Classic Pop Icons

It seldom fails, I’ll be riding down the road and “Maggie May” will come on the radio and I’ll just be arrested by those final phrases from Rod Stewart. “I’ll get on back home, one of these day-aaays” and that glorious final falsetto howl. “Wooo hoo hooh.” My spine will tingle a bit and I’ll think “Man, that guy used to be a really terrific singer.” Then the old hand wringing will come out, “too bad he didn’t keep it up” or some such. I’m probably not alone in that feeling. The idea that Stewart was one of the people who had it and then lost it is close to pop consensus. It’s almost the Elvis after the army of the next generation. Maybe there’s not a clear demarcation like there was there, but many listeners believe that Rod Stewart at some point, relatively early on, lost “it” in a bid for mainstream stardom, and never quite got “it” back.

After the early 1970s, “hip” and Rod Stewart have never fit. He was one of the figures who most incurred the scorn of the original punks for his flash and relative musical conventionality. As Entertainment Weekly once pointed out, he is the only performer to lose his chapter in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock n’ Roll. It’s as if the editors tried to rewrite their own history, ashamed that they had once singled out a performer who later proved unworthy of such a spotlight. Having some occasion to listen to some Stewart lately, it’s become clear to me that this assessment is very harsh and unfair. Even sticking primarily to the hit singles, it appears evident, to these ears at least, that he was good or great a lot more than we gave him credit for at the time. In fact, you can just pop in at any point in his career and pull out at least a few gems. When you add it all up, instead of a career of disappointment you find one of the more enjoyable bodies of work played out in the pop Top 40.

Generally, the story is that at Mercury, alone and with the Faces, he was beyond reproach with masterful originals like “Maggie May,” “Gasoline Alley,” “Stay With Me,” “Every Picture Tells a Story,” and “You Wear it Well,” along with insightful, passionate and daring reconstructions of songs like Tim Hardin’s “Reason to Believe,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Angel,” and the Temptation’s “I Know (I’m Losing You).”

Stewart’s 1971 LP “Every Picture Tells a Story” is widely and justly considered one of the finest full length LP statements in rock and roll history. In a year that produced classics like “Who’s Next,” “Sticky Fingers,” “What’s Goin’ On,” “Led Zeppelin IV” and at least a half dozen other certified classics, “Picture” might be the best of them all. This is not something I have any desire to dispute.

The interpretative gift Stewart displays on these recordings is one of the most singular in all of rock ‘n’ soul and still contains surprises and rewards four decades later.

Stewart was successful at Mercury. Both “Maggie May” the single, and the Every Picture LP were chart toppers. It was at artist friendly Warner Brothers, though, where he became a superstar. This is where the story starts the move downwards for many critics and fans. Part of it was that Stewart had split with the Faces. He had always pursued a solo career along with his work with the group and tracks like “Maggie” were done as Stewart solo numbers. The well publicized break, though, made Stewart seems selfish and egotistical to some. And for the rock critic hordes, a singer in a band was much hipper than a soloist.

Rod Stewart – “Maggie May”

As writer Fred Bronson pointed out, another well publicized move further pushed Stewart away from hipness: His move to L.A. and full hearted embrace of popular success. It is no coincidence that the Stewart that is most reviled is the Stewart that is most popular. Love them or hate them songs like “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy,” “Passion,” “Young Turks” and the dozen other or so hits that made Rod Stewart not merely popular but a pop institution captured a broad swath of the public’s interest, including many who don’t usually buy music. Many of those songs meant something to many of those people. Since this is an audience that is not often heard in print, particularly about pop music, that fact is often ignored or downright belittled. Stewart’s ascension to superstar status came at almost the exact moment when critics devalued mainstream success in favor of the perceived greater challenge of artists on the margins.

The third and arguably most decisive factor in Stewart’s plummet from the critical heights, and the mainstream condemnation that retroactively came with it, was the persona he pursued at his second label. Rather than continue with the type of earthy folk-influenced rock that he had perfected at Mercury, on Warner Brothers Stewart became the personification of the late-night, sophisticated seducer. At the time, the move was seen as strictly cynical. In retrospect, it seems a natural progression. He was no longer the naïve young boy taken advantage of by an older woman; he was now himself a man of sexual experience and that experience came out in his music. More importantly, though, Stewart’s heart of hearts was in R&B music, much more than rock ‘n’ roll, and in the mid-1970s this was the direction of R&B. In that time R&B performers of all stripes including veterans like Johnnie Taylor, relative newcomers to the field like Barry White and Stewart idols like Marvin Gaye, were exploring the music’s potential as an aide to and chronicle of adult bedroom activities. Of course, sex was always a large part of the rock ‘n’ roll experience, but Stewart drifted away from the force and frustration that defined that style towards the seductive intimacy that defined the then new R&B. The smooth sax solo at the center of “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” underlines the song’s roots in R&B soul, as does the participation of Memphis legends Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn.

Tracks like Gaye’s “After the Dance,” “I Want You,” several of White’s singles, Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” and Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” helped expand the concept of what could be played on pop Top 40 radio, although they seldom received credit for it. There’s no way Rhianna’s singing about “whips and chains” on Top 40 without them. Arguably, “Tonight’s the Night” as a #1 pop hit for two solid months was the most influential of all them because it was one of those songs that impacted people who didn’t normally listen to the radio. It helped open minds because it wasn’t just preaching to the converted.

Rod Stewart – “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)”

Given the gentle but insistent assurance of Stewart’s vocals, even many critics were swayed by the record’s charms. But that was about it. “Tonight’s the Night” was a bad model for an artist who had sold out to mainstream success. Most of the remainder of Stewart’s catalogue is seen as self-parodying attempts to recapture that record’s potency or sell out professionalism.

There’s some truth there. Success breeds imitation and often creates artistic conservatism. It’s hard to hear “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” today and not cringe (although how much of that cringing comes from the tons of lounge lizards and shower singers who’ve mauled the song over the years without an appreciation of Stewart’s sense of irony and observation is up for debate). And it’s hard to recall a song like “Love Touch,” a 1986 Top Ten, seconds after you’ve heard it. Sometimes it’s hard not to want to strangle Stewart for wasting his talent on a blatant piece of boomer pandering such as “The Motown Song” or allowing his producers to destroy the delicacy of a promising piece like “Rhythm of my Heart” with sledge hammer production when the tune screams for delicacy. And listening to selections from his standards albums, it’s hard not to think he’s lost the plot with his well meaning but bland interpretations of the Great American Songbook.

To focus on those missteps, though, is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Looking back, we can see an artist who delivered far more than he failed. From 1976 on, we don’t have to look very hard to find that genius who gave us “Maggie May.” In retrospect, it’s easy to see that he was with us a lot more than we thought.

From the start it was evident. “A Night on the Town,” the album that gave us “Tonight’s the Night,” was an LP of deep pleasures, not the least of which were the follow up hit singles “The First Cut is the Deepest” and “The Killing of Georgie Part I and II.” The latter track, a six minute plus self-penned opus about a gay friend of Stewart’s who was killed, is especially worth remembering. It is one of the first mainstream pop pieces to address the humanity of gays. In doing it Stewart risked the ire of a mainstream audience that had still not adjusted to the idea that homosexuality was not a sin. The record itself was a passionately sung, improvisational piece in the great talking blues/folk tradition. It was definitely up there with his best Mercury work. The rest of the album largely maintained that standard with strong originals like “Fool for You” and inspired remakes like “First Cut” and a beautiful “Pretty Flamingo.” It wasn’t Every Picture, but it was a lot closer than you would guess.

With 1978’s “You’re in My Heart (the Final Acclaim),” Stewart did with love ballads what he did for seduction songs with “Tonight’s the Night.” The self-penned number was one of the best written love songs of its era with a gentle ingratiating melody that oh so subtly soared on the chorus and a lyric that was alternately witty and self-deprecating (“You’re an essay in glamour/Please pardon the grammar”), observant (“Breezing through the clientele/spinning yarns that were so lyrical/I must confess right here/the attraction was purely was purely physical”) and beautifully sentimental (“You’re ageless, timeless, lace and fineness/You’re beauty and elegance”). In some moments, it was all those things at once – “A big bosom lady with a Dutch accent/who tried to change my point of view/Her ad-libbed lines were well rehearsed/But my heart cried out for you.”

The record was also blessed with a versatile, genre defying production by Tom Dowd that set Stewart’s vocal aside, in different parts of the record, to an acoustic guitar, an electric rock guitar, strings, and a Beach Boys’ type latter day doo wop backing vocals. Stewart the vocalist did not let either Dowd or himself down. “You’re in My Heart” features some of his most finely calibrated singing. On the line “I said ‘hello’ unnoticed,” he breaks the word “hello” in two, emphasizing both syllables, a gesture that underlines how much this individual greeting meant in his life. You can feel him conjuring the memory.

Rod Stewart – “You’re in My Heart (the Final Acclaim)”

On the chorus of the song he takes a pause before the word “soul” to make that word stand out. And when he does sing it, that one word has the feel of a paragraph. In a moment like this, he’s not only as good as that singer on “Maggie May,” he’s arguably better.

Although, it was one of the best mainstream records of the late 1970s, it has largely been taken for granted – ballad junk, a wedding song. That so many people have taken it as an anthem for one of the most important moments in their lives has seemed to wash over many critics. There are a lot of sentimental records, but few of them hit like this one.

As if to prove he was not locked into the love man persona, the same year’s “Hot Legs” was one of Stewart’s toughest records. Some critics have complained it’s too much, but it would be willful to argue that it’s not as tough, or aggressively sexual as the best Rolling Stones’ records of the era.

And so it continued. Although sometimes he would strike out, most years you could turn on the radio and there would be a good Rod Stewart record. There were things like the heavily synthesized short story “Young Turks,” a record whose slickness could not dissipate the passion and inventiveness of Stewart’s singing. “Time, time, time, time is on your side.”

The year 1984 provided two of his best in “Infatuation” and “Some Guys Have All the Luck.” The former was a dark piece of pop paranoia with a terrific guitar solo by Jeff Beck and one of Stewart’s most intensely rhythmic non-melodic vocals. In different measures, he creates a legitimate and disturbing sense of paranoia, and a sense of the absurd. Sometimes our lives are that way. They’d be funny if we weren’t living them. The latter with its seamless musical confidence next to an unsettling display of male vulnerability recalled Elvis Presley’s hits of the early 1960s. Buoyed by arguably the best production of Michael Omartian’s career, it easily outpaced the Persuaders’ Spinners-wannabe original. That source though again reaffirmed Stewart’s commitment to and passion for R&B.

Rod Stewart – “Infatuation”

The same could be said for his much maligned disco records. Disco was where the style was headed in the late 1970s and Rod was willing to follow it. And in retrospect, many of those records are better than we remembered them. “Even the president needs passion,” he extols at the climax of “Passion.” We were fools to miss such an obvious wink. Riding that irresistible groove, he knows this is all supposed to be fun. Could we have taken ourselves so seriously that we didn’t understand that? It’s a shame if that’s the case because “Passion” is one delicious cheap thrill.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s Stewart seemed determined to win back some of the cultural respect he had lost in the disco and post disco era. As a result, some of his vocals in the era are fine but too careful, too respectful. It was as if by showing some restraint, he could remind us that he was once a serious artist.

Even here, though, his talent was too strong to be swept away. One of the best examples of this was his great 1993 unplugged concert on MTV. His version of Van Morrison’s “Have I Told You Lately” became a huge and deserved Top Five hit. Morrison is a very difficult artist to cover because he himself is vocally capable of displays of unreserved passion and his lyrics often contain a fierce but often muddled spirituality that only the composer can adequately deliver. Stewart, though, without radically changing the song’s melody, lyrics or arrangement, is able to take the song as his own. In the song’s final moments, the singer is able to capture a true to life emotionality that is supposed to be the essence of the best of pop music, although few performers ever go that far. He spreads the lines out, singing each deliberately, barely even singing at times, just kind of melodically speaking. When he gets to the final line, it almost seems as if he is in tears of joy. “You fill my- heart- with gladness.” He almost chokes on the word “heart.” Never has the legendary Stewart rasp drawn forth such meaning. “Ease my troubles that’s, that’s… what you do.” The pauses and the repetition portray a person just discovering his feelings and the miracle of being able to place those feelings into words. Hearing it, you can almost find those moments in yourself; you’re able to recall that special memory that you want to hold on to. More than that, you’re able to summon once more the feeling you held then in its full force. Isn’t that what great art is supposed to do, elevate your feelings and insights into your life and the world at large? And this performance is as close to a true work of art as any in its era.

Rod Stewart – “Have I Told You Lately”

Stewart was not done as a popular sensation or as an artist. In 1994 he scored one last number one with a self-congratulatory team up with Sting and Bryan Adams. For the Stewart haters, it was just another example of how he’d gone wrong. A smaller hit, 1998’s “Ooh La La,” a remake of a Stewart/Faces’ original, told a different story. Despite barely making the Top 40 it grabbed hold in the wider culture (to the point of serving as hook for a famous television commercial) and showed that the journey through adulthood and into middle and eventually old age was not without rewards.

The last decade or so has been filled with his series of albums based upon the Great American Songbook. They’ve been a popular, albeit unsatisfying, product. Stewart’s sandpaper voice and delivery are ill suited to Tin Pan Alley material. He compensates with a touch so soft that his distinct personality is almost completely wiped away when he sings these songs. As hard as they are to like though, they are easy to respect. Stewart’s a great singer and it is only natural that a great singer would want to try his hand at some of the greatest tunes ever written. In its way, it’s an extension of the public rehabilitation project upon which he’s been embroiled these past 20 odd years. Only a curmudgeon would begrudge him this last shot at respectability, even if it’s only his own personal estimation that he’s improving.

Like “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy,” the standards albums have found a large audience. For some people even today Rod Stewart still delivers. For the rest of us, there’s hope, a realization and appreciation. There’s hope that, just as he’s done before, he could find that great singer again and deliver yet another of those spine tingling moments. There’s the realization that he’s given us more than we’d ever thought he did. He was often much better than our opinion of him, even if we didn’t always know it then. And there’s an appreciation for the joy he often made for us in listening to the radio. Maybe if it’s a joy that should have been there, if we weren’t caught up in our preconceptions and aspirations to hipness to hear the best of what he has doing. But even if we were, there’s nothing to stop us from enjoying it now. The glorious sublimity that the singer found all those decades ago in “Maggie May” was there all along in bits and pieces spread across a frustrating but ultimately rewarding career. “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright),” “You’re in My Heart (the Final Acclaim),” “Have I Told You Lately,” “Young Turks,” “The First Cut is the Deepest,” “Infatuation.” This guy did not lose “it.”

Most of the songs discussed in this article are available on “The Definitive Rod Stewart” which is available in standard (2-CD) and deluxe (2CD/DVD) editions. The DVD features 14 music videos.

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