Q & A With Rod Stewart

By Rebecca Winters

It's a good time to be Rod Stewart. His U.S. tour, "From Maggie May to the Great American Songbook," starts Feb. 6. His album As Time Goes By...The Great American Songbook Volume II is up for a Grammy next week.

Were you surprised by the success of your two standards albums? You can say that again. It was meant to be a labor of love, something I was doing for a laugh...and here we are going double platinum on both of them.

Who was Maggie May?

She was one of my earliest sexual encounters, when I was 15 or 16. An older woman, of course.

What would be better, getting knighted or getting the Grammy?

The Grammy, 'cause my kids ask me, they say, Sting's won 200 of them and my dad hasn't got one, so they think there's been this huge injustice.

You called Sting "Mr. Serious Who Saves the Indians." Is his charity work the reason he wins all the Grammys?

No. There's a certain rivalry between Sting, myself and Elton [John]. Elton's always having a go about my nose and my hair, and I'm always having a go about his waistline and his lack of hair.

Do you really wear women's underwear?

I used to. In the '70s. One day I wore Britt Ekland's and told someone, and it's lived with me ever since. It's nothing to be embarrassed about.