Rod Stewart, it should be remembered by anyone prone to dismiss him, had enormous credibility around 1972 when we first heard tracks from his latest solo album, Every Picture Tells A Story, on arguably the best music programme at the time, Radio Luxembourg’s The Kid Jensen Show.
It wasn’t that that album was chock-full of sparkling Rod originals, but he made the featured covers utterly his own, they melded well and easily with the new songs. There was that wistful version of Bob Dylan’s Tomorrow is A Long Time, there was a charming reading of Tim Hardin’s Reason to Believe, and the sadly forgotten gutsy soul of The Temptations 1967 song, I’m Losing You.
Also in there were the stunning originals Mandolin Wind and Maggie May which was the big single smash. I bought the cassette and was proud to own it. Did things sound better on cassette in the early 1970s? It’s all too hard to quantify, too mercurial to try and bottle those early experiences, or see them in light of all the music heard since.
All in all, Every Picture Tells A Story was a superb record, surely one of the best solo albums ever and it made us investigate earlier stuff like Gasoline Alley. Then we had the music of his regular band, The Faces, which was always strong.
So, here we have Rod in 2017 or so, laying down tracks in Los Angeles, where else for his latest studio opus, Blood Red Roses. The opening track, Look in Her Eyes - co-written, as are most of the 16 tracks with co-producer Kevin Savigar - is I'm afraid no more than harmless, upbeat West Coast pop.
Hole in My Heart, the next one, is ridiculous, and tells of a chap who comes home and discovers his lady has left him for 'some Russian guy.’ (Why Russian, eh, is there something I’m missing?) Anyway, he can’t look after himself at all. I feel isolated, domesticated/I can’t even seem to boil an egg/Can’t get the washer working now the toast is burning/ I’m like a bullfrog in a frying pan.
At this point, I feel like giving up, but master Stewart rescues things a bit with Didn’t I which is clearly a heartfelt song, and fair dues for sure. My heart goes out to those parents dealing with their kids and drugs, he writes in a few prefatory words. Rod is a decent guy, always comes across as one so it is a pity to have to write like this.
The title track, Blood Red Roses, a song of high seas and whaling, is neither here nor there. It's dedicated to Ewan MacColl, who, curiously, has a posthumous song-writing credit along with Stewart/Savigar.
You know what, Rod should have had a séance and communed with Mississippi John Hurt or Lightnin’ Hopkins. Those guys certainly would have advised him to treat the 12-bar exercise Rollin’ & Tumblin’ with far more subtlety.
At the very least, he should have got the hell out of Los Angeles and made the whole record somewhere else.
His version of the 1916 ballad Grace is vapid, the next one Give Me Love is a pale funk-lite exercise. Best of My Life is a Stewart/Savigar homage to Motown and Rod’s personal favourite. Cold Old London is an attempt at a wistful song of lost love and regret, but it falters somehow. There is a version of a Paddy McAloon song, Who Designed the Snowflake which does nothing for this writer.
There you go. Just go and dig out I’m Losing You and listen to Rod forty-six years ago render with the right pitch that gut-wrenching sense of incipient loss, first delivered by the peerless David Ruffin, singer with The Temptations.
Your love is fading I can feel your love fading /Woman it's fading away from me/ 'Cause your personal touch has grown cold as if someone else controls your very soul.
Forget the bullfrog in the frying pan.
Meanwhile, Rod is playing Cork, details here
