GROWING-UP IN THE THEATER

ROD STEWART

"Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart — a
writer who offered profound lyricism and fabulous self-deprecating humor,
teller of tall tales and honest heartbreaker, he had an unmatched eye for
the tiny details around which lives turn, shatter, and reform — and a
voice to make those details indelible. His solo albums were defined by two
special qualities: warmth, which was redemptive, and modesty, which was
liberating. If ever any rocker chose the role of everyman and lived up to
it, it was Rod Stewart." –The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of
Rock & Roll (1980)

Typical. You wait decades for a brand new Rod Stewart song to show up, and eleven come along all at once.

The world knows Stewart to be a man of many facets: the fully paid-up, card-carrying rock star; the father of eight; the full-time curator of one of history's most famous haircuts; the tireless Celtic fan; the extremely handy soccer player and provider, even now, of a devilishly in-swinging corner from the left-hand side.

The world also knows Stewart to be a songwriter – though not so much in recent years. True, in this area, Stewart has already logged more than his share of keepers – songs that will be around for as long as people listen to pop music. He is the lyricist and melodist behind such staples as 'Tonight's The Night', 'You Wear It Well', 'You're In My Heart', 'The Killing of Georgie' and the indelible 'Maggie May' – all of them miniature masterpieces of story-telling.

Yet somewhere along the way, the source of those lyrical yet direct and instantly nerve-touching narratives appeared to dry up. To the point, even, where, at the beginning of this century, Stewart could look back at his own catalogue from a bemused and baffled distance. As he put it, 'It was almost as if a person I didn't know used to write those songs.'

The craft of songwriting lured Stewart from the beginning. As a young teenager, charged with minding his father's London newspaper shop, Stewart would put up the 'Closed' sign, so as not to be disturbed, and sit out the back with an acoustic guitar, attempting to decode and master every track on the first Bob Dylan album. Yet, in the mid-Sixties, in the small, hot British blues clubs in which Stewart did his formal vocalist's apprenticeship, first as a member of Long John Baldry's Hoochie Coochie Men, and then in the group Steampacket, it wasn't about writing your own songs. It was about wringing every drop of soul out of Ray Charles's 'The Night Time Is The Right Time' while simultaneously wearing a sharp suit and keeping a carefully up-combed bouffant in perfect working order. The songwriting ambitions took a back seat.

Even the highly influential Jeff Beck Group, in which Stewart sang between 1967 and 1969, was largely a covers outfit. It's a plausible argument, nevertheless, that, but for that lack of homegrown material, the Jeff Beck Group (who entirely blazed the trail for heavy rock as we know it) would have been Led Zeppelin before Led Zeppelin.

But then, perhaps, we wouldn't have had The Faces, Stewart's next outfit, whose liberal attitude to refreshment in the workplace and whose highly imaginative approach to the reconstruction of hotel rooms set the benchmark for rock'n'roll roistering from the 1970s onwards. It was for The Faces that Stewart, getting into his stride as a writer, came up with the eternal 'Mandolin Wind' and the band also saw the flowering of his collaboration with his former Jeff Beck Group cohort and lifetime pal Ronnie Wood. The pair started out unpromisingly, settling down one day in the tiny sitting room of Wood's mum's house in west London, armed only with a pad of blank paper and a cheap bottle of wine. The paper remained blank long after the bottle was empty. But the partnership would eventually yield, among others, 'Stay With Me', 'Miss Judy's Farm', 'Every Picture Tells A Story', 'Gasoline Alley', 'Cindy Incidentally' (with Ian McLagan) and 'Had Me A Real Good Time' (with Ronnie Lane).