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ROD Stewart’s known as the singer with a soulful rasp but he’s also a natural-born storyteller.

Maybe it’s because his Scottish father’s Celtic blood is coursing through his veins.

Spend a bit of time with raconteur Rod and he conjures up tales that are blissfully happy or devastatingly sad, outrageously funny or deadly serious.

It explains why his songs, those he’s written and those he’s chosen to cover, have such rich narratives and fascinating back stories.

His 30th studio album, Blood Red Roses, is a typical tapestry of styles, influences and revealing lyrics. It’s further confirmation of Rod’s renaissance as a songwriter.

With all that’s going on in his superstar life, it’s rare for him to talk about his abiding passion for his craft.

“Do you actually listen to them?” he asks of the 13 songs on Blood Red Roses, appearing somewhat taken aback at my affirmative response.

“Well, that’s good, we’re on the same wavelength,” he replies. “Most of the album was made in hotel rooms or backstage at concerts. It’s truly remarkable what you can do now.

“In the old days, I’d spend months in the studio, never seeing the sun. You might get up in the middle of the night. You’d be drinking or doing drugs but that’s all gone now.”

We start with the song that Rod “can’t get out of his mind”, Grace, a sorrowful but soaring Irish republican ballad, which he accepts might be seen as a “controversial” choice.

“It’s not really an IRA song and was written in the Eighties,” he explains. “We’ve been singing it at my house for six months now. Even my boys (Alastair and Aiden) are singing it.”

Rod first heard it being sung by Celtic’s fervent Green Brigade, some of whom fly the Irish tricolour, at the Scottish Cup final and was deeply moved.

Grace feeds into his love of the Glasgow football club which he describes as “a religion” with “a deep political history”.

The song is set during the 1916 Easter Rising and tells of rebel leader Joseph Plunkett, sentenced to face a firing squad at Dublin’s notorious Kilmainham Gaol.

Seven hours before he meets his doom, he marries sweetheart Grace Gifford in a no-frills 15-minute ceremony at the gaol’s austere chapel.

The chorus, so sweetly sung by Rod with, it has to be said, a fair degree of grace, goes:
“Oh Grace just hold me in your arms and let this moment linger/They’ll take me out at dawn and I will die/With all my love I place this wedding ring upon your finger/There won’t be time to share our love for we must say goodbye.”

Rod says: “I did my homework by visiting Kilmainham (now a museum). I saw how humans can treat humans, the inhumanity. Wow!

“It was disgraceful. There was no toilet, no bed, no glass, just bars and a pot to piss in.

“The guide told me the women only got straw in the corner and the men got straw and blankets.”

The folky vibe of Grace is also present on the title track of Blood Red Roses, a full-throated sea shanty with a chorus borrowed from the impassioned Ewan MacColl, father of the late Kirsty (Fairytale Of New York).

When he was just starting out as a singer in the Sixties, Rod would watch out for MacColl’s visits to London.

“I used to idolise him. I’d go and sit down at a folk club in Oxford Street and listen,” he says.

“He would stand there and always hold his hand to his ear,” he adds, adopting the same pose while heartily singing, ‘Go down! You blood red roses!’

“I’ve remembered seeing him all my life and then this track came up...a whaling song because I’d seen a film about whaling.”

Rod’s early love of MacColl’s songs, which include The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, led to the inclusion of Dirty Old Town on his 1969 debut album, An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down.

The song’s been covered by The Pogues and U2 but he says: “I did Dirty Old Town before anybody...it’s still a lovely song that always goes down well, especially in Scotland and Ireland.”

We move on to Rod’s emotional song Farewell, a nostalgic remembrance of his late friend Ewan Dawson and their favourite haunts.

“He was like a brother...the song is a love song to another man,” he affirms. “I have five male friends that I love and he was one.”

So how did they meet? “Well, he came from Muswell Hill and I came from Highgate. There used to be a coffee bar we used to frequent and he was in there one night.

“I noticed him in a corner, good-looking fella in high-heeled boots...you know Beatle boots (the sort made popular by the band).

“I thought I was the only one who wore them so I went over and said hello and we were instant pals.”

Unlike Rod, Dawson sailed through life without much work. “Basically, he did f*** all. He was one of those lovely old rogues,” he says.

“He was a wheeler dealer and I never quite knew how he made a living. All the time I knew him, I don’t think he ever put in a day’s work.

“I lost him a bit in the Nineties but picked him up again in the 2000s. He died four or five years ago but I had to wait for the right vehicle to come along.

“And when that song came along, I said, ‘Well, this has got to be about my dear pal’. I loved the guy.”

Next song up for discussion, opening track Look In Her Eyes, an uptempo pop number, reflects on a subject close to Rod’s heart...picking up women.

He says it serves as “a little warning to guys now. They get a few drinks inside them and take it too far”.

Look In My Eyes is set in a New York nightclub and tells of “Johnny from Brooklyn” meeting “Marion from Queens”.

“It starts with a line of people outside the club. The girls are all done up and the boys giving it all that. I used to love it.”

Rod is, of course, a past master at luring beautiful women though it helps being a rock star with all the adulation that goes with it.

He’s not entirely proud of his past behaviour but he senses there’s a different attitude in today’s youth.

“In the old days, we didn’t have girlfriends we didn’t try to shag, right?” he says, answering his own question with a twinkle in his eye.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend I didn’t have sex with, or at least try to!

“But my daughters have male friends who have no interest in sex at all and my sons have girls who are not interested in it. They’re just mates.”

Only one song on Blood Red Roses draws a guarded response from Rod, Honey Gold, a wistful power ballad, about an “untouchable” old flame who partied with his old band The Faces.

“I don’t really want to answer any questions on this,” decides Rod. “Mmmm, I might let slip who it is one day.”

He adds: “It’s almost a true tale. I don’t know if there was a peace march in 1995 but she was and still is the sort of woman who would have joined it.”

One of the album’s three covers is Rollin’ & Tumblin’, a visceral old blues favourite with Muddy Waters’ version the best known.

“It rocks!” I tell Rod. “Yes, it does,” he replies. “Not bad for an old fella, eh? I’ve been singing that since the Sixties with Long John Baldry.”

Of course, London, his birthplace, was Rod’s chief stomping ground in the early days and it’s the setting for his new album’s closing track, Cold Old London, a simple, devotional love song.

“It still means home to me, really does,” he says. “I have houses in LA, Florida, the South of France but this is still home even though it feels a bit crowded these days.”

At 73, Rod clearly has no intention of slowing down.

He says: “The reason I’ve been able to make three albums in five or six years is because my co-producer Kevin Savigar is now my co-writer.”

So what’s next for the latest member of Britain’s rock royalty to get a knighthood?

“We’ve started work on another album and have nine tracks already. I’ve just got to write the lyrics.”

And what would it mean to him to see Blood Red Roses hit No1 in the album charts next Friday?

“I would throw the biggest party,” Rod affirms. “I don’t care if it doesn’t get to No1 in Japan but, in my home country, I want it to do well so I can walk proud among my friends.

“I’m not expecting to sell ten million copies like Taylor Swift. I make songs for my friends now and hope a few other people want to listen.”

As for playing live, whether it’s a Las Vegas residency or next year’s stadium tour, Rod still can’t wait for the next show.

“The buzz is still there,” he says. “I remember when we only played for half an hour and that was it but now we do two hours.

“I don’t get nervous before I walk on any more. I’ve got no stage fright.” That last comment prompts one final story from Rod, about the only time he really was scared.

“I was with Jeff Beck at the Fillmore East in New York. I hid behind the amps and didn’t want to come out.

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“I was so conscious I was trying to sound like all the great blues singers with their rough voices.

“I thought, ‘F***, I’m in America and they’ll see me as a fraud.’ I really got wrapped up in this and I was so frightened the curtain would open and I’d see...this was my worst nightmare...a lot of the black guys going, ‘Fraud! Fraud!’.

“But it was the opposite. The place was full of hippies!”

• Blood Red Roses is released today. Visit rodstewart.com for 2019 tour dates.

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