He's a strange figure, Rod Stewart: wildly successful but, despite having been in the Faces and the Jeff Beck Group, never quite cool. He doesn't feel central to the world of rock and pop – or at least never has in my lifetime – but he has sold a staggering number of records. Did you know that in its first 24 hours MTV played 16 of his videos? Or that the act that kept the Sex Pistols off the number one slot in the jubilee year was Stewart? Or that he held the Guinness world record for the biggest audience – 3.5 million on Copacabana Beach? It's all here.
On paper he's the perfect rock star. His enthusiasms are fast cars, ridiculous clothes, oafish practical jokes, sex with models, private jets, drugs and alcohol, football. Counting against him, perhaps, is that he's sensible with his money, seems to be completely demon-free, gargled and snorted without ever succumbing to addiction, and has remained on good terms with his exes and various children by same (as well as with his eldest daughter, given up for adoption at birth and reunited with him as an adult). Also, he's not afraid to admit that his great recreational passion is building model railways: "It's not really about the trains […] there is no wearing of peaked caps, waving of flags or blowing of whistles. Furthermore, anyone found in the vicinity of the layout making train noises will find themselves forcibly ejected ..."
All this is amiably and self-knowingly told. The best rock star memoirs steer clear of nonsense about personal journeys, formulaic expressions of regret over drug use and sexual highjinks, or emetic tributes to the love that saved their lives. We don't want to hear about the anguish: we want somewhere for fantasy to flourish. The spirit should be: "How sad and bad and mad it was – / But then, how it was sweet!"
Alex James from Blur – before he became galactically tedious about cheese – wrote a really charming, daffy example of the genre. Mark Manning's Fucked By Rock: The Unspeakable Confessions of Zodiac Mindwarp, is even better than its title suggests thanks to a strong kinship in style if not in subject matter with PG Wodehouse. This one – while not quite in the mould of either – does clatter off to a good start. It also – excellent in such a book – has a comprehensive index: "Lumley, Joanna 177-9"; "nuclear weapons 28,29"; "oral sex: Rod advised against 58; untrue stories of 232" and so on. ("Untrue stories of", by the way, refers to the old tale of his being admitted to a West Coast emergency room to have a pint and a half of semen pumped out of his stomach. He denies it.)
I don't know whether Stewart wrote all of Rod himself but if he did he deserves respect and if he didn't I hope his ghost – rumoured to be journalist Giles Smith – is getting a decent slice of the action. The writing is a cut above workmanlike, the tone pitched right and the jokes good. Each chapter is given a whimsical 18th-century-style subheading, beginning with the dry: "In which our hero is born, just over six years of global conflict ending shortly thereafter ..."
Sprinkled hither and yon are Digressions on various pet subjects. The first one is on the subject of his hair, and it's splendid. He's had the same hairstyle for 45 years ("It's what I have in common with the Queen"). He paints a delightful portrait of early days: he and Ron Wood spending hours tenderly arranging each-other's barnets; or standing on the platform at Archway tube desperately trying to protect his bouffant from the pressure wave of the arriving train.
The heart of the book is in the opening 100 or so pages: the fierce excitement of young manhood and the crossing-over from fandom to performance; the exhilaration of American folk, blues and soul; the buzz of that germinal Stones/Who/Yardbirds/Faces/Jeff Beck Group scene. All are well caught. He writes articulately about music: where a drummer sits on the beat, or what makes a song bombproof. It's the work of someone who really knows his craft, and loves it. He's touching, too, about his relationship with his mentor Long John Baldry, who discovered him on a train platform blowing a mouth organ and instantly signed him up as a backing singer.
In the high years of fame the air slightly goes out of the tyres. Names are dropped (Freddie Mercury was "a sweet and funny man"), sales figures itemised, tales of circumnavigating the world by private jet to catch football games retailed, and collection of "Pre-Raphs" boasted of (he counts them to help him sleep and normally nods off by around 130). He never quite recaptures the brio of part one: the son of a North London plumber on the rocket-launch to stardom.
Still, there's plenty of sex. Blonde on blonde! At one point he swanks about cheating on one Playboy model with another Playboy model; at another, about sneaking out for a first date with Kelly Emberg while still married to his first wife, then leaving that date (smitten, he tells us) to climb into bed with his mistress.
What is his secret? "Hello darlin' – what you got in that handbag?" is the chat-up line he swears by, apparently. During his relationship with Britt Ekland (she called him "Soddy" and he called her "Poopy", for reasons we are left to guess at) he sent her the following telegram in response to her request for a love-letter: "Tired of pulling me plonker. Please come home."
Romantic though such details are, you find yourself souring a little at quite how badly he behaved: ending long-term relationships by publicly and humiliatingly flaunting his infidelity. "Less than gentlemanly," he'll concede in hindsight, or – of cheating on his heavily pregnant wife Emberg with "another model" – "This, clearly, was the behaviour of an arsehole." Still, he's also kind of pleased with himself.
Rachel Hunter broke his heart. She was 21 when they met. They spent eight years together and she was the only woman to date he didn't betray: "I've put my last banana in the fruit bowl," he assured reporters. Sadly, that fruit bowl went off in search of fresher bananas. Now, he assures us, he has found the love of his life in his third wife Penny Lancaster. We must wish him well.
• Sam Leith's You Talkin' to Me? is published by Profile.
