Rod Stewart Wants to Ditch Rock Music
Rod Stewart wants to say farewell to rock music after he wraps up his 2023 tour. The legendary singer broke the news in a new interview with the BBC. Boy George – whose band, Culture Club, will be on Stewart’s upcoming U.K. tour – joined Stewart for the interview.
“I am actually stopping,” Stewart told BBC’s Charlie Stayt. “I’m not retiring, but I want to move on to … I had great success with The Great American Songbook, all-American standards, and I’ve just done a swing album with Jools Holland, which is going to come out next year, so I want to go in that direction. I just want to leave all the rock and roll stuff behind — for a while, maybe.”
Stewart also said that “everything has to come to an end sooner or later” and he’s “really looking forward to doing something else, especially singing with Jools’ band. It borders on rock and roll anyway, it’s just not ‘Maggie May’ and ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?'”
This isn’t the first time Stewart has mentioned leaving rock and roll. Last year, he spoke with Forbes about wanting to try other musical genres. “I want to move on and just do the classics and the swing stuff, but I don’t want to be singing ‘Hot Legs’ when I’m 80,” he said. “I’m not retiring, but this will be the last time we do these songs in America. I just want to make a clean sweep. I want to go on tour with a big band and just play this stuff that I love. It’s a different entity to rock ‘n’ roll, although that’s where it all came from.”
Rod Stewart: Classic Images
