ROD: The Autobiography

Rod Stewart (aka Rod The Mod and to a very select few, Dad) was born the working-class son of a Scottish plumber in North London. He was never, as some stories later had it, a professional footballer or a gravedigger, though he did become a bit of a singer - and a fairly good one at that. Rod started out in the early 1960s, playing alongside acts like The Rolling Stones, before his distinctively raspy voice and natural onstage presence caught the eye of the iconic guitarist, Jeff Beck. An often-interesting two year stint with Beck's group paved the way into the angst-inducing (for the world's hoteliers) five years with the Faces, whose offstage antics with alcohol, hotel rooms and groupies have become the stuff of legend. And during all this, he found a spare moment to write Maggie May , among a few others, and launch a solo career that has seen him sell in excess of 200 million records, be inducted into the Hall of Fame twice, and play the world's largest ever concert. Not bad, as he says, for a bloke 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 steroid dependency, and a brush with cancer which very nearly saw it all slip away. Rod's is an incredible life, and here, thrillingly and for the first time, he tells the whole thing, leaving no knickers under the bed. Joyously entertaining and at times deeply moving, this is the remarkable story of a guy with one hell of a voice - and one hell of a head of hair.