down the microphone or keep singing until his final breath.