Rod Stewart & The Faces Real Good Time (1975)

From collectorsmusicreviews.com

Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA – March 7th, 1975

(46:14):  (I Know) I’m Losing You, Bring It On Home To Me, Fly In The Ointment, Every Picture Tells A Story, Stay With Me, Motherless Child, Gasoline Alley, Maggie May, Twisting The Night Away

The date listed on this show is from Detroit, 1974, yet i have been informed it is actually from san bernadino,ca  3-7-1975 originally a KBHS  show.

Anyway; this has to be the finest performance I’ve heard the Faces play.

The band is in tip top form tight and highly energized.

Ronnie Wood’s guitar playing is the best I’ve ever heard him; making me a bit more appreciative of his talents.

The show begins with  I Know I’m Losing You with Rod Stewart in fine form the band in perfect time behind him Ian McLagen spilling out sweet rolls from his keyboard and Woody’s laid back smooth rhythm guitar. Following is Bring It On Home To Me a superb rendition of the old Sam Cooke track.

Next is my favourite of this show Sweet Little Rock ’n’ Roller, the old Chuck Berry track with a superb Ian McLagan piano boogie along with Woody’s excellent guitar playing with Kenny Jones and  Tetsu Yamauchi providing a hot rhythm section; showing how tight the band is on this night. Moving right along through Fly in the Ointment and Every Picture Tells A Story with splendid balance and the notes getting hotter and hotter. Stay With Me follows with Ian’s bogie piano and  Ronnie’s guitar meshing with Rod in a  splendid way. I  can visualize the girls dancing rather intensely to this great track!

Motherless Child follows; the blind Willie Johnson track performed by Eric Clapton and others through the years. Ronnie Wood is absolutely on fire here; a wicked slide performance (in my opinion the best I’ve heard Woody play) having seen Woody play many times over the years this sticks as the smoothest I’ve ever heard him. This track reminds me of sitting in a juke joint in Mississippi hearing Son  House play. Woody and Ian open Gasoline Alley with a wonderful version of Gasoline Alley, Rod in  great form, soulful and  the band swinging; then Ronnie goes back into his slide performance; smooth as a wet hummingbird; delicate, yet powerful and suddenly the band rips into Stay With Me Ian opening with some hot piano  Tetsu providing some deep bass runs with Ronnie’s rhythm and Kenny’s backbeat.

Maggie May follows with a boogie opening with Rod singing as if his life depended on it. Perfect rhythmic flow here, quite different from the studio version (Every Picture Tells A Story). This show ends with  Rod asking the audience for applause for Foghat “A Magnificent Band” then says thank you, good night we’ll see ya and goes into Twistin’ The Night Away, another Sam Cooke tune with the band spot on, perfect flow with Ronnie on slide and Ian’s piano picking up the tempo faster and faster the band on fire to close this show! If you are a faces fan or just a music lover this one is a MUST  have. Great sound along with a stellar performance for the ages!!

Get this one if you can as it is a brilliant show!

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.

Rod Stewart When We Were The New Boys (1998)

From starlingdb.org

Once upon a time you were the greatest Rod Stewart fan in the world. You had the largest collection of footballs he’d thrown in the audience, forever treasured the man’s autograph on Gasoline Alley and seriously considered naming your daughter ‘Maggie’. Then it all changed, and after an unsuccessful attempt at lopping of the man’s head with your brand new sharpened copy of Camouflage you’d spent fourteen years in jail.

One sunny day in the year 1998, you’re finally released and as you walk out on the street, you hear that same familiar voice coming out of a radio set from an open window. But instead of recoiling and plugging your ears… you find out that you LIKE the song! He’s singing ‘Ooh La La’, an old Faces classic, originally written, recorded and sung by old bandmate Ronnie Lane (R.I.P.), and, what’s even more fascinating, he does a great job with it – actually embellishing the song with beautiful mandolin and flute parts, and his unshaking, old and wisened delivery beats the hell out of poor Ronnie who – let’s admit it – couldn’t really sing worth a broken tuppence. ‘Ooh la la’, you think, ‘I’m back in time! Rodney’s back as well! My life is full of meaning and sense (and well-spoilt blondes) again!’ So you sneak into the nearest store and immediately grab a copy of the album – it’s called When We Were The New Boys, it’s obviously nostalgic, and it only features half of Roderick’s traditional mug.

With all the excitement and emotion, you don’t even notice that numerous copies of this album occupy about half of the used bins’ space – you can’t wait until you’re home to put it on…AND? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT GIMME BACK MY GUN! Rod Stewart singing ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol’? By Oasis? OASIS? FUCKIN’ OASIS? (I’m sorry – I’m impersonatin’.) Who needs that? What the hell?Yup. The whole album, with just one exception – the above-described ‘Ooh La La’, which is actually quite heartfelt and solid – is just one big, one enormous put-on. I actually concocted that whole story because partially, it’s the truth: many people heard the new version of ‘Ooh La La’ on the radio, were oh so glad and rushed off to buy the album only to remain disappointed and feel themselves cheated and deceived.

All right, first the good news: the album feels quite live, it relies heavily on guitars and live drums and a real brass section and so continues the tradition of Spanner. Rod’s voice is in perfect form: in fact, I can’t remember the last time he felt so powerful on a record, maybe never since Never A Dull Moment. Also, he produced the record himself, without any robotic thugs to mar the songs with generic Nineties’ arrangements (well, most of the ballads still feature these rotten ‘heavenly’ synthesizers, but I guess that’s an evil we’ll all have to cope with).All of these things would be all right, if not for one – the songs mostly don’t go anywhere, and quite often, they go down the drain.

Rod himself contributes only one composition, the record’s second radio hit – it’s the title track, and it’s pretty miserable, though many people seem to have fallen for it. I can understand them, though: Rod really rides high on the ‘nostalgia comeback’, and, after all, it’s hard to deny a fifty-year old man the right to wax nostalgic about the ruthless days of youth. But I’d rather prefer a stripped-down ballad than a meandering dance track with no clear melody and about two acoustic guitar chords’ worth of musical wealth. This is quite poorly executed nostalgia, even if I don’t have the right to doubt its authenticity.

All the other songs are – here comes the big one – covers of selected acts from the Nineties and other decades. Yes, he does Oasis, and while his delivery of ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol’ is quite invigorated, the song was never a big something in the first place. But at least, when he does rockers, he really rocks, like on Primal Scream’s ‘Rocks’ and on Graham Parker’s ‘Hotel Chambermaid’. Of course, both are completely generic, recycled bash-a-thons with elements of sexism, but it’s always pleasant to see Rod go ahead and rock out when you’re used to the fact that he never rocks out any more.

The problem is, there aren’t that many rockers on here, and the ballads are – ALL AND WITHOUT ONE SINGLE TEENY-WEENY EXCEPTION – atrocious. Nick Lowe’s ‘Shelly My Love’ is the worst of the lot, guaranteed to give you sugar diabetes for life with just a couple of listens, but the others are just bad, bad, bad. Everything is reduced to a standard late-Seventies’ Stewart formula, only with worse melodies and more stinkingly ‘passionate’ vocal deliveries. This time, Rod has swapped his youthful loving intonations for loving intonations of an old man, and often ends up sounding quite pedophilic. (Really!) Even the last song on the album, the totally acoustic ‘What Do You Want Me To Do?’, with just an embellishing touch of harmonica and piano, simply cashes in on past acoustic glories.

All too bad. It seems like these days Rod simply does not know where to go. Apparently, he thought such a move would be the best thing to do and the perfect way to re-establish his reputation in ‘serious’ circles, but it looks like the years finally gave in on him and he simply has forgotten how to produce a good record. I had high hopes with Spanner, but this album just shows that the line between genius and banality has totally escaped poor Rodney. Please find that version of ‘Ooh La La’ somewhere and tape it off – it’s an ideal way to put a final touch on your Stewart collection. Otherwise, don’t bother. There were much better records put out in the year 1998. Brian Burks can probably tell you everything about that.

Rod Stewart Every Picture Tells A Story (1971)

From independent.co.uk

He’ll never let you down: The Seventies may have been a terrible decade for pop music, but in retrospect, one man, Rod Stewart, stands out as a mentor for the young: a man of questionable taste in almost everything, except good pop music

You want classic early Seventies albums, I got ’em. The entire Al Green back catalogue, Let’s Get It On, There’s No Place Like America Today, Grievous Angel, After the Goldrush, Blood on the Tracks . . . Unimpeachable classics, every one, and while others may have to bury their Cat Stevens and James Taylor albums away when fashionable friends come round to borrow a cup of balsamic vinegar, I have nothing to hide. Those pre-Ramones years were difficult to pick your way through, but I seem to have managed it quite brilliantly. If there was a smarter, more forward-thinking, more retrospectively modish young teenager around than me between 1971 and 1975, I have yet to meet him.

Sadly, however, I am that commonplace phenomenon, Reinvented Man. Most of the Al Green back catalogue I bought in the early Eighties, the Gram Parsons at university in the late Seventies, the Curtis Mayfield from a car boot sale a few years ago, and so on. I didn’t buy any of them at the time of their release. I thought that soul music was for wide-boys, country was for old people, and Bob Dylan was for girls.

These are a few of the albums I bought back then: McCartney; Led Zeppelin II; a Humble Pie live double, the title of which escapes me; the Curved Air record which had painting on the vinyl; Anyway by Family; Deep Purple in Rock; Tubular Bells; a Van der Graaf Generator album, purchased after I read a review in Melody Maker, and if I ever meet the journalist who wrote the review he can either refund me my pounds 2.19 or get biffed on the nose; Rory Gallagher and Every Picture Tells a Story, by Rod Stewart.

Every Picture Tells a Story is the only one of those that I still possess. All of the others have disappeared, stolen or flogged (although the Van der Graaf Generator album was certainly not stolen, and I can’t imagine who would have bought it off me); some of them were flogged because I needed the money, others because they had absolutely no place in the ineffably cool collection I was in the process of assembling.

So how come Rod Stewart has survived? ”Now there was someone who never let you down,’ a friend remarked sardonically when I owned up to my tragic affliction, and he has a point. Rod’s track record is not without its blemishes. There was Britt Ekland, for a start. And tartan. And ‘Ole Ola’, his 1978 Scotland World Cup Song (the chorus – and I may be misquoting, but not by much – went something like ‘Ole-Ole, Ole Ola/We’re going to bring the World Cup back from over thar’). And ‘D’Ya Think I’m Sexy’. And the Faces live album Overture and Beginners, which the NME commemorated with its annual ‘Rod Stewart and the Faces Thanks-For-the-Live-Album-Lads-But-You-Really-Shouldn’t-Have-bothered Award’. (The record ends with Stewart thanking the audience ‘for your time . . . and your money’, and you really have to hear the lascivious drawl in his voice to appreciate the full horror of the moment.) And the haircut. And his obsession with LA. And the champagne and straw boaters on album sleeves. And ‘Sailing’, which made a pretty decent football song but an interminable single. And several other blonde women who weren’t Britt Ekland but might as well have been. And the couplet from the song ‘Italian Girls’ (on Never a Dull Moment) that goes: ‘I was feeling kind of silly / When I stepped in some Caerphilly’. And the cover of the record Ooh La La, a pathetically cheap arrangement which allowed the purchaser to jiggle a tab and make a man’s eyes go up and down in a supposedly hilarious manner. And the record itself, arguably the worst collection of songs ever released by anybody. And the all-purpose session-musician sub-Stones rock’n’roll plod-raunch that can be found on any of his post-Faces work, ‘Hot Legs’ being the template. And the Faces live shows, which were apt to end with the entire band lying in a drunken heap on the stage. He’s hardly put a foot wrong, really.

I bought Every Picture Tells a Story in the Virgin shop in Oxford Street: there was only one Virgin shop then, situated right where the Megastore is now, except you had to walk through a shoe shop (or rather, a cowboy boot shop) and up some stairs to get to it. I lived 30 miles from Oxford Street, but this was still my nearest discount record store, and though the train fare cancelled out any savings I made, it was much more fun buying records there. There were headphones, and beanbags (although the beanbags were frequently occupied by dossers) and bootlegs, which I had never seen before.

And in any case, the length of the journey lent a proper gravity to the serious business of record-buying. Now, I indulge myself whenever I feel like it, even in times when I have had no money at all; there are occasions over the last 15 or so years when I have come back home yet again with a square-shaped carrier bag and felt sick with guilt and over-consumption. (‘I haven’t even played side two of the album I bought after work on Tuesday, so how come I’ve bought another one today?’) In those Virgin days, I thought and read and talked for weeks before committing myself to something I would have to live with and listen to for months. (Mistakes, like the Van der Graaf Generator record, had to be paid for by the self-flagellation of listening to the thing and kidding myself that I liked it.)

Every Picture Tells a Story seemed a safe bet. I had heard ‘Maggie May’, of course, and knew that any album featuring a song like that would not be actively unpleasant; I could count on songs, and singing, and these seemed like reassuring virtues. And songs and singing was what I got: ‘Maggie May’, ‘Reason to Believe’, a beautiful cover of a Dylan song, ‘Tomorrow is a Long Time’, a decent stab at the Temptations’ ‘I Know I’m Losing You’ (I didn’t really approve of Rod singing a song by a Tamla Motown group – Motown was for sisters and people like that – but there were plenty of guitars, so I let it pass) . . . loads of stuff. There wasn’t anything I didn’t like, really. I played Every Picture Tells a Story to death, and then let it rest in peace.

But, like all the best teen icons, Rod wasn’t a mere recording artiste, he was a lifestyle. You couldn’t just listen to his music, forget about him, and put him away in the little and chronically over-familiar pile of records in your bedroom (I probably had about nine albums by then, and in truth I was pretty sick of all of them). He resonated. For a start, there was this football thing he had. At school, the sight of him kicking balls into the Top of the Pops audience excited a great deal of favourable comment; ever since punk, it has been de rigueur for bands to express an interest in the people’s game, but back then, things were different, mostly because of the kind of music I was listening to. Few of the people I watched fooball with at Arsenal looked as if they knew who Humble Pie were; none of the people I watched Humble Pie with cared how Arsenal had got on. (I remember John Peel attempting to read out the football results at a late-summer Hyde Park concert, and getting booed for doing so.) When I went to see the Who, I saw that rock and football did not have to attract entirely separate audiences, but for the most part, the afghans at the gigs and the Crombies at the grounds never got to rub against each other; Rod Stewart was a godsend to the countless teenage boys who couldn’t see why Ron Wood and Ron Harris should have to live on different planets.

And it was much easier to be Rod Stewart than it was to be Hendrix or Jagger or Jim Morrison. Tartan scarves were easier to find in Maidenhead than leather trousers, and Rod had never worn a dress, like Jagger had. There was no need to take heroin, or read Rimbaud, or play a guitar with your teeth, or know who Meher Baba was; all you needed to do to acquire Rodness was drink, sing, pick up girls and like football. It was easy.

We could all do that without having to go to LA or even Soho. (We weren’t drinking or picking up girls yet, needless to say, or at least not properly, if you catch my drift. But we would, no problem, no need to worry about us, pal.) The photo on the gate-fold sleeve of Never a Dull Moment depicted Stewart’s band lined up in a goalmouth; on Smiler, they were all raising pints outside a suitably cor-blimey-looking pub. This was transparently shameless ROD STEWART stuff and it is impossible to look at these photos now without cringing; we were being conned rotten, but we didn’t know that then, and even if we did, we wouldn’t have cared.

I went to see the Faces in 1971, at the Oval, but I cannot remember so much as a bum Ronnie Wood note now. (And the next time I saw them, at the Reading Festival, they left no impression, either. This may well have been a result of their liberal pre-gig refreshment policy.) In 1972, when I was 15, there was ‘You Wear It Well’, which, reassuringly, sounded exactly the same as ‘Maggie May’, but with its own tune, and the album Never a Dull Moment, and the Faces album A Nod’s as Good as a Wink, and the single ‘Stay With Me’, and the single ‘What’s Made Milwaukee Famous’, which came in a tartan picture sleeve, and the Python Lee Jackson single ‘In A Broken Dream’, which became the traditional bottom-groping finale to every village hall disco I went to. I didn’t need to think about any other pop singers; there was enough Rod Stewart product to soak up all the record-buying money I had. (It was no use being a Stones fan, or a Dylan fan, or a Floyd fan – you had to wait years.)

A Nod’s as Good as a Wink was dreadful, the usual admixture of tired Chuck Berryisms, duff lyrics and a chronic fluff-on-the-needle production; I didn’t even like ‘Stay With Me’ that much, although it was OK if you wanted to pretend to share a microphone with a pal (then – as now, as far as I am able to tell from The Chart Show – you leant back, head on one side, with the arm furthest from the mike punching the air).

The solo stuff was different, much more tender, and certainly more wrought. The booze-and-football photos, it is clear now, were intended to compensate for the rampant sissiness of the recordings, the Bob Dylan covers (‘Mama You Been on My Mind’, ‘Girl from the North Country’), the McCartney ballads (‘Mine for Me’), and Stewart’s own sentimental cod-Celtic songs. This was the stuff I preferred; indeed, I would still rather listen to a ballad than anything else, and maybe this is Rod’s legacy to me.

They still sound surprisingly good, those three solo albums (Every Picture . . . , Never a Dull Moment and Smiler) that created the Hampden-and-bitter Stewart image. The cover versions are immaculate: so good, in fact, that when I sought out the originals (during that purist phase all Music Blokes go through, when we believe that originals must by definition be superior to the copies), I was disappointed by them. Sam Cooke’s ‘Bring It on Home to Me’ didn’t have that rollicking string arrangement; Dylan’s ‘Mama You Been on My Mind’ was pretty but plain, and anyway Dylan couldn’t sing.

And Stewart’s voice still sounds great. Why Caucasians used to believe that rock stars with croaky voices – Stewart, Janis Joplin, Frankie Miller, Joe Cocker, Paul Young – are white soul singers remains one of life’s impenetrable mysteries. (During the Eighties, thankfully, with the advent of the more honey-toned George Michael and Boy George, this perplexing claim ceased to be made.) Only the overrated Otis Redding sounds as though he is gargling through porridge; neither Al Green nor Marvin Gaye nor Aretha Franklin seems as distressed, as pained, as the Croakies. Surely one of the points of soul singing is its effortlessness? But Stewart pinches other things from black music traditions: his vocal mannerisms, his laughs and spoken asides, and the way he rides the beat and slides under and over the melody line . . . these are the tell-tale signs of somebody with a good record collection and a sharp pair of ears, and they set him apart from the opposition. And anyway, Stewart had grown up with folk (hence the Dylan and the Tim Hardin covers) as well as the more ubiquitous R&B. He wasn’t a Jagger or an Elton John, but a straightforward, uncomplicated interpreter of popular songs: 15 years earlier, he might have been our answer to Dean Martin; 15 years later, he probably would have been a one-hit wonder for Stock, Aitken and Waterman.

Things went downhill fast after Smiler. There was one great last Faces’ single, ‘You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything’, which swung in a way that most English rock songs do not (mostly, I discovered years later, because Stewart and Wood had liberated a huge chunk of a Bobby Womack song for their fade-out), and then the band split up. Ronnie Wood joined the Rolling Stones, a move which, distressingly, made a lot of sense. And a year or so later Atlantic Crossing was released. There was no football pitch or pub photo on the sleeve of this one: just a monstrous cartoon drawing of Stewart, wearing an improbable silver jump-suit and, well, crossing the Atlantic.

I had left school by this time. And I had also turned my back on the other Rod fans I had knocked around with in the fourth and fifth forms: I was off to university and they weren’t, and I had started to hang around with people who made jokes about Existentialism (admittedly, the jokes consisted mainly of saying the word aloud, but they would not have amused the people with whom I had once shared an imaginary microphone). Had Rod met Britt by then? I don’t remember. And in any case, Britt was not to blame for the self-parody which sucked Rod down and out; if it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else Farrah Fawcett, maybe, or some Seventies equivalent of that woman who knocks around with Michael Winner. Rod was hell-bent on making a berk of himself and he didn’t need any help from Scandinavian bit-part actresses.

I bought Atlantic Crossing anyway, for its two aching ballads, ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ and ‘It’s Not the Spotlight’, but it was the weakest of his solo work – and therefore of the entire Stewart oeuvre – to date. And then I went to college, and listened to punk and blues and soul and reggae, and it should have stopped there, but it didn’t. My devotion intensified: I wore a Rod Stewart T-shirt that I’d bought for 50p, and I had a Rod Stewart poster on the wall of my college bedroom. It was, I guess, an ironic devotion – Rod had become a post-punk figure of fun by that time, and you would have to have been particularly imbecilic not to get the joke – but there was a glimmer of earnestness there, too: I was frightened by the Athena prints of Renoir and Matisse paintings that hung on my neighbours’ walls, and of the classical music that I occasionally heard coming from their stereos, and used Rod as a kind of talisman to protect me from these evil and alien forces. So I stuck with it for a while, until I felt more comfortable with university and with myself, and then I gave up. I preferred the Tom Waits version of ‘Downtown Train’ – he still listens, you have to give him credit for that – and I haven’t even bothered with the Unplugged album, which seemed aimed straight at me, and those like me.

But these are the records I own because of Rod: His California Album, by Bobby Bland, which is where Stewart first heard ‘It’s Not the Spotlight’ (and though Stewart’s version is flatter and less piquant than Bland’s, Rod wisely didn’t bother with Bland’s unattractive trademark phlegm-clearing whoops), and maybe even ‘If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right)’; my entire Bobby Womack collection; my Chuck Berry’s Golden Decade; my Temptations’ Greatest Hits; and my Sam Cooke album. I was introduced to the Isley Brothers (‘This Old Heart of Mine’), Aretha Franklin (‘You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman/Man’), and Crazy Horse (‘I Don’t Want to Talk about It’). And once I had been introduced to Aretha Franklin and Bobby Bland and the Temptations and Chuck Berry, I got to know B B King and the Four Tops and Atlantic Records and Chess Records and . . . He gave me a good start in life, and as a young man, a pop innocent, one cannot ask for anything more than that. If I had been similarly smitten by Elton John or James Taylor or Jethro Tull or Mike Oldfield, all of whom were competing for attention at around the same time, it is possible that I would have junked my entire record collection a decade or so ago.

The people who stick with pop the longest, it seems to me now, are those who entrust themselves at a tender age to somebody like Stewart, somebody who loves and listens to pop music. Those who fell for the Stones got to hear, if they could be bothered, Arthur Alexander and Solomon Burke and Don Covay (and if they got to hear Don Covay they would find themselves wondering what, precisely, Jagger had brought to the Sixties party). Those who went for Led Zeppelin went on to Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Genesis and Pink Floyd led you up a blind alley: there was nowhere to go, and so a good many people I knew stopped dead. Today’s youngsters, eh? Where are they heading for after they’ve chewed up the Sisters of Mercy or the Happy Mondays? (Suede and Teenage Fanclub, on the other hand . . .) Even after all these years, even after Britt and ‘D’Ya Think I’m Sexy’ and blah blah blah, I’d still like to buy Rod a drink; I’d like to sit him down and talk to him, not about Celtic or Jock Stein or Denis Law or ligaments or real ale, but about music. He knows much more than he’s ever let on.

Rod Stewart: Graded on a Curve – Never a Dull Moment (1972)

From thevinyldistrict.com

Rod Stewart remains my greatest lost hero, who went from a likable rogue with a knack for writing great and frequently self-deprecating songs to the cheesy lothario of “Hot Legs” and “Tonight’s the Night.”

And while pinning down when he jumped the shark from jovial rascal to queasy-making lecher (my pick: the lines from “Tonight’s the Night” that go, “You’d be a fool to stop this time/Spread your wings and let me come inside”) can be difficult, in my humble opinion his final great moment was 1972’s Never a Dull Moment, which was not nearly as great as 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story, but still highlighted Stewart as an irrepressible rake rather than a sleazy ladies’ man.

Sure, both 1974’s Smiler and 1975’s Atlantic Crossing have their moments, and even 1976’s A Night on the Town includes the great “The First Cut Is the Deepest.” But Never a Dull Moment is the last Stewart LP to include more good tracks than mediocre ones, and features some undeniable classics in “Lost Paraguayos,” “Mama You Been on My Mind,” and the wonderful “You Wear It Well.”

Indeed, Never a Dull Moment lives up to its title, although I have to admit I’ve never been a huge fan of the blues standard “I’d Rather Go Blind,” which Etta James turned into a hit in 1968. On the other hand, his cover of Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away” rocks and rolls thanks to the cranked-up guitar of Ron Wood (the Faces featured on Rod’s first four “solo” records; odd how their ultimate disappearance coincided with his downfall) and the powerful drum thump of Micky Waller, who’d played with Stewart back in the days of The Steampacket.

The LP features more covers than originals, never a good sign, but all of the Stewart originals (which he co-wrote either with Wood or classical guitarist Martin Quittenton of blues-rock band Steamhammer (not to be confused with The Steampacket) are stellar. Opener “True Blue, ” on which Faces’ stalwarts Wood, keyboardist Ian McLagan, and bassist/vocalist Ronnie Lane keep things punchy, features Stewart in familiar mode; down on his luck, but still high-spirited, and trying to find his way back home. “I just don’t know what to do,” he sings, just before Wood cranks up both the volume and the tempo and the band goes into boogie mode, complete with the sound of a racecar and McLagan really laying it out on organ. Fantastic tune.

But not quite as good as “Lost Paraguayos,” a perky tune on which Stewart, who is shacked up with an underage girl in some cold and rainy part of the world, decides to “get me some South American sun,” and spends the song patiently explaining to his jailbait lover why she can’t come along (“Down at the border you need to be older/And you sure don’t look like my daughter”) after which he laughs wickedly while telling her he’d never tell her a lie. (Right.) At which point some great horns come barreling in, and we’re back in the boogie, and Rod is firing off some of his trademark “Woo’s!”

Stewart’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Mama You Been on My Mind” is just plain lovely, and Rod the Mod demonstrates (hardly for the first time) his knack as an interpreter of other people’s material. A sweet steel guitar comes in, and this one is more country honk than Faces’ usual brand of boogie rock, which follows in the form of “Italian Girls,” the most raucous song on the LP. This is a Faces song in all but name, and includes some wild keyboard work by McLagan, as well as Wood’s usual mean, mean guitar.

The song segues into a quiet coda at the end, complete with mandolin by Lindisfarne’s Lindsay Raymond Jackson and piano by McLagan, as well as some sweet violin by Dick Powell. It’s a beautiful ending to one hard-rocking number, and exemplifies in one song what Stewart and the Faces did best usually in two—namely, mingle knockdown ravers with ballads that’ll break your heart.

I’ve always been ambivalent about Stewart’s take on Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel,” and if I like it it’s only because Wood’s guitar is big and loud and raw, and helps to allay the song’s sticky sweetness. Faces’ drummer Kenney Jones’ heavy hand on the drums also gives the song some needed heft, while Neemoi “Speedy” Aquaye’s congas don’t hurt either.

“Interludings” is a 40-second acoustic guitar throwaway, of the sort I hate on albums, but fortunately it leads straight into “You Wear It Well,” which features a great acoustic guitar and organ opening while highlighting all of Stewart’s strengths: his self-deprecating humor, his skill at playing the mirthful miscreant, and his knack for mixing heartbreak with a dedication to keep going, despite the obstacles. “Madam Onassis got nothing on you” he tells his former love over a great violin, and then adds the kicker—“I ain’t forgettin’ you were once mine/But I blew it without even tryin’,” which he follows with his trademark humility: “So when the sun goes low/And you’re home all alone/Think of me and try not to laugh,” lines that sum up Stewart at his devil-may-care best.

“I’d Rather Go Blind” may not thrill me, but Stewart does a more than adequate job of interpreting it, and it has the added advantage of sounding like a classic Faces tune. So far as I can tell all of the boys are playing on the tune, including the great Ronnie Lane, who would ultimately quit the Faces, unhappy at the way they’d been demoted from equal status to Stewart’s de facto backing band. And McLagan’s organ is a wonder to behold.

Meanwhile, closer “Twistin’ the Night Away” is a punchy and characteristically loose take on the Sam Cooke classic, and features one cock walk of a guitar solo by Wood as well as some fantastic drum smash by Micky Waller. I especially love the way it picks up speed toward the end, and concludes with some great drum pummel and lots of twisting guitar licks by Wood.

It’s heartrending really, listening to this album and knowing what was to come. Stewart, the guy who gave us the immortal Every Picture Tells a Story, sold himself cheap and turned himself into a tawdry commodity and sex object (“Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”), and for what? Filthy lucre. Somebody once told me an ex-wife said Stewart was so cheap he hated to give his piss away for free, but that could just be urban legend.

Still, the bottom line stands, and as Stewart aged his lovable rogue persona just became sleazy; there’s a fine line between your randy imp and a dirty old man, and Stewart crossed that line and never looked back. Too bad for him. Too bad for all of us. Because in his prime, nobody played the perpetual reprobate with even half the panache as he did.

Rod Stewart/Faces Live, Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners (1974)

From thevinyldistrict.com

What a rotten deal. The Faces were one of the premiere bands of the seventies–and one of the best live acts as well–and what do we have in the form of a live LP? This crumby piece of half-baked crap. Recorded during the Faces’ sad downward slide (they would never release another album) and including only three Faces originals, 1974’s Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners is nothing less than a travesty of justice.

By the time the Faces got around to recording Coast to Coast they weren’t really the Faces in name only. They’d become Rod Stewart’s de facto backing band–just check out the billing on the album cover. The Faces acquiesced to the demotion with the exception of bassist (and band heart and soul) Ronnie Laine, who wrote or co-wrote such classics as “Ooh La La,” “Glad and Sorry,” “Debris,” and ‘Too Bad,” amongst others. Laine opted to quit the band and go solo, and his replacement Tetsu Yamauchi was left the impossible task of filling his shoes.

It was inevitable, I suppose. Stewart’s 1971 solo album Every Picture Tells a Story transformed him into a superstar, and the Faces–from his perspective at least–had outlived their usefulness. He would use the Faces on his solo albums as sidemen, but he was done recording or touring under their name. The band might have gone on without him, but the additional loss of guitarist Ron Wood–who would continue to play and write with Stewart before ultimately joining the Rolling Stones–was a death blow.

Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners reflects the schizophrenic state of Stewart’s career come 1973. As mentioned, only three of its songs are Faces originals, while another six appear on Stewart’s solo albums. Also included are two covers (the Temptations’ “I Wish It Would Rain” and John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”) not released by the Faces or Stewart. In short Coast to Coast is a rags and bone affair that doesn’t cohere, and it doesn’t help that the boys tuck “Amazing Grace” in the middle of “Borstal Boys” and tack the chorus of “Every Picture Tells a Story” to the end of “Too Bad.” What listeners are left with is a confusing mishmash, and the LP’s running time is short to boot.

The LP isn’t a complete loss. The Faces were a famously raucous (if shambolic) live act, and on the hard-rocking numbers they acquit themselves quite well. The band ups the wattage on covers of “It’s All Over Now” and “Cut Across Shorty,” and make short work of Faces originals “Too Bad,” “Stay With Me,” and “Borstal Boys.” The Faces may not have been the tightest live act out there, but on Coast to Coast Wood, drummer Kenney Jones, keyboardist Ian McLagan, and Yamauchi made an arena rock din, happy to sacrifice the subtle touch for raw power. The live version of “Stay with Me,” for instance, may lack the jet propulsion take-off of the studio version, but I’m betting it rattled every window within a seven-block radius of the Anaheim Convention Center where the LP was recorded in October 1973.

The album’s slow ones don’t fare as well. The rough and ready approach doesn’t suit “I Wish It Would Rain” or the blues and soul classic “I’d Rather Go Blind,” and the band’s cover of the Jimi Hendrix ballad “Angel” lacks the light touch of Stewart’s studio version. And Stewart’s reading of “Jealous Guy” lacks the naked vulnerability of the Lennon original. Stewart has always been an excellent interpreter of other people’s material, but on this one he misses the mark–his raspy croon simply can’t do justice to a song as fragile and uniquely personal as “Jealous Guy.”

Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners fails at many levels, largely due to the fact that it documents a band coming apart at the seams. It’s not a Faces album and it’s not a Rod Stewart album and if it was either it still wouldn’t work because without Ronnie Laine the Faces lost the guy who made the Faces the Faces in the first place. Coast to Coast is a post-mortem farewell from a band whose members would soon move on to other endeavors–Wood with Mick and Keith, Jones with The Who, and McLagan with session work. As for Laine, he would go on to record four solo albums and several collaborative LPs–1977’s lovely and moving Rough Mix with Pete Townshend being the best—before succumbing in 1997 to pneumonia after a long bout with multiple sclerosis.

It defies belief that this lackluster shambles is the best–indeed only–live Faces recording out there. Certainly there must be a live recording of the band at its prime locked away in a studio vault somewhere, and its legions of fanatical fans deserve the chance to own it. That Coast to Coast: Overture and Beginners should be the Faces’ live legacy is beyond sad–it’s a disgrace, and somebody had better get their act together and do something about it, and quick.

Rod Stewart 1973 interview: A Mod’s Progress – The life and times, trials and tribulations of R. Stewart Esq., Folk singer

From New Musical Express June 16 1973

Rod Stewart ruffles his hair, gazes down thoughtfully at his red patent-leather shoes. It`s early evening in an office above Wardour Street and, a floor below, the Marquee Club is just warming up for the night. Thick, muddy, distorted rock seeps up through the floorboards.
Stewart grimaces: “That guitarist doesn`t sound much good does `e?” – then pauses before continuing with a slight edge of wistfulness to his voice:
“…Yeah, I`d like to play the Marquee again – if we could get away with it.”

In some respects the early days must have been great for Rod Stewart and the Faces, when they used to play places like the Marquee. Admittedly there are few guys around who seem to enjoy the flash of success more than Stewart yet, in some ways, life must have proved much easier then. Certainly less complicated.
Just sometimes Stewart must wish he could get back to that, especially over the last six months when one could hardly blame him if he occasionally felt a little desperate.

On their last British tour the Faces were roundly criticised for sticking too closely to their old material. Then Stewart was quoted as saying he thought “Ooh La La” was a mess. And now, for whatever reasons, Ronnie Lane has left the band. So here he is tonight, forgoing an invitation to a fashion show at the Savoy to put the record straight.
“I ought to get some kind of award for being the most misquoted and most misunderstood person in 1973. I`ve been misquoted a lot lately and it can hurt, y`know. Believe me, it can hurt.”
He speaks cautiously now. Despite his brash, arrogant onstage persona he`s a guy with sensitive spots like any other; edges and sides that have sometimes been hidden behind the boozy, outgoing exterior.

Even so, tonight, he`s content with the world, and perhaps rightly so. Over the previous weekend the Faces had played a series of heartening concerts at the Edmonton Sundown. On two or three of the nights they had been ace, simply tremendous and Stewart knows it.
If the band have been through a bad patch just lately it now seems over.
He doesn`t put one completely at ease, stretching back smiling and saying “Well, what do you want to know James?” but he`s a likeable soul, a little more homespun than sometimes presented.
He sips a pint of bitter and starts to talk, firstly about Tetsu.

“It was either going to be Andy Fraser or Tetsu. Tetsu was the first we asked and he jumped at the idea. We were a bit wary at first `cos we`re really quite close to Free, not so much as friends but we really love their music and we didn`t want to bust their band up.
“But Tets reckons Paul Rodgers was great about it and we were with Simon (Kirke) a couple of nights ago and he was great about it too, so…
“It was Simon who said it`s brought the two bands together – which it has. Free`s music is maybe more of a down type of music than ours but there`s a similarity. We tried one other guy who was brilliant but not as good as Tets.
“He`s just the right shape y`know,” Stewart rubs his hand down his hip. “He`s got a tiny little rib cage and little spindly legs and his guitar kind of fits in the middle.
“The first night he came he brought some scotch with him. I don`t think he`s ever drunk so much in his life till that night. Now every time I see him there`s a bottle of scotch sticking out of his pocket.” Stewart laughs in satisfaction.
“You could say we`re getting `im well trained.”

He moves on to explain how it`s good to get some new blood in the “orchestra”, and he`s looking forward to getting Tetsu on stage.
Nevertheless he admits it won`t be quite the same again without Ronnie Lane. “There`s only one Ronnie and it`s impossible to look for another one. The guy`s a character and we`ll never replace `im.”
But hadn`t Ronnie Lane`s increasing interest in Meher Baba – and perhaps his more homely approach to life – meant a certain contradiction of life-styles within the band?
Stewart draws up his shoulders slightly. “Let`s get one point clear: we`re all parting on the best of terms. Let`s get that on record, there`s no bad feelings.
“If you look back at the interviews I`ve done since we first got together, I`ve always said Ronnie Lane is one of the best lyricists Britain`s got, and he still is. He`s got a great career ahead of him.
“I think he probably just got tired of being on the road, which I don`t really blame him for. It was just at a point, though, when the rest of us were really getting into doing it on the road. Y`know, we love it now – me, Woody, Mac and Kenny – we love being on the road. But I don`t think Ronnie did.
“On the American tour we had two rows, and that was really because we wanted Ronnie to stay and he didn`t want to. There are no bad feelings. Two little rows, y`know, that`s not bad.”

Fair enough. But, just to check it out, how about the old rumour that Rod`s thinking of leaving the band? That he doesn`t need the Faces as much as the Faces need him?
“Well, I don`t know whether they need me but I know I need them. If something was to happen I could always make my own albums, but I`d be lost without them.
“I get depressed if I don`t see the boys for a while. There`ll always be a Faces and I think I`ll always be in it. I hope so anyway. Unless they kick me out of course…”
Stewart grins.
“I don`t expect, though, to sustain the same level of success for ever. Name somebody who ever has. Everybody has to level out and I can`t expect to have another album as successful as `Every Picture Tells A Story`. That was a freak album. It sold a ridiculous amount of records.
“Yet `Gasoline Alley` was the best for me. If I could capture that again I`d be well pleased.”

Stewart says there`s a peak he`s aiming for – records and concerts that he`s totally satisfied with. “When that happens I`ll retire – I`ll knock it on the head.
“I look at it like all good footballers should – I want to retire at the top. It doesn`t tend to happen in this business and it`s sad. People just sink lower and lower and hang on to the music business.
“I want to disappear,” – he snaps his fingers – “like that.”

So what does he feel is still missing from the albums?
“Aaargh…”, his face creases, “That`s where I got misquoted last time, on `Ooh La La`. What I`m trying to say is that we can do a better album than that.”
He emphasises it. “We can do a better one and we`re going to.
“As for me own albums – the same, really. Except I`ve got to start being a bit more honest with myself – move on to songs I really want to sing.”
Such as…?
“Oh, I don`t know because last time I said that with `Amazing Grace` everybody else went ahead and did it and beat me to the punch. These days I keep the songs I want to record up my sleeve.
“Of course, having said that, the next solo album will probably turn out to be all Stewart/Wood songs. You just can`t tell.”
He taps his forehead. “It`s all up here at present. With Ronnie and things, it`s all been held back a bit.”

Is there any more he`d like to say about it? Stewart considers.
“Well, I`ll probably use the same crew…yeah, I think I`ll use the same crew. And there`s a strong possibility it could be the last one.
“In future I think we`ll combine the two – my albums and Faces albums – so I can put one hundred per cent into both. I think that`d be a good move.
“Then I`ve got this album which is a kind of `Best Of` coming out in about four weeks time which I`m really pleased with. I went to the trouble of re-mixing some of the tracks and cross-fading some of the others. I`m glad the record company had the courtesy to ask me to put it together myself.
“Then I think we`ve got a live album coming out but everybody`s doing that…” He trails off. “I don`t know…music`s so boring to talk about. It`s an active thing. Not something to sit and discuss.”

He gazes at the floor again, then perks up. “I`ve got more guitars than I know chords. Did you know that? I`ve been collecting acoustic guitars lately and I worked it out the other day that I own more guitars than I know chords.” He looks pleased.
“What else do you want to know James? Do you want to know where I`m going for a holiday?”
Where`s that?
“Suggest somewhere”.
Stewart smiles and talks about football for a while. He says he`s still allright as a player but finds it hard to get a game without attracting vast crowds who`ve come to see Rod Stewart – Rock Star. He says he can no longer combine the two lives.

In many ways Stewart is remarkably unassuming. He`ll talk about football but don`t expect any great insights into the state of the world or more etherial subjects. He`s interested but doesn`t see that he or any other artist should know more about it than anybody else.
“You`ve got to be honest and admit that the level of intelligence among rock musicians is not all that high. I`m not saying they`re all idiots, but, generally speaking, most musicians come from a working-class background so why should they particularly know what`s going on?
“You can only reflect your life and times. I think I did that with `Silicone Groan` – y`know, everybodies having it done in the States, having their tits blown up with silicone. I suppose you could say that`s social comment if you want.”

Also, Stewart is not particularly interested in the supposed new rock phenomena: decadence.
“Each to his own, y`know. I don`t think I live a particularly evil life but I don`t allow myself to get bored either. I suppose I come in between the two.
“I dunno. What is decadence? MPs getting knocked off by hookers? Good luck to them – why should we pry into it?”

How does he feel about Ian McLagan once describing him as “a bit of an old folkie at heart”?
“Yeah…that`s true. You`ll catch me at the dirtiest of folk clubs sometimes. I went to see Deroll Adams, the old banjo player, at the…where was it?…the Shakespeare the other night. Y`know I really blew it. I sort of walked in, in me yellow suit, and they were all sitting there…you know how they are.”
He grins again.
“But I`d like to play one…I wish I could do that…just get up and do `Mandolin Wind`. I`d really be nervous because it`s not something I`m one hundred per cent sure I could do. It`s a very different scene.”
He thinks for a moment. “Y`see I`ve always personally got to remember that I`m a singer of songs. I don`t need a sensation to get a crowd on their feet. I don`t have to take me trousers off or something. It`s sometimes easy to forget that.”

But doesn`t a certain amount of spectacle on stage help to sell records? “Yeah, I think maybe it half-sells them. Like, I think I`ve been flash since I left school but I do think I`ve got a pretty good voice as well. You can`t forget that.
“I mean, there was a time when I was with Beck that I used to hide behind the amplifiers and my voice hasn`t improved that much since then. It`s just audiences – and audiences, particularly in America, have brought me out of myself on stage.
“I really need an audience – the bigger the better. It`s a great boost to the ego – that`s something that everybody needs.
“Also, I need to be told how good I am. And everybody needs that.
“Unfortunately you can get in a certain position where people take you for granted and forget to tell you how good you are. That`s the point when you begin to doubt yourself.”

Rod Stewart Gasoline Alley (1970)

From classicrockreview.com

His second official solo album, Gasoline Alley, is a critically acclaimed 1970 album by Rod Stewart. It features a diverse mixture of covers and originals that reflect the various styles of Stewart’s various musical projects and this album has been described as one that both celebrates tradition while featuring the rock sensibilities of its present. Ultimately, while the album is a sentimental snapshot of place and time, it has maintained its musical integrity and interest a half century after its creation.

Sir Roderick David Stewart was born in war-torn London, 1945 to parents of both Scottish and English ancestry. As a teenager he developed an interest in English folk music and he began playing harmonica in the early 1960s, joining the rhythm and blues group The Dimensions as a harmonica player and part-time vocalist. One of the group’s earlier gigs in 1963 was opening for The Rolling Stones in London. After leaving The Dimensions, Stewart made his recording début with the single “Up Above My Head” in June 1964, and soon signed a solo recording contract with Decca Records, where he recorded several further singles and made some national television appearances through the mid 1960s but found little commercial success.

In early 1967, guitarist Jeff Beck recruited Stewart to front the heavy blues Jeff Beck Group. The group included bassist Ronnie Wood and the 1968 debut album, Truth, featured contributions from future Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones and acted as a model for Zeppelin’s own debut album. Stewart co-wrote three of the original tracks on this critically acclaimed album, which spawned a world wide tour in late 1968 into 1969. The Jeff Beck Group’s second album, Beck-Ola, was recorded in April 1969 for release that summer.

The heavily-touring group was slated to play the Woodstock Music Festival before Stewart and Wood abruptly left the group to eventually form Faces with former members of The Small Faces. Meanwhile, Stewart recorded and released his debut solo album, An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down (known as The Rod Stewart Album in the US) in late 1969, which established his heartfelt mixture of folk, rock, and country blues in both original and cover material. Faces début album, First Step was released in early 1970 with a more straight-forward rock and roll style and this group quickly earned a strong live following. Simultaneously, Stewart entered the studio with producer Lou Reizner to record Gasoline Alley, which struck a balance between the Faces’ sound and Stewart’s solo debut.

Stewart and Wood collaborated on the opening title track, an excellent folk track with a 12-string acoustic topped by duelling lead guitars and Stewart mimicking the lead riffs throughout to create a catchy melody. Stanley Matthews provides a mandolin lead to “Gasoline Alley” to complete the aura of this ode to a simpler past. the cover of Bobby and Shirley Jean Womack’s “It’s All Over Now” follows as an entertaining track with a country rock feel due to Wood’s twangy guitar and the piano style of Ian McLagan.

A cover of Bob Dylan’s “Only a Hobo”, a song Dylan himself would not release until decades later, offers a nice change of pace as a simple acoustic waltz with sad and moody lyrics delivered masterfully by Stewart. “My Way of Giving” soulfully starts with organ, bass and the masterful guitar chording by Wood. The song was co-written by Ronnie Lane for the Small Faces in 1966 and he, along with Faces band mate Kenney Jones on drums, perform on this track. “Country Comfort” is an Elton John / Bernie Taupin composition and the piano of this folk ballad is delivered nicely by guest Pete Sears, The song also features an odd but charming backing vocal by Jack Reynolds.

The album’s second side offers more diversity to its solid overall sound. “Cut Across Shorty” was originally written for Eddie Cochran in 1960 and, a decade later, this version features a duo acoustic beginning by Wood and Martin Quittenton, which is cut across by Mick Waller‘s unique drum pattern before everything kicks in for a driving rhythm under and some fiddle sprinkled throughout. Two Stewart acoustic originals follow, the partly surreal but all feeling ballad “Lady Day” with a fine a fiddle lead, and the celtic-feeling “Jo’s Lament”, with layered instrumental arrangement. “You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want to Discuss It)” wraps things up with a simmering beat and a funk-inflected theme which brings back the Faces’ rhythm section for a final cameo.

While a commercial disappointment in the UK, Gasoline Alley did become the first of 15 consecutive albums for Stewart to chart in the Top 40 in the United States. He would soon reach superstardom with his next 1971 solo record, Every Picture Tells a Story, and continue this success for decades as he became one of the best-selling music artists of all time.

Rod Stewart: The chaotic story behind the classic Every Picture Tells A Story (1971)

From loudersound.com Mick Wall ( Classic Rock ) May 05, 2020

“The single Maggie May is a freak. A million-to-one chance. But the album has permanence and a lasting value. I still can’t see how the single is such a big hit cos it’s got no melody! Plenty of character and nice chords, yeah, but no melody.” 

When Rod Stewart utters these words in October 1971 Maggie May, the hit he cannot understand and which a friend will tell him to leave off the album (“because it’s not commercial”) is stuck to the top spot on the British and US charts. Every Picture Tells A Story will match that feat at the same time – elevating Stewart from a respected journeyman into rock’s new superstar elite. 

In a year dominated by George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord, John Lennon’s Imagine and Middle Of The Road’s bubblegum Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, Rod Stewart becomes a household name. 

With the Faces he notches up over 120 dates on the road in ’71, including four separate American tours. Two Faces albums are released – Long Player and A Nod Is As Good As A Wink… To A Blind Horse, spawning the boozy hit Stay With Me. 

Suddenly Rod and the group are taken seriously – almost. Critics herald them as the new Rolling Stones – a funnier, more ramshackle model than the Glimmer Twins’ mob. Twanging the national nerve, by the end of ’71 Rod will be a millionaire, living in a 38-room mansion surrounded by 17 acres of Berkshire real estate with the Queen for a neighbour. 

His fame and wealth will overshadow the Faces. The days when Ian McLagan recalled, “we were five blokes who shared the same haircut but only one hairdryer” won’t return. But the meteoric rise of Rod Stewart involves a great deal of luck. 

Consider that when Archway Road-born Roderick David Stewart turned 26 in January ’71 he had very vague ideas about his future. “I’m looking for a song that’s probably been forgotten, that no one’s done for a time. Something that can fit my voice so I can sing it right, and something with a particularly strong melody.” 

He felt confident about that soon to be famous throat. “It’s become more sandpapery, that’s an improvement in itself. I learned a lot from playing with Jeff Beck, which really helped a lot. I learned how to fit in with a guitar – how to be a lead vocalist. I think I phrase very well.”

Having produced half of old pal and mentor Long John Baldry’s It Ain’t Easy album (Elton John did second-side honours) Stewart used many of that album’s motley cast of characters for his own, Every Picture and the same Morgan Sound Studios in Willesden, complete with trusted engineer Mike Bobak. 

Morgan was favoured because it boasted a mock pub, an establishment that saw major action when Rod’s merry men were around. Also part of the team was Rod’s Faces/Jeff Beck Group buddy Ron Wood. “I turned up promptly at each session with my guitars, a shoelace and a small wireless,” recalled reliable Ronald. 

Despite a friendship that began in the Jeff Beck Group, they were chalk and cheese. Wood noted, “Rod’s the last person I thought I’d end up sharing a career with. We lead completely different lives,” while Rod commented, “I write lyrics best. Woody and I have got a really good combination, because he writes beautiful melodies, but can’t write words. I can’t write melodies at all, but I can words.” 

Stewart was happy in charge. If the other Faces were irresponsible rogues Rod was a stickler for appearances, and keeping up to speed with the ledger. “I don’t get so much freedom with Rod as with the Faces,” Ron mused. “He’s made up his mind what he wants when we get into the studio. He moulds the musicians.” 

Ian McLagan contributed significantly to the Every Picture album. In his mind’s eye the Rod-the-Mod concept was over. “The Faces are a rock’n’roll band but Rod’s a bit of a folkie at heart.” 

Rod saw it differently: “Me and Woody are from the so-called underground. The Faces are more pop.” 

Maybe the truth lay elsewhere. Bob Dylan’s Band albums were an inspiration for Stewart’s solo discs. He liked Neil Young and claimed to have been enthused by Van Morrison’s 1968 album Astral Weeks. (‘Claimed’ because Rod’s actual Van knowledge was sketchy: “Van doesn’t write his own songs, so he can’t conquer them.”) 

Rod was ruthless when wearing his producer’s hat. The Faces rhythm section, Ronnie Lane and Kenney Jones, would appear on one Every Picture cut only, a version of The Temptations’ (I Know) I’m Losing You. Later chosen as a single, it was released with no group credit – for contractual reasons. Rod liked the number because he thought David Ruffin was the best singer in the world. But the Faces weren’t interested in recording it, so he took it instead.

According to Jones, “Rod used the Faces as a springboard. He kept the commercial stuff for himself. Rod was no fool. The Temptations song was easy. I was watching Sink the Bismarck! one afternoon at home when I got the call. I didn’t even take my drums; I used his regular drummer Mickey Waller’s [not even Waller’s but half-Status Quo’s and half-Free’s]. I got home in time to see the Bismarck sink.”

Mickey Waller had played with Stewart and Wood in the Jeff Beck Group two years earlier and had since appeared on Rod’s debut solo album An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever You Let You Down – known as ‘Thin’ to the cognoscenti, and The Rod Stewart Album to the Americans. Prized for his ‘Waller Wallop’, his other affectionate nickname being ‘Wanker Waller’, little Mickey didn’t own his own drum kit. He hated cymbals but always hit the snare’s sweet spot. If he had to play a solo he’d demand more money. 

Many of the other players emerged from the fringes of the British music scene. Raffish mustachio’d violinist Dick ‘Tricky’ Powell, a trained architect and jazzman, played gigs in a local Italian restaurant in Willesden Green for wine and pasta payment. Scouser Sam Mitchell was a Dobro/bottleneck player with a reputation for licks and liquor. 

Baldry thought Sam the greatest exponent of the National steel stringed guitar. Rod liked him enormously, especially his sense of humour. Twenty-year-old Sam’s opening gambit was usually, “How’s your wife, and my kids?” When he left he’d say, “It was a business doing pleasure with you.” 

Rod’s regular pianist Pete Sears is not alone in recollecting, “The Every Picture period was the funniest time I’ve ever had in music.” But Powell and Mitchell returned to the anonymity from which Stewart found them and would later die of alcohol-related deaths. 

Another Every Picture victim was Stewart’s co-writer on Maggie May, painfully shy classical guitarist Martin Quittenton. Waller introduced Rod to Quittenton when the latter was playing with Steamhammer at the 100 Club on Oxford Street, London. 

Stewart befriended the jumpy guitarist, offering him a room in his Highgate home – later rented out to Baldry. “Rod found me and gave me work,” Quittenton remembered. “He was very kind. Rod and his girlfriend Sarah were hospitable. A lovely couple.”

The in-demand Sears flew in from San Francisco. Sears knew of Quittenton’s prowess, and had also played with Mickey ‘Finn’ Waller in Sam Gopal’s Dream, on London’s psychedelic rock circuit, and in ex-Blue Cheer man Leigh Stephens’s West Coast group Silver Metre. 

As sessions took shape in January, Stewart had gathered an extraordinary line-up of mods, musos, hippies and be-bop beatniks. More oddballs were to arrive. His team falling into place, Stewart was stalling as he considered his follow up to Gasoline Alley. More drinker than druggy, he rubbished the idea that his last album had been made with psychedelic stimulation (“Funny, I made the album on a bottle of brandy a day”). 

He had no grandiose ideas when it came to writing: “I pretend to be a songwriter. I try really hard, but it takes me three weeks to write one song. If I’m pressurised I can write lots of songs. I gotta do it, so I do.” 

He needed to. Stewart had a five-album deal with Mercury-Phillips, brokered by A&R man and nominal producer Lou Reizner, as well as his Faces contract with Warner’s. He was adamant that the two should be distinct. 

I made the album on a bottle of brandy a dayRod Stewart

“I won’t use the Faces at all on my next record,” he said. “I might use Ronnie Wood a bit but we really must separate the two issues. Put the band over there, and my albums over here, and keep the music as far away from each other as you can. We can make nice heavy albums with the band – and I can do a bit of smooth stuff on the quiet.”

His yardstick was “make a solo album of really slow things, like a nice midnight-type album. There’s a wealth of musicians in England. I want to make a whole album like Bob Dylan’s Only A Hobo [a song he had recorded for his previous LP]. If I can sell an album like that I’d be more pleased than with Gasoline Alley.” 

True to his word the very first track on the Every Picture sessions was yet another arcane Dylan song, recorded at Morgan during a break from the Baldry project. Tomorrow Is A Long Time was, as McLagan had noted, a folky choice with Quittenton on acoustic guitar, Powell’s old time fiddle and Ronnie Wood playing his new fixation, the steel guitar. 

Stewart liked the results but had little idea where to go next. The working title for his imminent third album was – bizarrely – Amazing Grace, which would appear as a song, though not with the Scottish bagpipe arrangement he envisaged.

A raw version of this most traditional of ditties (folk singer Judy Collins’ interpretation was charting at the time) was knocked out with Sam Mitchell after Baldry’s album ended on a three-day furlough that necessitated the cancellation of the Faces’ first three gigs for 1971. 

Back at work Stewart embraced a Ted Anderson song, Seems Like A Long Time, with Baldry and Madeline Bell from Blue Mink adding “vocal abrasives”. Rod had heard the song on Brewer & Shipley’s Tarkio LP. So easy on the ear it was practically MOR, this was standard hippy songwriter fare. 

Taken in isolation, these three opening tracks were hardly earth shattering. By February, Stewart was struggling for direction. His deadline set for late May, he looked over his shoulder at whippersnappers like Free. “They’re knocking me out. What a tight band!” 

His possible repertoire for the projected album was haywire. He seriously considered tackling I’d Rather Go Blind, a hit for Chicken Shack in 1969. He toyed with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ Out Of Time, surely the solo property of Chris Farlowe. He was even planning on covering Pete Townshend’s The Seeker, a hit for The Who in recent memory. 

Sessions shelved, Rod embarked on the Faces’ third US tour that spring. There was now a buzz around the group. They climaxed at New York’s Capitol Theatre in Port Chester (billed as Rod Stewart and The Small Faces) with a decadent end of tour party on April 4, at which pharmaceutical cocaine was consumed for the first time, according to Wood. 

The provider was a notorious concentration-camp survivor Freddie Sessler, later to be Wood (and Keith Richards’) partner in crime. Sessler, who was independently wealthy, came armed with limos full of New York’s most ferocious groupies. He also had pockets stuffed with vials of pure Merck – 98 per cent proof medicinal cocaine. Rod was soon expressing concern for Woody’s welfare. 

Yet while other chaps snorted, smoked and guzzled across America, screwing anything that moved and destroying anything else that wasn’t nailed to the floor, Stewart – though no angel – resisted the excesses. He didn’t smoke, and only ate the occasional lump of hash for a dare, making the others laugh to hear his stoned nonsense. 

A la Jeff Beck days, Ron and Rod were still sharing a room. They pretended to be gynaecologists, dressing in white coats with stethoscopes and inviting groupies to be examined in their ‘clinic’, decorated with underwear the road crew rescued on stage. 

If consultancy got boring, a favoured pastime was demolishing the room and sending the contents to the lobby by lift. Or drawing cocks on Holiday Inn paintings. Debagging their manager, a fragrant Irishman from the Curragh called Billy Gaff, then pushing him into the corridor alongside girls queuing outside their waiting room, was another regular jape. It was Gaff’s job to placate the management at sundry Howard Johnsons and Holiday Inns. And then dock the band’s wages.

Luckily Rod also brought along a notebook. In America he scribbled down a couple of songs. Every Picture Tells A Story was a more or less accurate account of his teenage years as a beatnik travelling round Mediterranean Europe in the early 1960s, getting moved on by cops (“French police wouldn’t give me no peace. They claimed I was a nasty person”), neglecting his personal hygiene “My body stunk but I kept my funk”) and eventually being deported, thanks to the British Embassy agreeing to front his BOAC fare. 

The other song, named Maggie May after a notorious Liverpool docks prostitute, found Rod recalling “my first shag” at the Beaulieu Jazz Festival in 1961. “It was in a tent,” he mused. “I was 16 and it lasted precisely 28 seconds. She was older and bigger than me. I don’t think her name was Margaret.” Intriguing documentary footage exists of Stewart outside a Beaulieu newsagent. He’s wearing an army jacket festooned with Ban The Bomb badges and a broad smile.

The Faces returned to play at the Orchid Ballroom in Purley – not much Merck in Purley – then Stewart was back in Morgan with Waller, Wood, Sears and bass player Andy Pyle, who’d shared the Faces recent road trip as a member of Savoy Brown. Ostensibly the headliners, Savoy Brown were blown off stage so many times the Faces usurped them. 

Pyle remembers: “ The song Every Picture was recorded immediately after that eventful tour. The atmosphere in the studio was the same good-natured party vibe. It was over in two hours with no rehearsal and no repairs.” Maintaining this buoyancy, Stewart chucked Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup’s rock’n’roll standard That’s All Right into the Morgan pot. 

Pete Sears: “As usual we went over the basics at Rod’s house and tried to make it our own. We knocked off something raw and spontaneous… Sophisticated in a subtle way. That summed up the album. Rod and his cast fused folk, blues rock and soul, even Martin’s classical leanings, into one fresh sound.” 

Sears describes Rod’s approach as “the antithesis of sterile production line. The method was go over to Rod’s place in the afternoon where he sang at his grand piano. We whipped up a quick arrangement, went back to Morgan, hit the downstairs pub, made the recording, went back to the pub. 

It was his idea for me to come in half-way though on the song Every Picture Tells A Story, to add impact.” It was also Stewart who coached Wood into arriving at the line “I was accused…” building his guitar solo to a place that made Jagger and Richards sit up when they heard it. Wood, who was listening to a lot of Duane Allman, and the Flying Burrito Brothers’ pedal steel player ‘Sneaky’ Pete Kleinow, came of age here, dubbing 12-string to electric and then adding slide guitar. 

Wood’s confident musicianship allowed Rod to blossom, a fact not unnoticed by Ian McLagan. “The sessions were a lovely piece of work. Rod was interesting as a solo artist. Away from the Faces he was very confident. There wasn’t much talk. Just play. He didn’t waste studio time because time was money. He was a good producer but he was lucky to have Mike Bobak as his engineer. Mike was a quiet chap. He needed to be, because we were all terribly noisy.”

Without Bobak’s input Every Picture was a nonstarter. Credited as engineer, his role was vital – not even Rod Stewart could sing, dance and operate a 16-track mixing desk at the same time. Bobak has vivid memories of life inside Studio One. 

“Rod wasn’t in the studio when I was mixing. He was in the bar. Rod was the producer in that I didn’t tell the musicians what to do. He’d say if he didn’t like something, but I didn’t tell him if I didn’t like what he was playing. Despite our long relationship I was a hired hand. He was the artist and I wasn’t. I got no royalties. Rod worked everything out at home and put it together in Morgan. ‘This needs violin – where’s Powell? This wants Dobro. Where’s Mitchell?’

“It was fun and games for them but with serious work between 7pm and 10pm. Never later. They’d go to the bar, I’d knock off a mix cassette, give it to Rod, and he took it home for perusal. He had a routine. Two hours were allotted to each track. He didn’t want to spend a lot of money because studios were expensive. The musicians were collaborators. He conducted on the shop floor. He was quite old school in his attitude. He only played a bit of acoustic guitar on the album. He wasn’t very good. Bit of a strummer.” 

It was in a tent. I was 16 and it lasted precisely 28 seconds. She was older and bigger than meRod Stewart

Bobak worked with Stewart throughout his Mercury career and started noticing a change. “He was alright during Every Picture. Then stardust bit him. He thought he was the bee’s knees. Always preening himself, fiddling with his hair, trousers. He loved his motors. Every night you’d hear his wheels screech off.”

Occasionally Rod lost his temper. “He was quite moody if things weren’t going well,” says Bobak. “I remember him shouting at me and the tape op Phil. I don’t know why. I wasn’t playing the songs. If he got tense he could be very rude.”

During an attempt at Maggie May, Ron Wood realised he’d played a blinding solo that the engineers hadn’t tracked. A furious Stewart threw a glass of wine over young Phil and stormed off to the bar, effing and blinding.

Stone The Crows vocalist Maggie Bell saw a sweeter side. Maggie was living with Alex Harvey’s brother Les in Highgate when she got Rod’s call. “I thought he was an absolute gentleman. Very professional. He arrived in his yellow Lamborghini. Smartly dressed, everything matching and expensive. He was wearing a pink jacket, pink satin trousers and a white silk scarf. What a dandy! I was in patched denims. In the car we talked about Scotland.

“I told Rod he reminded me of Denis Law. I was just down from Glasgow, so I was nervous. He gave me the lyrics for the song Every Picture Tells A Story. ‘See what you think.’ We did it in two takes. Years later people thought I was the Maggie in Maggie May,” Bell laughs. “Rod wasn’t my type.”

Bell was paid £30 for her work. Her arrival during the line ‘Shanghai Lil never used the pill/ She claimed that it just ain’t natural’ is among the album’s most priceless moments. 

Stewart, who’d loved singing with Julie Driscoll in his mid-60s group The Steampacket, and with Toxteth lass Beryl Marsden in Shotgun Express (they included Mick Fleetwood and Peter Green), was ecstatic. 

“It’s one of the two best songs I’ve ever written,” he gushed, perhaps forgetting that Wood actually wrote the music. His other favourite was Mandolin Wind, which Rod was solely responsible for composing. It needed pepping up. He’d demo’d it for the Faces but they didn’t rate the song. 

Martin Quittenton recalls the original: “Rod played it to me on the acoustic guitar. I don’t know where the song came from. We never talked like that. We just did it.” 

With Quittenton and Wood’s guitars underscoring Stewart’s plush ballad what the song lacked was… a mandolin! Enter Wallsend musician Raymond Jackson from Lindisfarne who, like both Bell girls, had played on the Baldry album three months earlier. 

“I drove down from Newcastle to add a mandolin overdub. The song was very country-ish. I remember Rod and his girlfriend were watching me play through the glass. I finished and he seemed pleased. Then he said, ‘I’ve got this other song called Maggie May. I don’t know what to do with it. I might not even use it and it probably won’t even go on the album but I’ve got nothing to put on the end so can you put some mandolin down? 

“I had two minutes to improvise around the chords, then I was playing, and they double tracked it until it was almost orchestral. Suddenly they liked the song! I’d got the impression it wasn’t going to be used at all. Now the people at the mixing desk were looking at each other in delight. They were applauding. 

“That night Rod invited me home. I followed his white Rolls-Royce in my little Bedford HA van and ran out of petrol. I had to get Rod to pull over at Child’s Hill and wait for me, because he wasn’t holding back.” 

Chez Stewart the young Jackson was treated to Sarah’s warmed-up shepherd’s pie and a few beers. “We watched football. Rod had one of the first portable Sony black-and-white video machines in his lounge. Then I drove home and kipped on a mate’s floor in Olympia.”

Jackson’s contribution to Maggie May became controversial later when he asked for more than the £15 he was paid as a session man. 

“It was annoying that Rod left my name off the credits [‘The mandolin was played by the mandolin player in Lindisfarne. The name slips my mind’ according to the sleeve]. I asked him later: ‘Surely you could have got the information from the company?’ But he didn’t apologise. My mandolin made it whole, if you like, glued it all together. The song didn’t have a definitive chorus or middle eight. It was unusual.” 

Some said a mess. And yet now it was good enough for a single’s B-side, at least. Rod still wouldn’t have put it on the album – except that Mercury told him ever so politely that the album was way too short by at least six minutes, and since half of it was other people’s material, could Mr. Stewart kindly get off his arse… 

Maggie wasn’t all Rod’s work. He’d first attempted it with Ron Wood in an American hotel room in March, the guitarist vamping around the opening to Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. Now Martin Quittenton shaped the chord sequence in Rod’s shag-piled lounge and composed the acoustic intro, christened ‘Henry’, on the Piccadilly Line Tube a few days later. A pretty little madrigal, ‘Henry’ was really conceived as a time-filler. It would appear on some versions of the single, but not all. 

According to Quittenton, Rod finished the Maggie lyrics in a desperate hurry. “We didn’t think it was very good,” he recalled. “Never in anyone’s wildest dreams was it a pop standard.” 

Evidently Stewart thought the song had something, since he asked Ian McLagan to overdub a Celeste part. “I did what he asked and it was rubbish. I’d also cocked up the piano intro to I’m Losing You, but it worked, so I cocked it up every time we did it live for good measure.”

Rod was OK during Every Picture. Then stardust bit him. He thought he was the bee’s kneesEngineer Mike Bobak

One other song required a tinker – Rod’s version of Tim Hardin’s classic Reason To Believe. Rod rated the doomed genius Hardin highly and expressed a desire to produce him. Enter burly South Londoner Danny Thompson from folk group Pentangle, accompanied by his 19th-century double bass ‘Victoria’. 

“I knew Rod from Marquee days when he used to see me with Alexis Korner and from meets on the road, when Pentangle and the Faces shared ahotel,” says Danny. “He wanted me to replace Ron Wood’s electric bass part with my acoustic. I doubt it took 20 minutes. After the playback, I’m off. Rod and his girlfriend, who was wearing thigh-length leather boots, saw me to the door and he held my bass while I got my car, an S1 Bentley. 

“Rod’s jaw dropped. ‘I’ve always wanted one of those!’ He was an endearing bloke, a proper geezer. I did it because I thought Tim Hardin – who was huge on the folk circuit – would get a load of money. I didn’t even get paid. He still owes me 20 quid. He said, ‘I’ll make it up next time.’ But he never did.” Billy Gaff would soon manage Hardin who was in the grip of heroin addiction. He was a hopeless case, but thanks to Stewart most Hardin compilations are called Reason To Believe. 

In early May, Bobak had the album ready to send to New York for mastering by Mercury’s production boss Len Dimond. The sleeve was given to American artist John Craig who came up with a 1920s Art Deco look. 

“The front image with the ‘Classic Edition’ typography was borrowed from a piece of old RCA sheet music. The illustrations on the back were Edwardian postcards, nostalgic 1910 images that seemed to fit the songs – which I hadn’t heard!” says Craig today. “Rod had no input. I guess he liked it because I did his next album, Never A Dull Moment. If people like the cover it’s serendipity. In the age of the gatefold sleeve you could have a lot of fun.” 

The cover photos and an inner poster were taken at a Faces gig in the Fillmore East on February 17. Craig hand-tinted Lisa Margolis’s photograph, accentuating Rod’s cockerel barnet (he was born in the year of the Rooster), painting his lips red and his microphone gold. The package, more lavish in America than Britain, was now ready. Anyone want to hear it then?

Expectations were moderate. There were no full-page adverts. The music press carried two teasers for the album: one featuring tongue-incheek text from Rod himself: “Like all great art, great wine, great craft, and great sex, Rod Stewart’s third album took a long time in coming….” 

Before packing his bags for the next American tour Rod sent old mate John Peel an advance tape of the album. Only a year earlier the agreeable DJ had been lending Stewart and David Bowie the odd half a ton: “They said it was for art labs but they spent it all on velvet trousers, and nights at the Speakeasy.” 

Intrigued by what looked like a haphazard selection, Peel started playing Mandolin Wind on his show and announced: “D’you know, I think that may be the best thing young Rodders has ever done.” 

The ball was rolling. The band left for America as local heroes but Rod returned to the UK a superstar. On July 9 Every Picture was released and the Faces blitzed the Philadelphia Spectrum. A local DJ, given a pressing of Reason To Believe/Maggie May, was inundated by requests for the B-side. 

The tour took off. There were riots in Dayton, crowd invasions in Chicago and all-night parties everywhere else as the Faces – assisted by pharmaceutical cocaine that blew up into a cloud when it reacted with air – were blown across the USA. 

Kenney Jones remembers: “Mayhem. There was lots of drinking and cocaine and girls in every corridor. I never took drugs because they messed up my timing, but I was surrounded by it all. Drinking was rife. Horrible stone bottles of some muck we called Stanley Mateus and plenty of brandy.” 

After they’d played Long Beach California, Apple Records executive Jack Good threw a party at which Rod met his soon to be new girlfriend, 18-year-old Dee Harrington, an aspiring model and glamour girl. He came back to England with her as his first trophy blonde and they set up home in Rod’s mock-Tudor spread in Winchmore Hill. Sarah returned to her flat in Notting Hill Gate and never uttered a word about Rod again in public. 

Reason To Believe was released in early August but was soon listed as a double-A side once Maggie May saturated the airwaves. By October the single was number one in America and Britain, and so was the album. First performed on Top Of The Pops on the 19th the single became a permanent fixture on the programme that autumn, featuring eight times; one that included Peel pretending to play Ray Jackson’s mandolin part. 

“I remember Rod wore a crushed velvet purple suit, and he fell off the stage. We had to restart the whole show,” said Peel. 

The Faces were triumphant when they kicked butts and footballs at the August Bank Holiday Weeley Festival on the 28th. Resplendent in a pink satin suit designed by Rod’s man Andreas (“he makes me look tarty”), his feet platform boot shod by Bowie’s cobbler, a bare-chested Stewart brought the Clacton crowd to its feet as he introduced Maggie May: “Here’s a song about a schoolboy what falls in love with a dirty old prostitute.” 

By the time they encored with Every Picture Tells A Story, Essex blood was so inflamed that when T. Rex headlined they were roundly booed, while the onsite caterers staged a pitched battle with several chapters of the Hells Angels. The Faces were paid £4,000 and departed as heroes. Magic stuff. 

Similar pandemonium followed on September 18 at the Oval Cricket Ground’s Goodbye Summer Show – A Concert In Aid of the Famine Relief for the People of Bangladesh, featuring The Who, Mott The Hoople, America and Lindisfarne. By now sessions for the Faces third album, A Nod Is As Good As A Wink… To A Blind Horse were underway and the crowd was treated to an early version of the band’s one and only US Top 40 hit, Rod and Ron’s Stay With Me. In Britain that reached number six. The ackers were rolling in.

Martin Quittenton was on an open-top 31 bus on Worthing sea front when he heard Maggie May for the first time outside of the studio. “I was on my way to work in a music shop and I heard it coming from a juke box in a pub that had its doors open. Someone told me it was number one. I flinched every time I heard it. I didn’t feel proud, I felt vaguely satisfied.” 

Sadly, a few years later Quittenton fell foul of the music business and suffered a severe breakdown. By his own admission Martin could have cashed in with Rod. “He asked me to go to America, but I was well on the way to a breakdown and it was impossible for me to go,” he told Smiler magazine in 1992. He retired on modest royalties, sold his guitars and moved to Anglesey to open an animal sanctuary. 

As the year ended Stewart was wealthy and famous. These were blissful times. “When Maggie May went to number one we all went out and got drunk. The whole Stewart clan. The drinking went on for a long time, and why not?” he asked. It was a proud day when he gave his parents – Scottish Bob and Cockney Elsie – his first Gold Record. 

“That was more gratifying than any big cheque or new car. My whole family had stood by me. They never said, ‘Get yourself a day job.’” 

But big cracks had appeared in the Faces happy-golucky façade. During their sixth US tour – November and December – with Maggie-mania sweeping the States – they were still billed as ‘Rod Stewart and…’ “That was really heartbreaking for me,” Rod reckoned. “The boys all went, ‘Fuck it, don’t worry’, but I could tell Ronnie Lane and Ian McLagan were hurt, because they’d got away from a somewhat egotistical singer in Steve Marriott and they didn’t want that again.” 

That December Stewart was presented with five Gold Discs at the Amsterdam Hilton for sales in various countries. Despite the success of A Nod Is… the Faces won nothing. Ronnie Lane wasn’t surprised. “Rod’s records have been better than the band’s. He works in a weird way. He does an album in a week. He goes in and crash, bang, wallop it’s finished. Everyone just strolls in, doesn’t give a shit and it comes out great.”

By way of justification, Stewart let rip three years later: “The looseness that the Faces were known for just became too loose. It was such an unprofessional band. How many times can you get away with being an hour and a half late at a gig for $15,000? You can’t go on doing that, year in and year out.” 

Looking back, it’s obvious that Every Picture Tells A Story was Rod’s defining moment. It is one of the greatest albums made in the early 70s. Even old mate David Bowie was impressed enough to copy Rod’s hair-do for his album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, where he also covered It Ain’t Easy, the Ron Davies song Rod suggested to Baldry. 

Rolling Stone magazine voted Rod rock singer of the year in their end of 1971 poll. NME readers elected him ‘Best New Disc and TV Singer Of The Year.’ Melody Maker gave him their Pop Star of the Year gong. Yet Stewart never matched Every Picture again. His next recordings were fine, but they were inferior carbon copies. 

In a reflective moment Stewart acknowledged, “Every Picture was a great album to make. I wasn’t living up to anything. No one told me to make a single; I just bunged Maggie May on because that was all I had left to give the company. After that? I just hoped for the best. I really miss that spontaneity.” 

As for the woman who inspired Maggie May: “If she’s still alive she’s in her late 60s now,” recalled Rod in 2007. “Cor… what a dreadful thought.”

Rod Stewart An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down (1969)

From headheritage.co.uk

I know what you’re thinking – Rod Stewart? And I agree; a Stewart album would normally be the last thing I’d listen to, much less recommend. But this, his first solo LP, comes highly recommended for all those into the heavy acoustic rock groove of the Stones’s Beggars Banquet; in fact, this album could easily be re-titled “Beggars Banquet II” — even the cover follows the original “RSVP” Beggars Banquet sleeve. (And to make the Stones similarity more obvious…it features Ron Wood on guitar, years before he replaced Mick Taylor.)

An ancient issue of Rolling Stone informed me of the LP. Greil Marcus raved about it in his Feb 7, 1970 review, even claiming it was the only album of late ‘69 (other than Let It Bleed) which picked up the mantle laid down by Beggars Banquet. Marcus is one of those reviewers who, analytical as he can be, I’ve always respected, mostly because he was one of the very few critics who praised Skip Spence’s Oar…back when it was originally released. So I went on a hunt for this Stewart album (titled “An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down” in the UK), and found it for a measly $2 in the vinyl bin of a local bookstore. Original issue, and nearly mint to boot.

“Street Fighting Man” opens the record, and it’s a great song, not just a great cover. It starts off all heavy acoustic rock, pounding drums, pedal steel guitar, banging piano, and an acoustic guitar riffing away. Stewart’s vocals lack the vitriol of Jagger; he instead sings with the raspy wail we know so well. A brief bass solo and it’s back into the groove, here a bit fatter than the proto-punk of the Stones original. An electric guitar pops up for an extended jam session in the middle; you think the song’s over much too abruptly, but then it picks back up – from what was the beginning of the Stones original. “Everywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy,” wails Rod on multi-tracked vocals, and you can’t deny the power. Another bass solo, then things get real weird…a treated piano begins to play the opening chords of that psychedelic Stones classic, “We Love You!” What must this have sounded like in the back-to-the-roots era of late 1969? And that’s it, a fade-out, the end.

Acoustic guitar on the right channel, scorching blues electric in the left, opens the oh-so-very Beggars Banquet “Man of Constant Sorrow.” All “Prodigal Son,” “No Expectations,” “Factory Girl”…only maybe a little better. A short track, a simple bluesy dirge of regret and despair, but it leaves an impact.

“Blind Prayer” is all blaring lead guitar and massive piano/drums, Stewart singing in a blustery manner of hardscrabble proclamation. British blues of Cream vintage; even the riffing bridge section is straight off “Wheels of Fire.” Things mellow out with a Doorsy bass/piano section, Stewart singing “tread my name into the dirt.” A whiskey-soaked wail and the bottleneck comes in, the drums begin banging out fills. The riffing bridge becomes the song itself, all Zeppelin I, but that Doorsy midsection returns, “Riders on the Storm” with bottleneck guitar. This track is everything the Stones could have been after Beggars Banquet.

“Handbags & Gladrags” was the hit off the album, and for reason. You could easily see it as “No Expectations, Pt 2.” Just the most moving, emotional, blues-soaked moan of regret ever put on wax by a British blues singer. One of those songs where the piano plays a melody that gets stuck in your head for DAYS, Stewart’s vocals included. Plus it’s got a horn section straight off of Sgt Peppers! Easily one of the many highlights of this great album. Features another fake-out ending; a fade…then the piano comes back in, playing out the refrain all by its lonesome.

“An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down,” the title track of the UK release (on Vertigo records, released February 1970), opens Side 2. A hard rock track with swing to spare, it begins with some multi-tracked acoustic guitar scrapes, then the bass comes in on a thick funky groove. One of those walking-on-the-balls-of-your-feet type affairs, all attitude and pomp. Somehow it reminds me of something off the first Montrose album…only without all the guitar gimmickry. “Stray Cat Blues” type guitars, especially on the fade.

“I Wouldn’t Ever Change A Thing,” mutters Stewart, announcing the next track, before the bass and piano engage in a circular motif which runs throughout. Organ courtesy Keith Emerson, giving the track a pure late ‘60s vibe. No guitars on this one. After a Procol Harum-type organ interlude, the track takes on a more melancholy vibe, all piano and wistful vocals. But then the bass announces a funky section with Stewart’s vocals panning across the spectrum. This eventually leads into a pure hell of organ, the drums bashing away – the heaviest track Procol Harum never wrote, in fact.

“Cindy’s Lament” comes on strong, heavy guitar/drums/organ, sounding very much like Cream. The organ plays an extended mournful note with acoustic guitar, then the drums hammer it back into a sub-Zeppelin II riff-a-thon. Stewart here sounds nearly identical to Plant, and the lyrics are right there in that blues grotto so familiar from the first two Zep albums. This is basic blues done English heavy, and it’s not bad. “You don’t have to notice my shoes/But please, please say hello sometimes,” sings Stewart. Man, there’s gotta be some meaning in those lines, somewhere. The track’s heavy, it grooves, Stewart nearly wails himself hoarse, it’s got some cool-sounding guitar riffs, but it follows too closely the template of Zeppelin I and II. An early fade fools you; the track comes back (uneventfully, it turns out) for another riff run-through.

“Dirty Old Town” is all Zeppelin III meets Beggars Banquet, acoustic guitars, muted drums, Rod’s raspy vocals. It opens with acoustic guitars and bass in a nice bucolic mode, snappy, muted snare in the far right channel. As the track continues the instrumentation picks up a more and more noticeable phased effect, until a Stevie Wonder-type harmonica (with a wah-wah effect, I should note) announces a grooving climax. A pretty cool track, but a subdued ending to the album.