Rod Stewart's father use to cry every time he heard his song 'Sailing'.

The 68-year-old rocker remembers how his parents, Robert Stewart and Elsie Gilbart, would become overwhelmed with emotion while listening to their son's music and Rod's ''great'' memories of parents inspired one of the tracks on his new album 'Time'.

The musician - who has three siblings - told The Sun newspaper: ''I've got loads of great memories of my parents and that song ['Can't Stop Me Now'] just came to me as I was thinking how great my dad was.

''They used to come over to LA a lot and one time my dad flew over on Concorde. He was so down to earth and enamoured by the journey and food that he thought he had to pay for it ...

''His favourite song of mine was 'Sailing' and he would always have a little handkerchief, wiping under his eyes every time we played it.''

Rod - who has eight children with five women, including Alastair, seven, and Aiden, two, with his current spouse Penny Lancaster - still gets emotional whenever something reminds him of the times he spent with his dad but he insists he will never be embarrassed about crying and believes men shouldn't have to bottle up their emotions.

He revealed: ''I tried to spend as much time with him (dad) as I could in the last 10 years of his life. I would take him and my mum, who was in a wheelchair, everywhere I could. We shared a lot of great times together and there was a photo of me crying in the papers last year when Celtic beat Barcelona in the Champions League.

''That was because I was thinking about dad and wish he'd been there. There's nothing wrong with crying. Men should let it go.''