Rod Stewart To Cough Up $3m For Not Singing
Then buzz it up
March 7th, 2006 at 13:00 by Stuart Heritage
And you thought it was bad enough when Rod Stewart opens his mouth and sings - just look at the trouble Rod Stewart causes when he doesn’t sing: he has to pay $3 million for cancelling a concert.
A judge has ordered Rod to pay back $3 million to a casino firm after he failed to reimburse a giant advance for a concert in 2000. To put that figure into more Rod Stewart-friendly terms, $3 million would buy roughly 1,500 of those ridiculous haircuts he has, or 2,630 pairs of horrific skintight leopardskin spandex trousers.
Imagine: it’s New Year’s Eve, the year 2000. Instead of seeing the
new year in surrounded by loved ones, you’ve shipped yourself off to
Las Vegas and pissed away whatever meagre earnings you managed to
scrape together over the last 12 months down a brightly-coloured,
screaming fruit machine. But it’s not all bad; croaky old mental-haired
1970s singer Rod Stewart (CDs) is due to be playing a special concert
tonight. You’ll enjoy that.
Only, no. Rod Stewart pulled out of the New Year’s Las Vegas
concert, citing his bad throat. He was apparently still recovering from
a thyroid cancer operation that he had a few months earlier. Which is fair enough, but the
trouble was that Rod had already accepted a $2 million advance from
casino firm Harrah’s for the concert. And he wasn’t giving it back.
Rod wanted to keep the cash and simply reschedule the cancelled dates once he
was better, but Harrah’s weren’t having any of it, something that Rod’s
lawyers were bewildered by:
"The man had cancer… He’s
now fully recovered and he’s willing and able to perform the concert.
They won’t let him."
Last September, a jury ruled that Rod Stewart should pay back the advance,
and that’s where yesterday’s $3 million figure comes from. He must pay
back the advance to Harrah’s plus interest, along with an additional
$153,483 in contempt-of-court fines and legal costs.
Not that this legal adventure has put Rod Stewart off from
performing in Las Vegas. He’s apparently considering a full-time move
to Vegas, as the resident star attraction at the MGM Grand Hotel and
Casino. Well, he’s got to recover his millions somehow, and somebody
has to pay for the nine billion engagement parties that daughter Kimberly has planned for this year.
Read more:
Stewart must pay $3m for cancelled show - Independent
[story by Stuart Heritage]
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March 7th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
Rod Stewart is number one on the long list of old rockers who should have vanished thirty years ago. Jagger, at least, gave up illusions of a solo career and kept the Rolling Stones a going concert. Their albums rock hard for a bunch of old guys. Stewart hasn’t been interesting, vital or clever since he left the company of the Faces. And now he can only shamelessly croak the Great American Songbook, sounding at best like a smoker trying to speak between coughing jags. Barking dogs
tearing apart old shoes would have been a better musical treat. Pony up, Rod.
March 8th, 2006 at 1:34 am
Looks like the author of this op/ed piece woke up on the wrong side of the bed and has a bone to pick with Rod.
If you had millions of fans who bought your albums and wanted to see you live, you would put records out and set concert dates (and choose whether or not to appear).
This “croaky old mental-haired” singer has sold millions of albums over 30+ years. Gee, I wonder why…