Rod Stewart A Spanner in the Works (1995)

From starlingdb.org

You may love or hate all the endless ‘unplugged’ sessions, but there’s no denying at least one thing: most of these actions invigorated the ‘dinosaur rockers’ to finally go out in the studio and make something that would stand out among their gray, tired, and often shitty catalog of the Eighties. Paul McCartney played his set and released Off The Ground, his biggest ‘comeback’ in years; Clapton played his set and released From The Cradle, a record I still insist is one of his best; even Bob Dylan followed his set with Time Out Of Mind. Well, Rod was no exception: after his 1993 affair with MTV, he put out this little record which, while far from ‘great’, is still undeniably the best effort since Blondes, and in many ways can even be deemed superior. Frankly speaking, I had little hope when I picked it up – something was stirring up my heart, though, telling me that it was yet too early to put a big fat full stop to the Mod’s career. And oh how happy I was! Yeah, this ain’t exactly the ‘great’ comeback fans were probably secretly hoping for since the mid-Seventies, but it’s the closest thing to a ‘satisfying’ Rod Stewart album we’ve seen in years. No more generic robotic rockers on here. Very few Phil Collins-style atmospheric ballads. No atrocious experiments with setting old songs to break dance rhythms or anything like that. The production is quite clever – with just a slight touch of synth backing, lots of acoustic guitars, cute little bass lines, restrained backing vocals and acceptable lead guitar passages. Oh, by the way, Rod produced half of the album himself, and Trevor Horn (of Buggles and Yes fame, remember that?) is responsible for the other half. My only gripe is that after collaborating once again with Ronnie Wood on Unplugged, the natural move would be to lure him into the studio – but somehow Rod failed to make this decision, so the backing band mostly consists of the same thugs like Kevin Savigar and Robin LeMesurier that so effectively butchered everything on Rod’s Eighties’ albums. Here, though, they are much more restrained.

A couple of tracks should still be thrown into the wastebin that’s already overflowing with his previous garbage. The ‘R’n’B heroes tribute’ ‘Muddy, Sam And Otis’ is downright embarrassing: I would expect that he’d at least make it a blues tune or a heartfelt rocker, instead, he goes for the same pathetic, adult-pop sound that was used for songs like ‘Here To Eternity’. The lyrics are actually quite moving: after all, it’s always nice to hear a talented dude sing a hymn of appraisal to his reverend teachers. Unfortunately, the feel of sincerity and genuine emotion isn’t quite achieved; everybody knows that it’s the same ‘corporate Rod’ that sang ‘Young Turks’ not so long ago, rather than the young innocent Rod who sang ‘Blind Prayer’ or ‘Maggie May’, and everything sounds phoney, apart from, maybe, the lines ‘thank you Sam thank you Otis thank you Muddy’. And there are some pretty shitty ballads, too, like ‘The Downtown Lights’ and ‘You’re The Star’, where he reproduces the standard Sludge Rock formula that bored us to death for decades.

The rest is tolerable, hey, it’s sometimes exciting! On most of the tracks, the aim was clearly to emulate the Stewart of old, not the rutty Stewart of the Eighties. So the album is like an unabashed nostalgia trip, but hey, what on earth was wrong with the word ‘nostalgia’ in the first place? Tom Petty’s ‘Leave Virginia Alone’ is given the same treatment as all the ‘Maggie May’-type stuff, with the same steady rhythm, self-assured acoustic guitars, and moving, heartfelt vocals. So what if it’s a cover? By the way, there’s just four originals on the entire album, and somehow Wilson & Alroy put this as a serious flaw of the record, accusing Rod of shedding all signs of creativity (for some odd reason, they seem to have forgotten that Every Picture, their favourite of his entire catalog, had but three originals). Fine, says I, perhaps it’s indeed better that he’s choosing other songwriters – after all, do we really need a couple more clones of ‘Muddy Sam And Otis’? As it is, we have the pleasure of hearing Rod sing another Dylan cover, and he doesn’t butcher it! ‘Sweetheart Like You’ is a definite highlight of the album, just like the upbeat, inspiring cover of Sam Cooke’s ‘Soothe Me’, with tasty organs and one of the greatest vocal deliveries in years. These two songs really make you cry out ‘Rod’s back’ loud and proud: both of them wouldn’t feel out of place on any of his better early period records. Yeah, it’s all nostalgia, but you gotta give the guy some credit – you gotta, you really gotta! Time hasn’t really washed him up, it has just covered him with slime and fat, some of which he’s been able to successfully shake off on this record.

And it ain’t true that all the originals are bad, either. ‘Delicious’ is an okayish rocker, with enough distortion and raunchiness from the guitars to not seem much too soft, but with enough restraint and too few ‘posing’ to seem overblown and caricatured. And ‘Lady Luck’ has its subtle charms as well: yet another ‘Maggie May’ clone, it’s typical ‘harmless’ Stewart, with acceptable production values and an unremarkable, but inoffensive melody graced by a modest, not too obtrusive, but emotional vocal delivery. Perhaps the only ‘loss of face’ happens when Stewart retitles ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ as ‘Purple Heather’ and credits it to himself, for reasons unknown. Maybe the record company thought there were so many covers it would have a fortune to lose in royalties, or maybe they didn’t quite figure out the author of this beautiful folk tune, so it was decided that the copyright was lost in the years. But it’s good, anyway.To conclude. I HEAVILY recommend this record to anybody who’s wooed over Rod’s great stuff; in fact, once you’ve acquired all of his Ron Wood period records, this is the natural next step. On the other hand, please do so only if you’re desperate for more ‘similar’ product, because on an objective level, Spanner adds nothing to the Rod legacy besides proving that the man is still able to sound exactly the same way he used to sound twenty-five years ago. Nevertheless, after sorting out the dreck (which is quite limited this time around), the rest is solid, enjoyable and quite acceptable even for a person with an exceptionally ‘refined’ taste.