Legendary singer Rod Stewart was born January 10, 1945 in London, England. Through a number of different bands and various solo projects, Rod has always managed to captivate most of his listeners with his incredibly unique voice and larger than life personality. After four decades in the music industry, Stewart is still going strong today.

Like many gravel-voiced, sultry singers, every breath of Rod’s life comes through in his vocals. Rod was born Roderick David Stewart to a working class family in Highgate, North London. In his younger years, Stewart was an impressive athlete. He was almost a professional football player and still wears his love for the sport on his sleeve.

Before music became Rod’s career, he worked at a variety of odd jobs. While still a teenager, Stewart even had a stretch working as a grave digger. However, it was becoming more and more apparent that singing and performing was what he wanted to do, and prompted by other popular music of the day, Rod set out to follow his dream.

Throughout the mid 1960s, Rod practiced his music and went on the hunt for the ultimate band. Displaying a unique vocal range and an undeniable talent for delivery, Stewart was accepted with open arms into the Jeff Beck Group in 1966. Although the band wasn’t a smashing success, they still developed quite a following.

For the times they were in, surrounded by The Beatles, Elvis and even upstart bands like Zeppelin, the Jeff Beck Group still managed to release two successful albums and pull off successful tours of both the UK and the United States. However, the group had split up by 1969.

Undeterred, Stewart got right back on the horse and joined the Faces. While recording with his new group, Rod chose to leave nothing to chance. His love was for music, and while recording with the Faces, he was also working on his own solo albums. Rod’s smash hit Maggie May was released the same year as the Faces’ hit Stay with Me (1971).

In 1975, Stewart moved to the United States to work as a solo artist full time. His sound evolved and ventured away from straight rock. Now, Stewart was delivering more of a pop sound and was actually ahead of his time, releasing 80’s-sounding music before the decade rolled around.

Ironically, even though Stewart was at the forefront of 80s tunes, he didn’t experience much success at all as a recording artist, save a few tracks. 1981’s Tonight I’m Yours sold over a million copies, but the next dozen years weren’t too kind to Stewart.

In the early 90s, with the rush of MTV and dominance of bands like Nirvana, Stewart reinvented himself once again. Only this time, he wasn’t trying something new, per se. He was reverting back to the classics.

At a time when grunge music dominated the landscape on MTV’s Unplugged series, Rod Stewart recorded his Unplugged and Seated show in 1993, featuring his huge hit Have I Told You Lately, and he was once again a widely popular artist.

As the new millennium was just getting started, Stewart decided to keep with his classics and standards theme, and he released The Great American Songbook in 2002 – a montage of covered classics over a four-disc span. Stewart won his first Grammy for Volume III in 2004.

Stewart still records music and performs live today. Although he’s 65, Rod still finds time to entertain and is rumored to have a new album in the works.