Manchester ArenaThe 74-year-old is all smiles as he hurtles through his songbook from his very first album to the classics
Roderick Stewart doesn’t seem to do many things by halves. This month, the singer proudly unveiled his model train set, a 124 ft long epic based on postwar Manhattan and
Chicago that has taken him 23 years to build. He is on his third marriage (to Penny Lancaster, since 2007), is a father of eight children by five mothers, has made 31 studio albums and sold more than 120m records. Here, he performs for more than two hours and – while he sits down (on a chair labelled “Sir Rod”) for the acoustic section – seems to have as much energy left for the raucous encore of the Faces’ Stay With Me as he has for the opening 80s cruise through Some Guys Have All The Luck.
The crowd are marvelling at the 74-year-old’s fine shape when he reveals he’s not even the oldest Stewart in the building: “My brother Don is in the audience. He’s 90! Good old Don!” The singer’s face is all smiles and emotion and he’s not always this engaged in singing. That he’s in the mood becomes apparent as he states: “It’s going to be a good one, this. I can feel it.” And so it proves.