Rod

Rod Stewart was born the working class son of a Scottish plumber in north London. Despite some early close shaves with a number of diverse career paths ranging from gravedigging to professional soccer, it was music that truly captured his heart-and he never looked back. Rod started out in the early 1960s playing the clubs on London's R&B scene before his distinctively raspy voice caught the ear of the iconic front man Long John Baldry, who approached him while he was busking one night on a railway platform. Stints with pioneering acts like the Hoochie Coochie Men, Steampacket, and the Jeff Beck Group soon followed, paving the way into a raucous five years with the Faces, the rock star's rock band, whose onstage and offstage antics with alcohol, wrecked hotel rooms, partying, and groupies have become the stuff of legend. And during all this, he found a spare moment to write "Maggie May," among a few other tunes, and launch a solo career that has seen him sell in excess of 200 million records, be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, and play the world's largest-ever concert. Not bad, as he says, for a guy with a frog in his throat. And then there is his not-so-private life: marriages, divorces, and affairs with some of the world's most beautiful women-Bond girls, movie stars, and supermodels-a struggle with steroids, and a brush with cancer, in which he almost saw it all slip away. Rod's is an incredible life, and here- thrillingly and for the first time-he tells the entire thing, leaving no knickers under the bed. A rollicking rock 'n' roll adventure that is at times deeply moving, this is the remarkable journey of a guy with one hell of a voice-and one hell of a head of hair. From the Hardcover edition.