True, his
long hair, piratelike beard and single
pearl -
drop earring still evoke the bad - boy drifter he once was, growing up across the Mersey from Liverpool, intrigued by the Northern soul scene of the 1960s, which was made up of R&B and Motown, flare pants and dance marathons both languid and manic.
He had grown his hair
long and no
longer had the bleached Rod Stewart do, but he wore a short beard and a
pearl drop earring in one ear, which gave him the air of a 16th - century courtier and put me in mind of a portrait that hangs in Tate Britain — Marcus Gheeraerts's Captain Thomas Lee, fancifully kitted out as half fop, half bare - legged warrior.