I didn’t want to do it, because I knew it was going to hurt. I knew it was going to hurt something awful. But I’m just a soldier in the war of rock & roll, with a keyboard for a hand grenade who took a bullet at Live Aid, and my marching orders were to attend the Washington, DC leg of the Santana and Rod Stewart “Electric Geriatrics” Tour at the Verizon Center on the benighted evening of Tuesday, August 19.
The something I knew was going to happen was my old hero Rod “The Old Sod” Stewart was going to sing “Hot Legs” and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Both tunes are (although Stewart either doesn’t know it or is too cynical and money-grubbing to care) legacy-sullying disgraces of such embarrassing proportions even his star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame rolls up into a cringing ball every time it hears them. But the review tix never came through, and I didn’t get to cover the show, and oddly enough I found myself disappointed. I’ve never seen Stewart, and I suppose I was hoping to hear some flickering glimmers of the genius who gave us “Every Picture Tells a Story,” “Handbags and Gladrags,” and “You Wear It Well.”
I’ve said it before, but Stewart’s fall from grace remains one of the saddest and most precipitous in rock history. In the early seventies the rooster-cropped, sandpaper-voiced party animal who took nothing seriously was fronting one of the greatest live acts of all time, the Faces, while simultaneously putting out solo albums that were heart-breakingly brilliant. And then? I wish I could say nada, but his post-1974 (hell, make it post-1972) output was far worse than nothing—it was flat-out debasing, both to Stewart and his fans.
It can be argued that his fans were anything but disappointed by swill such as “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” After all, the song did slither to the top of the Billboard Charts. To which I can only respond that nobody deserves such fans, and had Rod come to his senses he’d have made the best out of a bad job and laughed it off (to use his own words), ideally by sending each and every person who bought the abominable “Sexy” a letter telling them to bugger off. Instead the song’s success just encouraged the worst in Stewart, who turned himself into a veritable treacle machine until his muse deserted him (wisest thing it ever did) in sheer disgust, leaving Rod to torture us all with album after album of dull standards from the dreaded American Songbook.
Stewart returned in 2013 with Time, his first LP of self-penned originals in many years, after tracking his muse down to a Mexican jail, where it was cooling its heels for crimes that Rod clearly spells out in the great “Lost Paraguayos.” But said muse was obviously the worse for wear, and delivered a tired slew of middle-of-the-road tunes too innocuous to even despise, with the exception of “Can’t Stop Me Now,” which reeks of the worst of “adult contemporary,” and “Sexual Religion,” which is happily detestable, although it doesn’t quite live down to the standard set by “Do Ya Think.” (Okay, so he’s done far worse than Time’s “Brighton Beach.” But it’s marred by the sentimentality he used to be able to pull off by coupling it with a lascivious cackle.)
Finding the present unbearable I sought solace in the distant past, and Stewart’s 1970 sophomore solo album, Gasoline Alley. I’ve never so much as listened to the damn thing, as I already possessed what I assumed were the LP’s premier tracks on various Stewart compilations, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise, combining (as was Rod’s wont in those days) rock’n’roll, R&B, and folk rock in the form of a few originals along with covers of songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, The Valentinos featuring Bobby Womack, Elton John, and Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott of the great Small Faces, which had already morphed (with Ronnie Wood and Stewart taking Marriott’s place) into the equally great Faces.
Gasoline Alley is one gritty and hardscrabble LP, without so much as a hint of the slick and sleazy cocksman Stewart would slowly transform himself into, much in the same way Jeff Goldblum turned himself into an oversized insect in 1986’s The Fly. From opener “Gasoline Alley,” a Stewart-Wood collaboration so evocative you can almost smell the petrol fumes, Stewart plays his familiar role as down but by no means out wayfarer, and relies for assistance on the stellar playing of one fine assemblage of musicians, including Faces’ band mates Lane (bass and vocals), Wood (guitar), Ian McLagan (piano/organ), and Kenney Jones (drums), as well as the likes of mandolin savant Stanley Matthews, classical guitarist Martin Quittenton, and a host of others.
Anyway, to get back to the mid-tempo title track, it relies on one great electric guitar riff, some superb acoustic guitar and mandolin playing, and Stewart’s inimitable rasp to communicate Stewart’s desire to return to his origins in rough and tumble Gasoline Alley, “the place where I started from.” In this it has much in common with such Elton John classics as “Honky Cat” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and if you find the comparison absurd, well, all I can say is it behooves you to listen to some of John’s early material, because once upon a time the dude in the ridiculous glasses really had it goin’ on.
As far as Roderick Stewart’s cover of the Small Faces’ “My Way of Giving,” all I have to say is that Stewart’s vocals top those of Steve Marriott—no small accomplishment for anyone—and Wood’s funky guitar playing and Jones’ rough-and-tumble cymbal and drum work make Stewart’s version superior to the diminutive Faces’ original, especially when you throw in McLagan’s superb organ work. Toss in the fact that Rod delivers one of the best howls of his career, and what you’ve got in “My Way of Giving” is a rocking-horse winner, even if its chorus does sound a bit more contemporary (and hence a bit out of place) in relation to the other tunes on this otherwise timeless-sounding LP.
Similarly, Stewart’s version of the mid-tempo “Country Comfort” tops the John/Taupin original (which I love) by virtue of pure rustic grit, thanks to Stewart’s scrub-brush vocals, some fabulously bright piano playing by McLagan that recalls his heartrending work on “Handbags and Gladrags,” and one great guitar solo by Wood, to say nothing of the vocal contributions of the late, great Ronnie Lane, who joins Stewart on vocals in the song’s second half. Why, the ending may even make you cry, as Stewart once again seeks to return to his beginning: “Country comfort’s in the road that’s going home.”
Stewart also shines on his excellent cover of “It’s All Over Now,” the Bobby and Shirley Womack tune that the Rolling Stones transformed into their first number one hit in July 1964. Material from this period (you know, the “Old Time Rock and Roll” Bob Seger sang about) generally leaves me cold, but Stewart’s band turns this one into an exuberant, rollicking and rolling tune that sounds more like the Faces than Rod’s typical solo fare. Between the great rhythm section, McLagan’s high-spirited electric piano, and some very kickass bottleneck guitar work by Wood there’s simply no resisting the tune, and it flies by so quickly you’ll never believe it tops the six-minute mark.
As for Dylan’s “Only a Hobo,” Stewart’s contrasting of quiet verses with louder choruses—which feature lots of cool drum bash and more stringed instruments than Lynyrd Skynyrd—works like a charm, and Stewart wisely sings the tune, whose message is that every death, even that of an old hobo, diminishes us all, without the slightest trace of maudlin sentimentality. I wish I could say I’m as enamored of the similarly slow “Jo’s Lament,” but I simply don’t find its melody particularly fetching. That said the Wood’s bottleneck guitar playing is nothing less than phenomenal, especially coupled as it is with the acoustic guitar playing of Stewart (who knew?) and the mandolin work of Matthews.
Nor am I a huge fan of the Stewart-penned “Lady Day” (not to be confused with the Lou Reed number of the same name), although it too has its assets, including more tremendous bottleneck guitar by Wood, to say nothing of a country-fried instrumental ending that is as sweet as anything you’ll find on any of Stewart’s solo LPs. And Stewart throws in both one of his patented howls and a quick laugh to let you know he’s going to survive, Lady Day or not.
But you will not care about “Lady Day” after hearing album highlight “Cut Across Shorty,” a raucous and pounding rocker—featuring mandolin, bottleneck guitar, and some authentically wonderful drum abuse by Jones—about a race between a country boy and a city dandy to win the hand of one “Miss Lucy.” But Miss Lucy has already decided in favor of country boy Shorty, and she rigs the race by encouraging him to do a bit of creative short-cutting based on the principle that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
Stewart is at his absolute best, Wood pumps out some truly bodacious bottleneck guitar lines, and Jones and Lane nail the rhythm section to the city slicker’s feet, never giving the arrogant bastard an honest chance. I’ve been listening to this tune for years and it still never fails to amaze me, because on its face it’s such a simple, humble thing. Where its magic emanates from I’ll never know, but its no wonder the Faces made it a staple of their live sets; like “It’s All Over Now” it could just as well have been a Faces tune and nobody ever would have known the difference, mainly because it is a Faces tune in every way that counts.
Which leaves us with LP closer “You’re My Girl (I Don’t Want to Discuss It),” a herky-jerky hard rocker that features Wood and Jones (damn, Jones is great!) at their very best, giving (along with Lane’s in-your-face bass) Stewart the perfect space in which to state his case (“See your bag’s packed and you’re ready to go/There’s just one thing I think that you ought to know/You’re my girl”) while brooking no dissent. This song is so down and dirty you’ll be tempted to give it a bath, but don’t do it, I beg of you—it was Stewart’s renunciation of grit and grime that put paid to his greatness in the first place.
To summarize, Gasoline Alley is a tremendous LP, and as such just another nail in the coffin of mediocrity Stewart climbed into of his own free will come, at absolute latest, by 1975’s Atlantic Crossing, which mingled a very few bona fide decent tunes (“Three Time Loser,” “Stone Cold Sober”) with such maudlin misadventures and flat-out mediocrities as Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten’s “I Don’t Want to Talk About It,” that old warhorse “This Old Heart of Mine,” and Stewart’s execrable “Still Love You.”)
But what are you going to do? Stewart went the same way as Joe Cocker, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Robbie Robertson—and yes Bob Dylan, I don’t care what any of his legion of adoration-blinded fans have to say about the matter–whose wellsprings of genius dried up but chose to sully themselves by continuing to serve up shards of anthracite in place of the diamonds they used to send our way. That’s life, and life is hard, and the muse is one fickle tenant, ever ready to pack its bags and break its lease, leaving yesterday’s genius today’s embarrassment.
I’ve said goodbye to the Stewart I used to love innumerable times, but I’ll say it again: So long, Rod, and thanks for the memories, or at least for those memories that weren’t in fact nightmares. I’ll always love you, albeit (to quote the great Morrissey) “only slightly less than I used to.”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
