Unlike a certain religious figure I can think of, Rod “the Mod” Stewart didn’t walk on water until his third go-round. On 1971’s Every Picture Tells a Story Stewart finally got it right. He nailed down his persona (lovable rogue with lascivious cackle and sensitive side). Wrote himself a remarkable assemblage of brilliant songs (including perhaps the two best coming-of-age songs ever written and the heartfelt “Mandolin Wind”). And finally assembled THE IDEAL cast of players who found the perfect balance between rough and tumble rock ’n’ roll, folk, and soul. If Every Picture Tells a Story isn’t the perfect album, I’m D.B. Cooper.
Which isn’t to say he sank beneath the waters without a trace his first two times out. Anything but. Both 1969’s The Rod Stewart Album (which was released under the better title An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down in the UK) and 1970’s Gasoline Alley are superb albums—gritty, soulful powerhouses packed with strong Stewart originals and imaginative covers, and boasting simpatico supporting musicians many of whom would join him on Every Picture Tells a Story.
His first two don’t get the attention afforded solo album number three, but they’re required listening. Unlike Elton John and David Bowie, Stewart (who’d honed his vocal chops with Long John Baldry’s Steampacket, the little known and short-lived Shotgun Express and the Jeff Beck Group) never took a false or indecisive step. He had his blueprint down from the very beginning—it was simply a matter of perfecting his songwriting.
And talk about double-tasking. Stewart may have the reputation as a debonair roué and two-fisted drinker (who else would put out a greatest hits album shaped like a whiskey glass?), but at least part of it must have been smoke and mirrors—he couldn’t have spent all of his time bedding the ladies and hitting the bottle, because if so where’d he find the time to put together his early solo albums (one per year, more or less) while also singing and writing songs (and immortal ones, at that) for Faces, who toured heavily and released four albums in three years in their own right? The guy worked like a bricklayer. And the lads in Faces were doing double-duty too—some or all of them appeared on his solo albums, that is until he began his sad downward slide towards mainstream mediocrity and decided he could be more mediocre without them.
Stewart built The Rod Stewart Album with the help of a crew of seasoned musical carpenters. He eschewed the superstar bunch—former bandmate Jeff Beck would have been a logical choice but he’s nowhere to be found, and the same goes for the litany of big names he’d have known from their appearances on albums by the Jeff Beck Group. (Keith Moon is a no-show. Ditto Jimmy Page.) The reason is simple. Stewart wasn’t looking for thoroughbreds. He was looking for horses that could run in the mud.
And he found them in Faces guitarist/bassist Ronnie Wood and keyboardist Ian McLagan; former Steamhammer (an obscure, at least to Yanks, British blues group not to be confused with Steampacket, Steam, Mannheim Steamroller or Green Giant Simply Steam Sweet Peas) guitarists Martin Pugh and Martin Quittenton; and former Jeff Beck Group drummer Micky Waller. Pianist/songwriter Martin D’Abo, the one-time Manfred Mann vocalist responsible for penning “Handbags and Gladrags” (perhaps the best cut on the album) as well as The Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup” also makes a cameo. And is that really Keith Emerson pomptificating like mad on organ on one track? How did he get there? Did he walk into the studio by mistake? And if so, why didn’t anyone toss him out?
But Stewart proved to be an uncannily good talent scout, because the sound produced by this unlikely consortium was raw but tight, and hard-hitting even on the slow ones. The Rod Stewart Album has been labeled “British folk rock” (just check Wikipedia!) but that does it no justice whatsoever. Folk rock doesn’t kick you upside the head the way The Rod Stewart Album does. It’s is a rough beast that is equal parts blues, folk, and gutbucket rock ’n’ roll. Don’t let the folk traditional and Ewan MacColl cover fool you. Pay attention to Micky Waller’s primal drumming. To Ronnie Wood’s blistering slide guitar. And the breakneck paces of several of the songs. If this is a folk album, so is Exile on Main Street.
The LP opens with a cover of Jagger-Richards’ “Street Fighting Man,” and Rod and the boys takes all of the London out of the song—the grit on this one has nothing to do with city streets. Stewart’s vocals are pure sandpaper and whisky. Ronnie Wood plays fraying slide guitar all over it (Pugh’s in there too on electric guitar, wailing away) while doubling on bass. (On which he plays a rumbling solo that breaks all the rules by being great!)
At about the two-thirds mark the song comes to a halt, only to be restarted by McLagan on piano, after which the band adds even more grime. And all the while Waller keeps things moving with some pounding drums and heavy-duty cymbal crash until the band finally rushes headlong towards the police barricades, with McLagan throwing an organ at ‘em! The song has an organic and almost shambolic feel that is purely deceptive—everyone’s exactly where they should be doing exactly what they should be doing.
Stewart keeps things simple on the traditional “Man of Constant Sorrow”—it’s just him accompanied by acoustic and electric guitar, with this almost subterranean drum beat that I may be imagining. Rod finesses it perfectly, by which I mean he doesn’t set out to prove he’s suffered more than me! And I love the way he pronounces that “rado” in Colorado the way you would radish. I also love the “woo hoo hoos” at the end—they’re a token of the Rod to come.
A haunting piano opens Stewart’s “Blind Prayer,” which (lyrically anyway) makes “Man of Constant Sorrow” sound chipper. Rod really lays on the misfortune. It’s bad luck overkill, as a matter of fact, and it’s a sign of his skill that he pulls it off without descending into mawkishness. His parents die in a fire! When he’s like six or something! Then he goes blind! He’s homeless! He gets bullied! He has to work his fingers to the bone “stretching hide for a boot man in Jersey town”! His beloved dog Clown dies! He loses his pants! (Just made that one up.) And to top it all off his girl is “treading his name into the dirt!”
But musically this one is all muscle, a zero-sentimentally proposition. The band plays with a sheer ferocity that will keep you from mistaking “Blind Prayer” for “Mr. Bojangles” (although the dying dog in that one always gets me). And while Stewart does some serious stuttering (“But, but, but, but, but what I’m trying to say is/God, please, don’t take her away from me”) he never mentions having a speech impediment! Praise the Lord for small mercies.
On “Handbags and Gladrags” (which Chris Farlowe and Love Affair got to before Rod did, but didn’t do nearly as well) Stewart goes big with a string section and some very wistful oboe, to say nothing of some plaintive piano by D’Abo. And it works magnificently because the song is so sad and elegiac, one of the loveliest recordings Stewart would ever make. The production’s a bit murky, which I’ve never been able to figure out, but I get a shiver every time Stewart’s voice rises towards the end to sing, about a girl determined to go to wrack and ruin:
They told me you missed school today
So what I suggest, you just throw them all away
The handbags and the gladrags
That your poor old granddad had to sweat to buy.
It’s “Like a Rolling Stone” writ wonderfully small, and with oodles more compassion. Stewart was always a softie—take away “Stay with Me” and I’m hard pressed to think of a Stewart song where he comes across as cruel. And while his compassion would later curdle into mawkishness, in his prime he had things fully under control.
“An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down” is a rumble tumble knockdown rocker with a big bottom (Wood’s reverberating bass is a wonder, Waller kicks like a mule) while McLagan’s piano adds color. It sounds almost ramshackle but once again it’s pure deception—these guys play with zero flash but by the time they’re done you’ll wonder where all the bruises came from. They’re a heavyweight boxer with deceptively deft footwork, and you’ll swear they’ve been perfecting that imperfectly perfect sound for years.
“I Wouldn’t Ever Change a Thing” (that’s two songs in a row with “ever” in the title) is a real mind-melter—that’s Keith Emerson on organ, progging up the proceedings! And is that really co-producer (and head of Mercury Records’ European operations) Lou Reizner throwing in on vocals? Must be, because he sounds very distinguished! Basically what we have here are the scruffy commoners (Rod and his bunch) fighting it out with neo-classical pomp-rocker Emerson and Reizner but it works! Perfectly!
True, for once the boys aren’t playing like they haven’t bathed in eons, and Wood’s bass is slicker than usual, but the juxtaposition between Rod’s sandpaper vocals and Emerson’s pomp and circumstance is still a shocker. And the back and forth between Reizner (“I think what you say is all so right/But I find it hard to jog my memories”) and Stewart (“Don’t worry Lou, you may never get another chance, yeah” and later “Say it again with a lot more feelin’, yeah yeah” and even later than that “Don’t sing so serious, you make me feel so sad, yeah”) is pure dead wondrous.
“Cindy’s Lament” is actually Rod’s lament and opens with more heavy-duty organ, gratis McLagan this go round, and almost a minute passes before the band kicks things into high gear, with Rod coming on all woebegone bluesy about how his girl doesn’t have to notice his brand new shoes or even give him extra credit for lending her his library book (“I guess you forgot” he says, cutting her some slack). Hell, he knows he’s beneath her (her friends laugh in his face!) and when all is said and done he’d be happy if she’d just say hello sometimes, especially seeing how they’ve actually spent the night in the sack!
Meanwhile Waller whams away at his kit while Wood and Pugh whip up some whiplash backwoods funk and McLagan pounds the eighty-eights like they owe him money and refuse to ante up. Talk about your country honk. And talk about your pseudo-creepy—Rod’s so obsessed with his Cindy he leers at her over her garden fence, although that’s only because her brother’s serving as an informal doorman and would probably clobber poor skinny Rod if he got any closer!
Stewart closes the album with a sign of things to come—a perfectly decent but overly polite cover of Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town.” He spits most of the gravel out of his mouth and commences to croon, and I’m forced to ask myself, “Shouldn’t a song called “Dirty Old Town” sound, well, dirty?” The guitar playing is too pretty, too, and there isn’t a factory wall in sight. Hard to listen to The Pogues’ version and not deem Stewart’s take a bit… defanged, and in that respect it’s a harbinger of things to come, by which I mean Rod’s covers of “Angel,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Man” (worst gender change in rock history), and Lord have mercy, “Sailing.” And those are just the first three to come to mind.
I’m not going to say that when you listen to The Rod Stewart Album you hear Every Picture Tells a Story coming over the horizon because you don’t. Every Picture Tells a Story is a miracle, and it’s in the nature of miracles that nobody sees them coming because nobody believes in ‘em! But all the building blocks are in place. The sound is there. The players are there. And Stewart’s originals are excellent. They’re simply not epoch-changing.
But it’s like Jack Kerouac once said: “Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.” Who knows? Maybe even Jesus Christ didn’t get it right the first time out. Maybe he went glug-glug on his first couple of practice runs, leading Thomas to whisper to Simon, “No one’s ever going to call me the doubting type, but do ya think we should buy the guy a pair of waterwings?”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
