The announcement earlier this week that Rod Stewart is to perform at Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin, in April prompted a few memories for Shane Gilchrist, who spoke to the veteran singer about songwriting, soul and survival in a rock 'n' roll world.
Talk about formative experiences. Let's go back in time, to Rod Stewart's gig at Western Springs on February 22, 1979.
One stop on a global tour to mark the release of 1978 album Blondes Have More Fun. My very first rock concert.
Earlier that day, my folks had won a Radio Hauraki competition to get four tickets.
Perhaps because of the late notice, or perhaps out of some desire to expand their children's education beyond the school gate, they chose not to drop me and my younger sister at our grandparents' house just a few kilometres down the road in Manurewa, but instead ferried us along the motorway to a place I'd previously only affiliated with speedway ace Ivan Mauger or the zoo next door.
The Auckland twilight dimmed.
The ducks dispersed from the venue's various lakes and ponds.
A new sensory smorgasbord unfolded, comprising sights, sounds and smells outside the range of experience of many 10-year-old boys: a sea of lighters accompanied a ballad; clouds of sweet smoke billowed from the various clusters of patched gang members; a husky, soulful voice briefly bound together city-slickers and suburbanites alike.
Fast-forward 35 years. Hauraki host Kevin Black is gone, parents, too. Yet Stewart's still standing.
Well, not literally. He's actually sitting down as he gets his hair styled (spiky, please) at his house in Palm Beach, Florida, while chatting about his plans to perform at Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin, on April 11, 2015.
Stewart starts the conversation not on the subject of music but, rather sport. His favourite football club, Glasgow's Celtic, has just been knocked out of the Champions League.
''That's life,'' he laments before explaining he's been enjoying a brief respite from a 10-week tour that wound up last week with a show in Curacao, in the Caribbean, a place fellow rock veteran Keith Richards might suggest is slightly more exotic than Dunedin.
''Oh, well,'' Stewart says, diplomatically.
''I've never played in Dunedin. I'm looking forward to it. There are a lot of Scots down there so I should feel somewhat at home.''
(Stewart, though born in north London in 1945, has a Scottish father.)
Stewart says his set-list for Dunedin will be a greatest hits package.
Given his solo recording career started in 1969 with the album An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down, there's plenty from which to choose, including Maggie May, Sailing, Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright), You're In My Heart (Final Acclaim) and his disco-infused Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?
''People always want to hear the songs that made you famous,'' he says.
''They want to relive the past. There is a certain amount of nostalgia. But I don't see myself as a nostalgia act because I'm still making music.
''We will be doing a few songs from the new album as well,'' he says, referring to last year's Time, his first album of mainly original material in almost two decades.
Time was regarded as a return to songwriting form by many critics, Stewart co-penning all but one of the dozen tracks.
''It was most odd that it should happen so late in life,'' Stewart says of his songwriting flourish.
''It was actually spurred on by my autobiography, which came out a couple of years ago, and talking to family and friends, remembering old times.
''The first one I wrote was Brighton Beach. The song is self-explanatory [it is about his first love, Susannah Boffey, also mother to his first child, Sarah Streeter, who was adopted out as a baby].
''As with everything in life, songwriting is all about confidence. I ended up writing 11 songs.''
In the single Brighton Beach, Stewart describes his younger self as ''this scruffy, beat-up, working-class teenage troubadour''.
If any resemblance remains, he asserts it's only in the fact he still likes music and a glass of wine.
Oh, and football and women. Oh, and model trains (''I love it. But it's not very rock n' roll, is it?'').
''Those things haven't changed, but I've cut out the women part. I'm happily married now,'' the 69-year-old says, referring to his third wife, Penny Lancaster, with whom he has two boys, Alistair (8) and Aiden (3).
He also keeps himself in shape, although he emphasises he doesn't stay fit in order to improve his stage routine (a la Mick Jagger), but rather as a general ''health option''.
He doesn't like working out, but he makes himself do it.
''I enjoy touring. The only downside is I have to schedule it around the children's holidays now, but I like putting them first.''
Having left school at 15 and worked in jobs ranging from labourer to signwriter before starting a musical career in the early 1960s that included seminal sessions with English blues singer Long John Baldry, the Jeff Beck Group, the Faces then his solo career, Stewart has come a long way: various sources put his fortune at more than 100 million ($NZ198 million).
''I like to keep busy,'' he says, pointing out other survivors in the rock business.
''Look at the biggest-grossing tours around the world. It's usually by acts that have been around 30 or more years: U2, the Stones, the Eagles, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen ... They are still selling tickets.''
• In an industry replete with various excesses, survival also has other connotations.
In his 1975 album Atlantic Crossing, Stewart referred to being ''up on cloud 33'' in the song Stone Cold Sober; more recently, in his 2012 autobiography, he wrote of various periods of drugged-out hedonism.
He has also admitted to being addicted to steroids in the early 1990s.
''I used to take steroids to help reduce swelling in my throat,'' he explained.
''There was a period when I got very addicted to them. They don't give you a high or anything.
"It just means that if your voice is a bit strained, you are able to sing the next night. But they are very bad for you.''
Stewart has also had other challenges. Diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2000, he had to learn to sing again after an operation.
''They had to cut the muscles that operate the vocal cords. Therefore, you go through muscle memory loss; you have to teach the muscles what to do again.
''It's like anyone else's career. You are going to have ups and downs. The most important thing is I still love doing it.''
That enjoyment of his craft is apparent in footage of a 2013 concert in Los Angeles.
At the relatively small Troubadour nightclub, Stewart can be seen performing and chatting to a crowd ''of about 200'', many of whom are standing less than a metre from the singer and his band.
''I quite enjoy having the audience as close as that, as long as they don't notice my double chin,'' he laughs.
Earlier this year, Warner Bros released a four-disc collection, Tonight's The Night, featuring 58 live recordings by Stewart, including several songs made famous by late soul man Sam Cooke, whom the singer cites as a key influence.
''I first heard him on a transistor radio when I was about 16 or 17, when I had a day job.
''You can do anything with soul,'' Stewart says, pointing out he's referring not to the genre of music but to a state of mind.
''Take right now,'' he explains.
''I'm having my haircut and my hairdresser is doing it with soul.''
Specifically, Stewart is talking about being in the moment, and of communicating effectively with an audience. Singing is one thing; ''owning'' a song is quite another.
''As with all great singers, when you hear them you think they are singing just to you. That's what makes them stand out from the rest. Sam Cooke certainly did that for me.''
As Stewart underwent his singing apprenticeship in the early to mid-1960s, performing in cramped British blues clubs, first as a member of Long John Baldry's Hoochie Coochie Men, then in the group Steampacket, often the focus wasn't about writing original material.
Instead, he would attempt to extract every drop of emotion out of, say, a Ray Charles' song.
Even the influential Jeff Beck Group, in which Stewart sang between 1967 and 1969, was largely a covers outfit, although his next band, the Faces, was notable for Stewart's songwriting collaboration with lifetime friend Ronnie Wood, guitarist for the Rolling Stones since 1975.
Although Stewart was nominated for a Grammy Award (Best Male Pop Vocal Performance) for his 1978 hit Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?, it wasn't until 2004 that he claimed his first Grammy (Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album), for Stardust: The Great American Songbook Volume III.
Stewart's exploration of the Great American Songbook in the 2000s realised a long-held ambition to put his voice to the classic ballads and swing tunes he had heard in his childhood London home.
The result?
All four of the albums reached the Top 10 in both the US and the UK.
Stewart says he once tried to put together a tour combining American Songbook material with his various classics, ''but it just doesn't work''.
Hence, audiences in Dunedin and Auckland (his only other New Zealand show is at Vector Arena on April 13) are unlikely to hear much Gershwin or Berlin.
''I think you have to be very careful,'' Stewart says of his love of reinventing others' music.
''We will be doing a few oddities in Dunedin, but there won't be any Great American Songbook stuff.''
Instead, expect to see that famous haircut occasionally illuminated, not by lighters or matches, but by the glow of myriad cellphones as Stewart pulls yet another ballad from his bag of tricks.
Rod Stewart
Full name: Roderick David Stewart
Age: 69 (born January 10, 1945)
• Has estimated fortune of more than 100 million
• Has sold more than 100 million records sold worldwide
• Married three times: to Alana Hamilton (1979-1984; children Kimberley and Sean); to Rachel Hunter (1990-2006; children Renee and Liam); to Penny Lancaster-Stewart (2007-present; children Alastair and Aiden). Also has two other children to Sarah Streeter and Ruby Stewart.
AWARDS
• Won 1993 Brit Award (Outstanding Contribution to Music)
• Inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006; was inducted a second time into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, as a member of the Faces
• Received the first Diamond Award from the World Music Awards in 2001 for more than 100 million records sold worldwide
• Won 2005 Grammy Award (Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album) for Stardust: The Great American Songbook Volume III
• Received CBE in 2007 for services to music
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
• Every Picture Tells A Story (1971): Stewart's third solo album, it features Maggie May and Mandolin Wind
• Atlantic Crossing (1975): The sixth solo album from Stewart references his move to Los Angeles for tax purposes and includes singles Sailing and I Don't Want To Talk About It.
• A Night On The Town (1976): Stewart' s first album to go platinum includes the Cat Stevens cover The First Cut Is the Deepest as well as Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright) and The Killing of Georgie (Part 1 and 2)
