 Stewart flirted with a career in professional soccer, before becoming a full-time musician in the early 1960s, touring Europe for a time with British folk singer Wizz Jones before returning home in 1963. Stewart and guitarist Ron Wood, formerly the bass player for the Jeff Beck Group, joined the Faces, an offshoot of the legendary '60s mod band Small Faces. Though he remained with the Faces until 1975, Stewart began a solo career in late 1969 with The Rod Stewart Album, an acoustic rock effort that broke into the Billboard Top 200 in the United States, though it failed to chart in Britain. 1970's Gasoline Alley and its accompanying U.S. tour expanded Stewart's stateside following; though better known as the Faces' front man in the U.K., in North America he was already a minor star in his own right. As a result Stewart's 1971 follow-up, Every Picture Tells a Story, reached No. 1, spawning the surprise international No. 1 single "Maggie May" (originally a b-side). Now a full-time solo artist, Stewart released 1975's Smiler, then relocated to the U.S. for tax purposes, a journey commemorated on the poppier Atlantic Crossing, released later that year. 1976's A Night on the Town went platinum thanks to the success of its No. 1 single, "Tonight's the Night," while his 1977 follow-up, Foot Loose and Fancy Free, went triple platinum. Stewart was now a bona fide celebrity pop star, as known for his lavish lifestyle and relationships with actresses and models as for his slick, catchy hits like 1978's disco-influenced "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?". Adroitly shifting from disco to synth-pop at the turn of the decade, Stewart scored another platinum album with 1981's Tonight I'm Yours. However, at the end of the 1980s Stewart was on the comeback trail, finally scoring a much-needed hit with 1989's "Downtown Train," a clever Tom Waits cover that earned him his first Grammy nomination. Stewart entered the '90s as a mature, adult-oriented vocalist, reuniting with former Faces band mate Ron Wood to record a 1993 MTV Unplugged special, which also became a successful album. 1998's When We Were the New Boys featured covers of songs by contemporary British bands like Oasis ("Cigarettes and Alcohol"), Primal Scream ("Rocks"), and Skunk Anansie ("Weak"), as well as a Faces cover ("Ooh La La") and a Nick Lowe song ("Shelly My Love"). He came back with Human, an R&B - flavored effort released in early 2001. Seth Hindin
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