Rod Stewart

On 7 March 1989, a British rocker in a yellow jacket walked out into the Estadio Nacional in Santiago and opened by singing "Hot Legs". There were seventy thousand people. It was, until that moment, the first mega-concert in the history of Chile.

Almost certainly, he had no idea where he was standing.

That stadium had hosted the final stage of the 1962 World Cup and, after the 1973 coup, had operated as a detention and torture centre. In 1989, with the dictatorship ending, what happened that night was not a political act and did not try to be: it was imported entertainment. And that was precisely where its force lay, as the chapter of our Chilean series devoted to that decade tells it. What healed was not the songs. It was that seventy thousand people could be together, packed in, in the dark, in that place, without looking over their shoulders.

Ordinary, everyday joy. And it turns out that handing out ordinary, everyday joy was exactly Rod Stewart's trade.

The footballer he never was

Before the sandpaper voice and the spiked blond hair, he wanted to be a footballer. He was a working-class boy from north London, son of a Scottish father and an English mother, and he kicked a ball well enough to go for trials at Brentford in 1960.

For decades the story went that he had been signed. In his 2012 autobiography he dismantled the legend himself: he was never signed, and the club never called him back.

It is worth pausing there, because it is unusual. Most musicians inflate their prehistory; he set about deflating his. The same goes for the famous gravedigger job: he was briefly a labourer at Highgate Cemetery, and myth supplied the rest.

The voice

That voice was his signature from the start: rasping, rough, warm, impossible to confuse with anyone else's. He passed through the Jeff Beck Group between 1967 and 1969, and then the Faces, with Ronnie Wood, who would end up in the Rolling Stones.

And in 1971 he did something nobody had done. Every Picture Tells a Story and "Maggie May" — which was not even the single's A-side — hit number one simultaneously, album and song at once, in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia. It had never happened before.

That is Rod Stewart at his best: a folk-rock troubadour with a worn voice that made any story sound personally lived. "Mandolin Wind", "You Wear It Well", "Sailing". He sang like someone telling you something in your ear at a bar, half drunk and half tender.

The detail nobody mentions

Then he went disco, and the purists cried sell-out. "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?", in 1978, was pure danceable glitter and became the main exhibit for everyone who despised him.

There is a fact that almost never appears in that argument: he donated the song's royalties to UNICEF, and played it at the concert staged to benefit the organisation.

Which means the song used as proof of his greed did not leave him a penny. He never made much noise about it. He never claimed to be a tormented genius or a revolutionary: he was "Rod the Mod", the bon vivant, the easy-laughing charmer who did not take himself too seriously. That lightness was, at bottom, his strength. While others sank into their own importance, he went on handing out joy.

And when it looked as though his time had passed, in the 2000s he reinvented himself singing the standards of the Great American Songbook as an elegant crooner. With that repertoire he won, in 2004, his first Grammy: at fifty-nine, after selling more than a hundred and twenty million records.

What he was charged

In 2000 he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and the operation damaged precisely what had made him great. He had to learn to sing again, note by note, and never fully recovered the high notes.

Years later he faced prostate cancer. He kept it private while being treated and revealed it afterwards on purpose, to push other men into getting tested in time. He turned his own illness into a campaign.

The voice he was left with is a survivor's voice, and perhaps that is why it sounds even more human now than it did before.

The underrated trade

Rod Stewart is alive, was knighted in 2016 for services to music and charity, and is still touring past eighty, smiling the same as ever.

He was never the tortured artist or the man who reinvented anything. He was something rarer and more underrated: a man who gave people joy, decade after decade, and meant it.

And if you are Chilean you owe him a strange debt, the kind the creditor never knew existed. The night he threw the first party in a stadium that urgently needed to be a place of life again, he thought he was playing one more show on a seventy-seven-date tour.

Put on "Maggie May", or "Sailing", or "Forever Young" — that blessing from a father to a son that many have sung without knowing it was his — and listen to the sandpaper and the warmth of a working-class boy who wanted to play football and ended up making stadiums sing.

The part suited him. He wore it well.

Sources

Sir Roderick David "Rod" Stewart (Highgate, London, England, 10 January 1945), British singer and songwriter, son of a Scottish father and an English mother, from a working-class family. In 1960 he attended trials at Brentford Football Club; in his 2012 autobiography he clarified that he was never signed and that the club did not call him back, contradicting an account repeated for decades. He worked briefly as a labourer at Highgate Cemetery, the origin of the story that he was a gravedigger. He sang in the Jeff Beck Group (February 1967 to July 1969) and in the Faces (October 1969 until the group's dissolution at the end of 1975), alongside Ronnie Wood, later of the Rolling Stones. In September 1971 the album "Every Picture Tells a Story" and the single "Maggie May" simultaneously held number one in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Australia, a chart first. In 1978 he released "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?", criticised as a commercial turn; Stewart donated the song's royalties to UNICEF and performed it at the Music for UNICEF concert. In the 2000s he reinvented himself performing the Great American Songbook and won his first Grammy with "Stardust: The Great American Songbook 3" (2004). He has sold more than 120 million records. In 2000 he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, whose surgery affected his voice and forced him to relearn how to sing; later he faced prostate cancer, which he disclosed publicly to promote early detection. He was knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to music and charity. On 7 March 1989 he performed at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago on the "Out of Order" tour, in what is considered the first mega-concert in the history of Chile; most sources put attendance at around 70,000. The Estadio Nacional hosted the final stage of the 1962 World Cup and, after the 1973 coup, operated as a detention and torture centre. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of his work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Biography.com, AllMusic, Radio Concierto, La Tercera and other press coverage.