Word: rodding
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...Rod Stewart's Never a Dull Moment continues and solidifies the tradition of the picaresque in rock music that he established with Every Picture Tells a Story. The idea of Stewart as the eternally travelling vagabond can be traced as far back as "Man of Constant Sorrow," from his first solo album. But it is with Gasoline Alley's title song and his reworking of Elton John's "Country Comforts" that Stewart became seriously concerned with a partially autobiographical view of himself as vagabond. Since then he has rearranged his priorities in recording, and his albums, an equal measure...
This is a most important distinction, because it allows Rod Stewart to do the two things he does best in separate contexts, to sing rock and roll with a good band, and to write and perform songs that reveal an aspect of his character that doesn't square with the flamboyant, foppish figure he cuts as a Face...
...Rather Go Blind" is an old blues ballad, which is really all you have to say about it. Rod sings it beautifully, gives it the pain and heartache it deserves. The arrangement is simple, and respectful. The whole affair is handled much as Otis Redding would've done it, and that's the highest compliment that can be paid a ballad...
Someone once walked up to Rod Stewart after a concert and told him he was the best singing. He said that the best was gone. "Twistin' the Night Away" is a tribute to Sam Cooke, Rod Stewart's personal idol. The song is not done with Cooke's smoothness, but that's not Stewart's style. But it's done well, with no trace of its datedness, as it's given a hard rock treatment. Measure enough of Stewart's homage and respect...
Stewart assumes his musical schizophrenia, which is certainly more than you can say for a lot of other people, Jagger and Van Morrison, to name two. He's a singer in a very fine rock and roll band, "Rod Stewart's super-sexist but bawdily irresistible Faces," (as Lester Bangs says in the new Ms.) But he's also a sensitive interpreter of other people's songs, and an equally sensitive writer-troubadour. He makes no preferences, even though I suspect he enjoys the band more. (But that's because I enjoy the band more...