So Rod Stewart’s back, huh? After about 300 similar “comebacks” these past few months, you’re probably not too excited by the prospect. But think again. Out Of Order, the album he thinks is his best in years, actually is. But how do I let you know it’s the real thing? How do I tell you that even Rod cringes upon hearing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” How to explain the Stewart/haggis connection? (You’ll have to wait ’til later for that, actually.) Only one way, obviously. Let him do it. Is it paycheck time yet?

This album sounds like you were trying to, as trite as it may sound, return to your roots, or at least return to your old form.

Well, it’s not a return to roots. I’m still doing the same thing that I’ve always done—just better than I’ve done it for the last 10 years or so. Returning to roots is really impossible.

Do you still believe, as you used to say, that you never really lose your working-class upbringing; that it will, in some way always crop up in your music?

There’re a few songs on this album that show that, I think. My use of words has become a bit more sophisticated, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad one, I’m not sure. I’m confident that I’m a better songwriter now than I was in the days when I wrote “Gasoline Alley.” Those songs strike me now as being... crude, but perhaps that’s why people liked them. You can’t keep writing that way when your lifestyle is changing, though. Dylan can’t keep knockin’ out “Blowin’ In The Wind” over and over. You can’t always be Sweet 16.

But “Wild Horse” and “Dynamite” are closer to that feel than you’ve managed recently.

I think there’s more truth on this album than the last few. The song selection is better.. .it’s just better all-around because we took the time to make it that way.

Are you really as unhappy with your recent work as I’ve been led to believe?

Only in so much as, six months after I’ve finished an album, I have been able to look back and say “Oh God, what a piece of shit!” I’ve ended up doing that a lot these past few years, mainly because I started to lose interest in the whole thing. I gave up the production side entirely. Album before last, I used Michael Omartian (who, incidentally, didn’t allow his name to be associated with certain tracks due to his born-again Christian beliefs), and I forget who did the last one, to tell you the truth. But this time I didn’t want to take a back seat.

Even in terms of material, you seem to shy away from the last several years worth of stuff. Last time I saw you live, which was about four years ago, you seemed to have a definite discomfort playing anything after, say, 1976.

I think I do get more pleasure out of singing my pre-1976 material. That is probably the cut-off point, as opposed to “Tonight I’m Yours” or “Baby Jane.” I can’t really tell you why that is, but you’re probably right. I see a lot of people coming around to the material I am proud of, with the rebirth of interest in early ’70s music in the U.S. I’m going to be doing a lot of that this tour; “Every Picture Tells A Story,” “Mandolin Wind”...

Does it strike you as funny that a lot of the interest you’re speaking of comes from people who, five years ago, considered you an old fart, and held that music in contempt?

It’s strange, innit? The day before I left California, I saw (ex-Pistol) Steve Jones walking down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills with a suntan, hair down the middle of his back, and looking extremely fat. He was walking a small, frilly dog. I thought “God, how times have changed!”

You laugh about it now, but what was your reaction at the time?

Though it sounds like a bit of a cliche, I think it did give us all a much needed kick up the arse. The likes of me and Elton bore the brunt of it.

Don’t you think it had as much to do with your gone* Hollywood image as it did with your music?

It could have been many things—the women, the money. A lot of guys were pretty jealous, y’know. A lot still are, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Hey, I was up there to be knocked, and I took more than my share. But I’m still here.

There was some validity to your being perceived that way...

There wasn’t though! I never went about with film stars or any of that rubbish.

In your younger days, your partying was the stuff of legend, though. You were up there—or is that down therewith Zeppelin, the Stones.

I suppose I don’t party as much as I used to, purely because I don’t want to. It’s not the be-all and end-all of life anymore. I still enjoy a good drink now and then, which is part of the reason I didn’t connect with you yesterday, mate. Had a few pints, then a few more and lost track of time.

What takes the place of week-long binges?

Well, football takes up a lot of my time in California. I play with a team called the Exiles in a semi-pro league. My mates are the blokes I play with. They’re all just transplanted Brits—electricians, plumbers—I don’t have too many friends who are musicians.

So you’re probably just thrilled to talk about music.

That’s all anyone ever does want to talk about actually. I try not to talk too much about it, because I think it should be something one practices rather than talks about. I am sort of proud of this album, so I would like to talk about it. Have you had a chance to listen to it?

The question every interviewer dreads. Yeah, I have. And it was a really pleasant surprise.

Good. That’s what I’m hoping people will think.

So how long did the whole project take?

It’s hard to say, really, because it takes me so long to write a set of lyrics. That’s my least favorite thing to do, actually. We finished the instrumental tracks and I went away for a couple or three months to do the lyrics.

Why does lyric writing present such a problem?

Because I’m a very lazy person and writing lyrics is a big mental strain and I haven’t been used to mental strain since I left school. It’s the most trying thing I do, yet it’s ultimately the most rewarding. But I have to be really whipped into shape to do it. Also, I like to think of every line as a... jewel, and that’s probably the wrong way to approach it, especially in a three-minute pop song, one that’s supposed to be commercial. They go right by people the first few times anyway.

Your best work has been done in collaborations. Is it a struggle to find someone compatible?

A bit of a struggle. I’m working on it, but I’m not the most sociable person on earth which makes it even tougher. Maybe it’s just shyness, but I find it really hard to write with anyone else.

Yet you’ve been able to work with guys as varied as (Martin) Quittenton and Ronnie Wood, and create widely differing songs that actually worked.

I try to concentrate on finding guys I really like first, and since they usually end up being heavy drinkers, we work well together. It gets the juices flowing. Andy’s the main writer on this one; I think we wrote eight of the 11 songs together. Great fun to write with, Andy is. He’s probably the closest thing I’ve had to work with since Ronnie Wood.

How do the two compare?

The drinking part is about the same. I think Andy goes through more moods and depressions than Woody. Woody’s always smiling, always uplifting to be around. Andy, on the other hand, suffers from too much alcohol the morning after, so you have to dig him out of a bad mood. There’s this similarity, though. It’s hard to put a finger on.

And in a professional sense?

The way we constructed the songs was very similar to the way Woody and I used to. Andy’ll just start strumming along—he doesn’t believe in rehearsals, just going into the studio and laying it straight down—and as it comes off the top of his ’ead, record it. I’m more or less inclined that way myself, so it was good to do a record that way again.

Is there any chance of you and Wood working together again?

I put in a call to ’im to see if he’d like to come on tour, to be like an opening act, then come on and do a few songs with me. Right now, he’s touring Scandinavia with some unknown Swedish band, so he can’t be making any money. But I asked his manager who said he wanted $20,000 a night to do it. I don’t know if he was joking or what, but that’s the last I heard.

I’d really love to work with Ronnie again. I’ve heard he’s put on a bit of weight, and he’s looking considerably healthier than the last time I saw him, oh, two years ago at the Faces reunion at Wembley. He really looked like death warmed up then.

On the Gunslingers tour he seemed to have his shit together.

Yeah, he looked good on that. Didn’t see it myself, but I get me reports.

As long as you’re in a nostalgic mood, do you ever see the rest of your old bandmates?

Well, I haven’t seen Ronnie Lane for about two years either. I see Kenney (Jones), I see MacLagen now and again, since he’s out in L.A. I have a birthday party every year and I invite the boys, and MacLagen made it up last year.

Faces always seemed like such a band of mates—a team. Do you miss that kind of camaraderie?

The last band, the nucleus at least, was together five or six years. So yeah, once I get a bunch of guys together, I like to keep ’em together. The reason the last band folded up was, the two guitar players, especially Jim Cregan who is a very dear friend of mine, weren’t going to be on the LP, due to a lack of ideas, really. I just figured it was time to start fresh. After this tour, I want to go straight in and make another album to see if these guys can cut it. I mean, I know they should be able to, as their credentials are magnificent. It’s just a matter of seeing how well they jell as a band.

How did you go about forming this band?

A little differently than my normal method, which is to put together a bunch of mates. This time I spent a little more time deciding on the best musicians. I’ve always used British guys before and this is an all-American band, so it’ll be strange for me.

Your previous tours have seen you do some marathonlength shows. After four years away from solid touring, are you in shape for that again?

I just have to watch myself, and make sure I get as many early nights as I can. Two and a quarter hours of singing plus drinking to excess will make you lose your voice—or it will me, at least. So I do some exercises. There’s only a couple of muscles down there and you’ve gotta work ’em to keep ’em in trim.

So you do work on keeping your voice in such pristine condition.

Hah! Well, assuming for a moment that you’re serious... Assume away.

It’s funny, you know. My voice has actually gained a couple of tones, I can sing higher now than I did in 1971. “Maggie May” is now the bottom of my range. As you get older your voice is supposed to get lower, not higher. Perhaps someone’s cut me balls off and I haven’t noticed!

Bernard Edwards did the vocals with me and I think he’s brought out a quality in me that no one has before. It’s difficult to explain, but... it’s a very personal thing when you go to sing into a microphone. You’ve got five guys on the other side of the desk and you’re in there alone singing a bunch of lyrics that you’ve just spent three weeks writing. It can make you very paranoid, and if you don’t have the right guy on the other side, it can be terrifying. But Bernard is, I think, the most magnificent person I’ve worked with. He gave me my soul wings on “Try A Little Tenderness.”

“I’ve gone off the rails a little bit since ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy...’ ”

Okay, you brought it up. Since I know Otis Redding is one of your idols, i want to ask you about a statement you once made in CREEM. You said, “I’d never do a cover unless I thought I could do it better than the original.” Well, is that still true?

Yeah...you’ve...It’d be absolutely ridiculous for me to try to say it’s better than the original. Maybe you should go and ask people who’ve never heard the Otis Redding version—and you’d be surprised how many people haven’t— and ask them. I don’t think I sing as well as Otis or Sam Cooke, all I’m doing is trying to make people aware of a great song. I don’t really think I made “Twistin’ The Night Away” better than Sam Cooke, but a lot of people consider that my song. (Laughs) Dodged out of that one pretty well, didn’t I?

You belong in politics, Rod. What do you think of the overwhelming glut of covers plaguing the charts at the moment?

It’s just a phase we’re going through. It can’t possibly last. But when I first started listening to music, I started listening to blues—I went backward to find out where it all came from. People, and I don’t want to say “kids” ’cos it’s not just kids, want to do the same thing now. Think about it, rock ’n’ roll’s been around for 30-odd years now, so there’s a lot of ground.

How about the general state of rock ’n’ roll at the moment?

It seems to be in a fairly healthy condition at the moment. In California and in London, it seems like every other kid on the street is in a rock ’n’ roll band, whereas when I started out, it was more of a novelty.

Any particular favorites?

INXS are one of the best pure rock ’n’ roll bands to come along for a long time. They remind me a lot of the Faces in the early ’70s, in their attitude. They’re the only band I’m really looking forward to seeing live.

I want to get some idea how these songs came into being. Like “My Heart Can’t Tell Me No.”

That one was originally written for Robert Palmer. I saw him one night and he said “I’ve got this song, and I don’t like to do ballads, and this one cries out for you to do it.” I think it worked out fairly well. I suppose ballads may be my forte.

The ones on Out Of Order, particularly the two sideclosers, have a very melancholy feel. And though one was written by you, and one by an outside composer, they have almost the same sentiment behind them.

Well, I like a melancholy song now and again. And yes, they do say pretty much the same thing.

Is there some personal involvement there?

Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know what causes me to write songs. I can never really analyze it but... Wait a minute! Of course not! I’ve never had that experience—I must’ve gone off the boil there for a moment. I’ve never been jilted, for lack of a better word. Thank goodness, no. Had a clean run since 16.

Rub it in, see if I give a damn. Let’s go on to one of the album’s rockers. Tell me about “Wild Horse.”

Ah, the boys’ song. That one’s Andy’s favorite. It certainly will be a marvelous song to play live—it’s very much a guitar player’s song. That feeling of wanting be free is in all of us, and some of us are lucky enough to attain it.

When in your career did you think you’d finally attained “it”?

Hard to say, y’know. When I got into this business, I didn’t expect it to last more than six months. In fact, I remember like it was yesterday, I saved up every last penny to put a down payment on a little car. Then after about a year, I realized I was doin’ all right so I bought myself a sportscar. And then I was unbearable—I was really Jack The Lad. And here I am 20 years later.

Twenty years into it, how have things changed your approach to the music?

A hell of a lot of water’s gone under the bridge. I think the biggest change in my life was when the children entered it. They. . .how can I put it. . .you wouldn’t be a human being if children didn’t change your life.

As far as my career, I’ve just worked at it harder and harder—off and on. The last two LPs before this, I’ll admit were a bit shaky, but I think I’ve tried to stay pretty true to the craft of songwriting and recording. I’ve gone off the rails a little bit since “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” but I think I’m pretty well back on track now.