Rod Stewart and Richard Marx

Born in Highgate, North London, England on 10 January 1945 and the youngest of five children, Stewart considered a career as a footballer before ultimately pursuing a career in music. In 1962 Stewart began spending time with Wizz Jones, a folk singer, and together they started to perform around England, Paris and even Barcelona, finding places to sleep under bridges. The following year Stewart picked up his signature Mod look, including his famous spiky rooster hairstyle. It was also the same year he became fascinated by R&B and soul music. He also joined his first paying musician job as a harmonica player and part-time vocalist with the R&B group, Dimensions.

Early in 1964 Long John Baldry discovered Stewart and invited him to play with his group the All Stars (renamed The Hoochie Coochie Men). As he started to gain more confidence as a performer on stage, Stewart would be billed as Rod the Mod. Later that same year he was scouted by Decca Records and signed his first solo contract resulting in his first single “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.” In July 1965 Stewart became part of the group Steampacket and supported The Rolling Stones.

By early 1966 Stewart departed Steampacket and found his way into the Jeff Beck Group as a vocalist and occasional songwriter and continued to tour with them around Europe and hit the United States in June 1968. By August the group released their first album “Truth,” but despite it’s widespread success the band fell apart and by October 1968 Stewart signed a solo contract with Mercury Records by his 1971 released the album “Every Picture Tells a Story” that really started to get his career on an upward spiral. With another album under his belt, by 1975 Stewart made the move to Los Angeles, California and released “Atlantic Crossing.” He reached the pivotal point in his career three years later with the release of the iconic “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” single, despite all of the criticisms about the lyrics.

As the times changed so did Stewart’s style; taking on a more new wave direction in the 80s. Unfortunately this resulted in mixed reviews of the albums that he released during this time. However things went back to stable with his 1988 release of “Out of Order” which had such hits as “Forever Young,” “Crazy About You,” and “My Heart Can’t Tell You No.” His following albums charted just as high and by 1994 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The 90s saw him signing with Clive Davis’ new label J Records.

The 2000s was full of continued success. He concentrated on working on some of the best pop songs from the 1930s and 1940s called “The Great American Songbook,” and a second “As Time Goes By: the Great American Songbook,” going up to four of these albums. Unfortunately in May 2000 he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, resulting in him going into surgery and having to “relearn” how to sing. To this day he continues his strong career and has released a tell all with his autobiography “Rod: The Autobiography.”

Marx’s career started aged 5, when he would sing jingles written by his father, who owned a commercial jingles company. It was when he was 17 that one of his demos ended up in the hands of Lionel Richie who invited Marx to sing on his debut solo album. Marx flew over to Los Angeles after his graduation to find himself singing on the songs “You Are”, “Running with the Night” and “All Night Long (All Night)”. His session singing career snowballed and he found himself singing for artists such as Madonna and Whitney Houston, which eventually turned into a songwriting career. He offered his song “Crazy” to Kenny Rogers, who recorded it, and also took the song “What About Me?” which featured the writing credits from James Ingram and Kim Carnes.

Marx finally released his eponymous debut album in June 1987, which would go on to sell almost four million copies in the US. The huge sophomore album “Repeat Offender” knocked Prince off the number 1 spot on the Billboard 200. The album would go triple platinum and eventually sold 5 million units in the US alone. It was the first two singles “Satisfied” and “Right Here Waiting” that went to number 1 in the Hot 100. He followed the success of this album with an international tour that included a visit to the Royal Albert Hall in London.

His third Platinum album “Rush Street” released on October 28th 1991 unfortunately didn’t quite achieve the success of the previous two albums, making it to number 35 in the Billboard 200 charts. Unfortunately, from the album “Flesh and Bone” released on April 8th 1997 until “Beautiful Goodbye” released on July 8th 2014, Marx chart success declined slightly, but it certainly didn’t have hinder on his biannually royalties check.