by Rod Stewart
In 2003, we went to Tanzania for New Year’s. We had seen an advert on the television in which a couple wished each other a happy new year in the middle of the African bush and we thought, ‘That looks like the most romantic thing.’ And on that trip, I picked up a stone and scored into the trunk of a tree ‘RS loves PL’. It was something I had never said to her and even then she didn’t know whether I was fooling around or being sincere, and I didn’t clarify it for her.
And then came 11 September 2004, the third anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. We were at Wood House, sitting by the lake on one of those bright, clear, English autumn afternoons. We were talking about what had happened those years ago and about the families destroyed that day and the children left behind. And after a while I said, ‘Let’s make a baby.’
She was overcome because she hadn’t been expecting to hear it from me. But the realisation that that was what I wanted for us both had been a long time coming, and I knew I meant it, as well as I knew anything. We tried immediately and, in fact, Penny got pregnant that Christmas, but she miscarried very quickly. Still, we resolved to keep trying.
In the meantime, I had another idea. In March 2005, Penny was nearing her thirty-third birthday. I told her, ‘I’m going to take you on a surprise trip – you, and your mum and dad. It’s just for the day, but you’ll need your passport. And dress smartly.’
That morning, Penny and I met her parents at Stansted Airport. Peter Mackay, my tour manager, was along to look after us, and I had entrusted a small but important box to him for safe keeping, but not even he was told the purpose of the day. Penny wore a black pencil skirt and a white shirt, the teacherly/secretarial look of which I’m unashamedly fond. I couldn’t believe that she hadn’t read my purpose – and maybe secretly she had. She was obviously nervous, and sensing that something was up.
As we were crossing the tarmac to the plane, I hung back slightly with Penny’s dad, and above the whine of the engine I leaned into his ear and said, ‘Do I have your permission to ask your daughter to marry me?’
Graham’s a tough man, but his legs almost went from under him. I had to hold him up for a moment. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Yes, you do!’
Good job, because the rest of the day would have come off a bit damply if he had said no.
Graham somehow managed to sit on the secret all the way to our destination: Paris. He and Sally, Penny’s mum, had never been there. We went to Le Fouquet’s in the Champs-Elysées for coffee, but I couldn’t relax at all. I kept looking at my watch. ‘Twelve-thirty. Drink up. We need to be going.’ Chivvied along by me, we left Le Fouquet’s and drove across to the Eiffel Tower. There we ascended in the lift to the Jules Verne restaurant on the Tower’s second platform, where Pete escorted us to the bar and left us.
I was in the middle of hastily ordering a round of vodka cocktails when a surge of panic rushed through me. The package in Pete’s pocket! I chased out after him and just managed to head him off out by the lifts, before he disappeared into Paris for an hour, which really would have cocked up everything. I tucked the box into the inside pocket of my jacket and headed back to the restaurant bar, where I proceeded to soak my jangling nerves in a vodka cocktail, followed immediately afterwards by another one.
And then, right there at the bar, I went down on one knee, held out the ring in its box and asked Penny to marry me.
Penny had a minute of disbelief. Her hands went to her face and her eyes welled. In the background was the sound of Sally sobbing hysterically. This seemed to go on for some time. I had a dodgy right knee – an old footballing injury – and I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to take this. Eventually I said, ‘Please say something, Penny, because me knee is killing me.’
She gave me a sobbing ‘yes’. And at last I was able to stand up, relieve my knee and become Penny’s partner for life.
After lunch we drove back to the airport and flew home. Paris was our special place from that day on, a city we return to when we can to remind ourselves of that day. I couldn’t believe how very much in love we were and how lucky this ageing rock star had become. And that night we conceived Alastair, our beautiful son.
* * *
The baby came on 27 November 2005. Penny had loved being pregnant, and I loved it too. On our way into the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in St John’s Wood in London, we paused at the chapel beside the maternity ward to say our prayers. And then, after a long and emotional labour, with Penny sometimes in and sometimes out of the birthing pool (we had chosen to have a water birth), Alastair finally arrived – delivered onto the lino in the end, which, I couldn’t help noticing, amid the euphoria of the moment, bore a very similar pattern to the floor at 507 Archway Road. As Penny recovered, I held Alastair and sang him ‘Flower of Scotland’. And as we left the next morning, I told the nurses, ‘See you next year.’
In June 2007, Penny and I were married in front of a hundred guests at a chapel decorated with white roses in the town of Santa Margherita on the Italian Riviera. There had to be some smoke and mirrors to prevent the press from inviting themselves. We set out for Italy from the south coast of France by boat, getting dropped off in two separate bays. It was like the D-Day landings. The sense of subterfuge only added to the excitement.
And what an incredibly joyous weekend we had. The night before the ceremony, we threw a white-themed party in our hotel and, as ever, on countless key occasions in my life, it devolved into a sing-song. Out came the old numbers: ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home,’ ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’, ‘On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep’ and, of course, ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’. And my sister Mary was there, and my brothers, Bob and Don, with whom I have shared those songs all my life, and the party conga-danced its way out of the hotel doors and onto the street – the way that parties conga-danced out of the front door of 507 Archway Road all those years before, some things never changing.
At the service, unbeknown to me, Penny had arranged for her procession down the aisle to be accompanied by an Italian boys’ choir singing ‘Fields of Athenry’, the great Irish folk ballad, adopted by Celtic supporters. I welled up and almost lost control completely. In honour of the Epping swan that rose up from the lake while Penny watched that day, there were swans’ feathers in the flower displays, on the invitations, in the hanging decorations above the ballroom. And when, in the traditional order of things, the bride and groom led the way onto the dance floor, their choice of song was Etta James’ ‘At Last’.
And, yes, as a 67-year-old man now, I can regret that this relationship, this marriage, this family, didn’t come sooner. But I know that’s just greed talking and that the blessing, the relief and the ever-renewing amazement of it for me is that those things came at all; that I am happier and more in love than I have ever been, that the journey ever reached this place, when I had given up hope that it would or could.
There’s a photo from the wedding. It’s taken after the service, and after the reception. The fireworks have just been let off on the jetty, the cake is about to be cut, and we’re standing on a hill above the water. Penny has got her arms across her body and I’m standing behind her with my arms around her, holding her tightly, and what the expressions on our faces and the setting and, really, everything about the picture seem to say is: at last.
DIGRESSION
In which our hero meditates on the tribulations and rewards of fatherhood.
Nobody can teach you to be a parent. It’s something that you learn as you go along, anxiously feeling your way forward, failing in places, succeeding in others, making the best of it that you can. Still, knowledgeable guidance is always welcome, so permit me to present my personal Top 20 parenting insights, a set of practical observations based on hands-on experience with seven children and more than thirty years in the fatherhood business, much of it in Los Angeles, a city which, as everyone knows, presents its own special challenges in the rearing of offspring.
Small children and an extensive collection
of priceless Gallé lamps is not an ideal combination. I sold off many of my best specimens when the kids started coming along because it seemed more prudent than trying to stick them back together.
Many of the pranks learned in years of touring and staying in hotels with rock bands turn out (perhaps unsurprisingly) to have applications within the context of family life at home. For example: positioning a bucket of water over the door to a child’s bedroom.
Similarly, secretly removing all that room’s light bulbs to create confusion and frustration.
But watch out for the ‘cellophane over the loo seat in the bathroom’ trick, conducted as direct revenge, at the parent’s expense, for the aforementioned light-bulb removal/bucket of water.
Should your one-year-old, while perched on her mother’s hip, reach out and snatch the false teeth right out of her aged and confused grandmother’s mouth, don’t panic. Wrest the false teeth from the one-year-old’s fingers, rinse the dentures quickly under the kitchen tap and place them on the table. With any luck, it will all happen so fast that the grandmother in question will give the teeth on the table a quizzical look, as if to say ‘Aren’t those mine?’, and then throw them back in her mouth, and nothing more will be said about it.
When packing your child’s lunch for school be sure to include, as well as the obvious sandwich and chocolate bar, random items such as a screwdriver, a piece of sandpaper or a plastic figure from a railway set, just to keep them on their toes.
Covering yourself in a bed sheet and pretending to be a ghost is an absolutely fail-safe way to frighten a child out of its wits, especially if you have access to a large, centuries-old house in the English countryside.
If your child finds your choice of a pale-blue Lamborghini ‘so Miami Vice’ and is vocal about their embarrassment at being seen in it, willingly concede to their demand to be dropped around the corner from school, out of sight, rather than directly at the gates. But then, after waiting a short while, follow them round to the entrance, hooting, waving and calling ‘goodbye’ loudly as they go in.
However, note that nothing embarrasses children quite so devastatingly as the sight, in a swimming pool setting, of their father in a pair of Versace Speedos.
Kids of all ages enjoy ‘the couch game’, wherein everyone sits in a line on the couch and, on the count of three, leans backwards as hard as they can to cause the couch to go over onto its back. Hours of fun. There are very few moods so dark that they cannot be lightened by a round or three of ‘the couch game’.
Equally good value: ‘the table game’. The object of this is to shift a restaurant table, very gradually, inch by inch, during the course of a meal until, imperceptibly and to the confusion of the waiting staff, it has come to occupy a place in the middle of the room, or elsewhere. Especially amusing in al fresco city restaurants where, at some point, the table can be half on and half off the pavement, and eventually out in the traffic. And also amusing in St Tropez, where the table can end up in the sea. Straight faces essential.
Books make a handy, obstructive covering for a child’s bed, especially if stacked very neatly across the entire surface of that bed, three or four deep.
Even the most sluggish of teenagers can be roused for school in the morning if you position enough alarm clocks around their bedroom in enough hard-to-reach places.
Equally effective in this regard: a recording of bagpipes played loudly outside the teenager’s door.
If your teenager persists in parking near the house in a spot where you don’t want them to park, wrap that teenager’s car key in thirty layers of cellophane in order to carry home the message.
If you are fed up with your offspring’s chihuahua crapping in your garden, and that crap going uncleared, place the offending waste-matter on a napkin under the driver’s seat of your child’s car and allow natural heat and humidity in the car’s interior to create a memorable lesson in pet care.
The same waste-matter placed on a napkin on the floor of the offspring’s room will have a very similar effect in terms of reinforcing the message.
If you are fed up with your offspring’s chihuahua in general, try drawing ‘666’, the number of the beast, on its forehead in marker pen.
That homeless person, discovered early one morning by your housekeeper asleep on the sofa in the sitting room next to the kitchen, may not be a homeless person at all. It may be Munky, the guitarist from Korn, kipping over, having been a late-night guest of your offspring. Therefore, your housekeeper need not immediately call the police and report an intruder. (I was away when this happened, I’m glad to say.)
And while we’re on the subject of being away: when Tommy Lee, a founder member of the metal band Mötley Crüe, and his pilot take it into their heads, while visiting your children, to try to land a helicopter in your back garden, you might want to be on tour, as I was, so that you miss the ensuing chaos and leave someone else to explain to the estate management and the fire department exactly what the fuck is going on.
My more than thirty years in parenting have left me, not only with the extremely useful accumulated knowledge above, but also with a thing about Father’s Day. It means far more to me to be remembered on that day than it does on Christmas Day or on my birthday. Father’s Day is the one that can get overlooked. I actually get nervous about it beforehand, wondering whether this will be the year that one of my children forgets. And when they don’t, and they get in touch and they send their love, it melts me away because that’s all I want to hear.
Perhaps I need that reassurance because I am prone to feeling guilty, and one of the things I am prone to feeling guilty about is whether, as a father, I have been all that I could be. I have never been a bad father. On the contrary, I have always been a good father in the sense that my love for my children has been unwavering. But I was certainly, for significant periods of my older children’s lives, an absent father. The nature of the job meant that I would be home for a month, and then gone for three. That was difficult for my children, and the fact that they didn’t know life to be any different didn’t make it easier. And then, periodically, I would make things even more complicated by starting another family. Each of my children knew they had my love, but my love was coming from such a distance a lot of the time. And I realised, too late, that this was ground I wouldn’t make up and time I wouldn’t get back. All you can do is try to mend it as best you can, which is what I’m doing now – trying to be more of a present father in their lives.
I’m so proud of them: Sarah, Kimberly, Sean, Ruby, Renee, Liam, Alastair and Aiden, the last (I can confidently state) of my children. Aiden was a little while in the making. We tried for two years for a sibling for Alastair before specialists discovered that Penny had high levels of mercury in her body and recommended that we try in vitro fertilisation. This route didn’t prove entirely easy for us, either. We had three rounds of IVF in all, and it’s physically very punishing for the woman, and heartbreaking for both of you when it doesn’t work. Still, we kept on going and turned it into as much of an adventure as possible. I was offered the opportunity to provide my samples at the clinic, but I preferred to do so in the privacy of my own home. Then Penny and I would jump into the Ferrari and speed off to the clinic with the tube kept warm between Penny’s thighs. I was on tour in Moscow in the summer of 2010 when Penny phoned to say she was finally pregnant, and we both wept for joy. On 16 February 2011 our lovely boy arrived. Six months after that, Kim gave birth to Delilah and made a proud new father a proud new grandfather.
I love the fact that my children refer to each other as brothers and sisters – not as half-brothers or half-sisters. There are no half measures here. There’s a real family gravity drawing them close – a proper clannishness, the Stewart clan.
One of the battles I have had down the years – both with their mothers and with my own conscience – is with the material side of parenting, the question of what children should be given and what they should have to go and earn. I cling so hard to that
working-class ethic that I came from – of coming from nowhere and making something of yourself. But, of course, my own kids don’t come from nowhere; they started off on another level of privilege altogether from where I started. It’s about finding the balance between enabling them and indulging them, and I concede that I struggle with it, veering one way and then the other.
But, through all that, I am fortunate that I still have a good relationship with their mothers. When you’ve had children with somebody, you share that for the rest of your life, over and above the differences you may have had. Kim is raising Delilah in the guest house of my home in Beverly Park, so Alana, as grandmother, is often around, helping her out, babysitting, pushing a stroller up the drive and out to the playground. Kelly, who eventually got married and had two sons and now lives in San Diego, became an interior designer and I employed her to design some of the rooms in Celtic House in Beverly Park. We get along fine. Rachel and I never actually fell out, so our friendship is still strong. Rachel had some disappointment in a love affair following our marriage, and it’s a sign of where our relationship is now that she came to me to talk about it.
In fact, relations between us all have been so stable that, in 2000, we felt close enough, at my suggestion, to hold a big family Christmas. It took place at Celtic House: Christmas dinner for all the children, Alana, Kelly, Rachel, and Penny, whom I had only been seeing for a few months and for whom this must have been a uniquely terrifying experience – thrust into a room with the three variously formidable mothers of her new partner’s children, who had never been together in this way, and in the volatile circumstances of Christmas, too.
