Rod Stewart worked numerous odd jobs before he became the rockstar we all know and love. The Brit left school at 15 and, before finding fame, worked as a silk screen printer, electrician’s assistant and as a soccer player.
But one job stood out for the young singer. He worked at London’s Highgate Cemetery, helping dig graves. The singer had frequently told stories about working as a gravedigger, although he later changed his story.
“… there were a couple of Saturdays up at Highgate Cemetery, earning a few quid by measuring out plots and marking them off with string,” he wrote in his autobiography, before Culture Sonar.
In his 2012 memoir, the “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” singer wrote: “You learn a lot about yourself, doing physical work. And what I learned about myself was that I didn’t like doing physical work.”
While he worked in a cemetery, Stewart claims he doesn’t consider this gravedigging. The “Maggie May” singer does appreciate the urban myth and believes it adds to his celebrity persona.
“Incidentally, it was from these few hours of casual labor at the cemetery that the popular myth arose (one I happily rode along with) that I was once a gravedigger. It’s a delicious, mysterious piece of back-story, but again we must move to strike it from the record,” he wrote.
When it came to choosing a career as a muscian, Stewart concluded: “Well, a musician’s life is a lot easier and I can also get drunk and make music, and I can’t do that and play football. I plumped for music … They’re the only two things I can do actually: play football and sing,” he said per Nelson and Bangs’s biography of the man.
Grammy-winning Stewart went on to rank as the 17th most successful artist on the “Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists” list and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
