Word: stewart
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Italian Girls" takes a fragment from "Every Picture Tells a Story," and enlarges upon it. It is the story of a brief encounter with a rich, and understanding, Italian girl. These are Stewart's kind of women, passionate, sleek, and intelligent enough to know an incorrigible wanderer when they...
...Lost Paraguayos" is purely picaresque; Stewart here is a rogue, seemingly sponging off the love of a very young maiden: "I like your laugh, and a nice hot bath and your oily sense of humor,--but if it rains again like it did today, I'm gonna hafta leave a little bit sooner." The song seems like a less than graceful exit; he can't take the girl, she's too young, but he's got to go because the weather's bad, "I'm no sun fanatic but it's damp in your attic, and your cat sleeps...
...This is Stewart's purest expression of the tradition he's settled into, a textbook example of the definition of the word picaresque. Yet he undercuts it by following it with "Mama, You've Been on My Mind." Stewart has a tendency to choose one obscure Dylan song for each album. Each of them has had a wistfulness, a plaintiveness that is characteristic of neither man. "Mama," has a country sound, and an almost totally acoustic instrumentation. There's a very nice simultaneous solo between chest piano and pedal steel...
...dredgedup old rockers, which I for one don't begrudge one bit. The most intriguing cut on the album is Hendrix's "Angel." Now, nobody ever covers Hendrix songs, simply because they're much too complex, lyrically as well as musically. But Eric Clapton brought off "Little Wing," and Stewart brings off "Angel," partially because it is one of Hendrix's simplest compositions, in both respects. He's therefore able to remain faithful to its arrangement, and infuse it with some of its original mysticism...
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...