Rod Stewart insisted that his upcoming album, Blood Red Roses, wasn’t going to be his last and revealed his desire to record a duet LP with Bonnie Raitt in the future.

He recently announced his third album with writing partner Kevin Savigar – and this 30th album overall – will be released on Sept. 28.

“I had writer’s block. I became a lazy git,” Stewart told Uncut in an interview published in the latest issue. “No, maybe it wasn’t that. I didn’t have a foil. I couldn’t find anyone I wanted to write with until Kevin Savigar came along. He’s brilliant. We could go on and on writing songs for years.”

Stewart also fielded a question about making a “sparse and intimate recording” like Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, who released the award-winning album Raising Sand in 2007. He said he was interested in doing one, “but not yet. I’ve still got a lot of rocking stuff to be done. I’ve thought about getting a girl to sing with me on those kind of stripped-back ballads. I know the record company wants me to do it. But I need to find a girl I think I can sing with – Bonnie Raitt would be great – and the songs come, and they’re all in that vein, and they can all be interpreted, then I’ll do it. And it will happen.”

Stewart – who recently described Elton John’s retirement announcement as “dishonest,” arguing that it “stinks of selling tickets” – rejected the idea of retiring himself. “Oh, please!” he said. “You’ve got no idea! When I first started, none of us thought about fame. We just had to play and people listened – that was all we wanted. It’s still the same. Plus, I’m a natural showoff! The audience is still there. Two nights, sold out, at the Hollywood Bowl. 15,000 a night. I’d be a mug to give it up.”

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