The singer has found marital bliss with third wife Penny, is a devoted dad to their sons Alastair, 12, and Aiden, seven, and says: “Happiness radiates out of me.”
Yet Rod harbours a regret that runs as deep as the “first cut” in the Cat Stevens song he still loves to perform.
It’s to do with the women who became a big part of his life . . . and then not.
“I haven’t treated women badly but I’m not proud of the way I broke up relationships,” he confesses. “I was a real coward.
“It wasn’t like Phil Collins. I didn’t send an email but I’ve left a lot of broken hearts. I’ve apologised or at least tried to since.”
It was only when supermodel wife Rachel Hunter walked out on Rod that he understood how devastating it could feel.
“When Rachel left me, I didn’t have the tools to cope with a break-up,” he sighs.
“I went to pieces. It was terrible. If ever karma got me back, it was then.”
“The other day, one of my boys had his heart broken and I said, ‘Well, it’s just as well it happened now because it happened to daddy late in life and I didn’t have the hammer and nails and drill to deal with it'.
"You can’t go over it, under it, round it.
“One of my daughters is in the same position right now having broken up with somebody. I told her: ‘You’ve just gotta be brave, nothing lasts forever.”
Rod might just be wrong there because it seems that Penny Lancaster — now Lady Stewart, of course — is his forever partner.
“Well she’s a British girl, the first one I’ve married,” he says. “Kelly (his ex-partner) and Alana (his first wife) are Americans and Rachel’s a New Zealander so maybe that’s the key!
“Penny’s an Essex girl and she’s proud of it. Apart from the visuals of Penny, she’s tough but not too tough and she doesn’t take any nonsense from me.
“She’s a great mum. . . the whole package, as far as I’m concerned.
“We hug every time we have to go away from each other. We always have a cuddle at night even if we’re not having sex.
“And we never go to bed without kissing each other good night. It’s just wonderful. I feel blessed many times over.”
I’m meeting Rod at his London hotel of choice, the five-star Langham in Portland Place, not far from the buzz of Oxford Street, to celebrate his vibrant and varied new album Blood Red Roses.
The album serves a rousing romp through all the styles he’s adopted in an career that spans more than half a century — rock, pop, blues, folk, jazz and soul.
In anticipation of the VIP guest’s promo day, the sumptuous hotel suite is festooned with bottles of booze and bars of chocolate. There’s even a football for the Celtic uber-fan nestling under the coffee table.
It’s the day everyone’s talking about porn actress Stormy Daniels’ cringeworthy description of President Donald Trump’s manhood.
“Simon, how have you bloody well been?” cries Rod, breaking into a grin to reveal his immaculate white teeth. “Nothing like a penis that looks like a mushroom is there?
“Poor bloke! It’s the worst humiliation you can possibly have. She’s a cheeky cow because now it’s gone all round the world.”
Rod, as dapper as ever in a grey suit, white shirt and black loafers with gold crown motifs, ignores the massed ranks of bottles and decides on a late breakfast of humble scrambled eggs on toast.
For nearly an hour, he regales me with stories from his life less ordinary, his views on pressing issues and themes explored on his new album.
- He believes the #MeToo movement is “long overdue” and says he has no skeletons in his closet . . . “In fact, we had to push women off, especially in The Faces.”
- He accepts that songs like Do Ya Think I’m Sexy and Hot Legs would never get written today “because they’d be seen as sexist.”
- He would love Celtic to join the Premier League despite concern over the Scottish leagues and hopes Steven Gerrard doesn’t turn into another “moaning” Rangers manager.
- He doesn’t usually get involved in politics but says “the British public deserve a second referendum on Brexit. They didn’t understand what it all meant”.
- He says his new ice bath has made a “massive difference” to his dodgy knee and that he’s planning to take up yoga to add to his swimming and gym routines.
- He admits in new song Hole In My Heart that he’s “undomesticated. I get all the pots and pans out but I can’t even boil an egg.”
- He reveals he’s just finished Breaking Bad, the saga of chemistry teacher turned drugs overlord Walter White, and “can’t imagine anything being that good anymore.”
Rod glances at my watch and asks if it lights up before proudly showing me his.
“Timex. . . 28 quid. I’ve got Cartier watches, bling watches, but I wear this all the time because when I go to bed it lights up.”
We move on to a new Rod song that’s getting a lot of attention, Didn’t I, a cautionary tale about drugs from a concerned parent’s perspective.
He thinks chemical drugs available today are way more dangerous than what was on offer in his rock ’n’ roll past.
“I was never really a druggie but I enjoyed a little cocaine . . . ONLY a little.
“In the old days, coke would hardly keep you awake. You could have sex on it and you’d wake up the next morning without a blocked nose. I haven’t done any for about 15 years.
“What worries me is what’s happening to today’s kids. In America, it’s the opioids.
"And I’m watching Sky today and they’re debating kids taking antidepressants at 12.”
Despite the superstar life he divides between Los Angeles and his latest UK home, a palatial 18th Century Essex pile, Rod still comes over as a down-to-earth guy who prefers life’s simple pleasures.
He spends “a little more time here because the tax laws have changed in my favour” and because his boys go to school here.
And when royalist Rod finally got a knighthood for services to music and charity, the war child born in Highgate, North London, couldn’t have been more proud.
“I’m sure my parents were looking down on me, they saw it,” he says of ceremony at Buckingham Palace in the presence of Prince William.
“It was stunning to get the news,” he continues. “I was happy with the CBE but now it’s Sir Rod Stewart CBE.
"We had to keep it quiet for a good two or three months which was very difficult because I wanted to jump out of the window and tell everybody.”
Rod gets up and paces out five steps forward, five steps to the side, and then goes down on one knee, just as he did on the big day.
“William said, ‘Are you still singing?’ And I replied, ‘Yes, I’ve got eight kids, I have to!”
Next we turn our attention to another musical knight — his old mate and, until recently, friendly rival Elton John.
If Rod has another regret, it’s his unguarded outburst on an American chat show that Elton’s three-year retirement tour is “dishonest” and “stinks of selling tickets.”
“She (Elton) doesn’t like me at the moment,” he reports, still with a distinct undercurrent of mischief.
“I was bang out of order. CORRECT, but bang out of order.”
Rod blames the show’s producers because “they make sure you get drunk before you go on. Four big shots of neat vodka and with me being a butch man, I knocked them all back.
“I said that the 300 dates in three years sounded a bit money-grabbing to me.
“Look, I know where’s he’s coming from. He’s just got two kids very, very late in life but I’m planning my tours around my kids. I think he’ll miss it. I can’t wait for the next show.”
Alastair and Aiden are a constant source of joy to Rod and they share his abiding love for football and the Glasgow team with the green and white hoops.
“I’ve had a half-sized astroturf pitch built for them,” he says. “They’re out there in their Celtic shirts. . . it makes my heart so proud, it really does!”
Celtic, of course, has mostly Catholic fans and Rod laughs when he describes his recent visit to Pope Francis in The Vatican.
“I’m a protestant but Penny wanted to meet the Pope. I hoped he would have a green and white shirt on but he didn’t,” he says.
“We were told to get there at 8.30 in the morning. Do you know what time he came on? About half past ten. Two hours later. No support act!
“Got to be careful what I say and it did turn out to be a great experience. He came up and said hello.
"Doesn’t speak any English and didn’t know who the f*** I was but that was OK.”
How odd to find someone who hasn’t heard of the irrepressible Sir Rod Stewart, still striding the world’s stage.
Never mind his song I Don’t Want To Talk About It — there’s nothing he didn’t want to talk about.
- Blood Red Roses is out on Friday.
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