THE SWEET SMILE OF SUCCESS

Rip It Up, Issue 20, 1 March 1979, Page 9

THE SWEET SMILE OF SUCCESS

Ken Williams

The paradox of the cult hero is that those who trumpet so loudly about their ! man's lack of * acclaim are -too I often v swift to rinse their hands of him once the % I |J recognition arrives. M 111 Too bad that : he's finally being ac- » i cepted for what they said he was: one of the world's great rock singers, a throat f supreme, a cocky lad with a gift for. , m § simultaneous braggadocio and selfcritical detachment. ffi. Too bad. Because, you see, he was their man. Now he's everyone s. It s a sell-out. Too bad. x , , v * X //-: ; | What has this to do with Rod Stewart (because that s who we re talking about)?

At this point in Stewart's career when he is one of the few rock singers known beyond his music (Jagger and Bowie are others) it is worth bearing in mind that very few years ago audience reaction was strictly underwhelming. THE BIG BREAK After knocking around the English clubs for years, he got the Big Break when he joined The Jeff Beck Group, a forerunner of the Heavy Metal school. The partnership brought Stewart to his first artistic peak (witness the Truth album, a classic of the period) but ended in acrimony after Beck, always a volatile personality, fired his bassist and Stewart's mate, Ron Wood. Stewart's first two solo albums, An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down aka The Rod Stewart Album and Gasoline Alley were a startling debut. They showed a singer of extraordinary sensitivity and taste. They were largely ignored. Especially in Stewart's native Britain. Too bad. "Maggie May" from Every Picture Tells A Story became an international hit and Stewart's star was in the ascendant. He became very popular. Good lad that, we knew he could do it. Rod's love of soccer and Scotland (although he was born well south of Hadrian's Wall) made him beloved of British fans. They sang his songs (his version of Jimi Hendrix's ‘‘Angel" and later, “Sailing” at footer matches). He was a good bloke and he had a beery little band, the Faces. They were rough but they had fun. THE BIG CHANCE And, then, after a particularly patchy album, Smiler, Stewart took a big chance. He went to the States and with the aid of top U.S. sessionmen made what is arguably his best album, Atlantic Crossing. In retrospect, especially given the enormous success of the record, the decision was an obvious one. But at the time it was a risk. Our lad, abandoning Britain for the Yanks and some 'Ollywood bint what used to pal around with Peter Sellers. Wot? The answer was obvious. Sell-out. Too bad. Too bad, too, that the Yanks had been the few people prepared to give him a listen early on. Too bad that Atlantic Crossing was a new artistic peak for Stewart who had in recent times seemed short of solid material, despite the assistance of such song-writing luminaries as Paul McCartney and Elton John. It's that sort of "Hollywood plus Britt equals sell-out" mentality

which irritates Stewart. "I get annoyed when people overlook my talent because of what I do or how I look. I haven't cultivated my image." CHARM TO DISARMgIBHHm In the flesh, Stewart is very personable, a man of immense charm. He accepts the meet-the-local-press commitment as part of the job. He answers f questions with disarming frankness and a ready wit. "Rod, do you ever get tired of questions about your love life?" asks a reporter among a crush of scribbling hands and , out-thrust microphones. "What do you want to know?" grins Stewart, with the knowledge that no question will be forthcoming. He takes more than he has to. The finger-poking aggression of a youthful reporter is met with a wry smile, accompanied by a playful clip around the ear and an admonishing "silly c* *t." Stewart doesn't like formal, press conferences, but access to the star is severely limited so the struggle for a few words from the famous throat is to the death. The January sale at Harrod's is probably easier goihg£PJpyHJ|ptWNoQpVQ|^oJtPl^P The crush makes a logical line of thought out of the question. It all comes down to repetitive queries about girlfriends past and present, lawsuits by Britt Eckland against Rod, lawsuits against WEA by Rod because of the company's attempt to up the prices of his new album in Britain ("albums cost too much now"), how much is he making; how much is he losing on the Australian tour. Despite the trappings of success (his cream suit is immaculate; so is his new companion, Alana Hamilton) and the organisation that takes care of business, things can go wrong. The collapse of a computer ticketing company in Australia means Stewart stands to lose something like $287,000 dollars on that end of i the South East Asian'touTlVgHflHl^HPVPlH^llHiflK^ He shrugs it off. "You'd be surprise how, often I've done concerts for nothing." LEGLEssjimmm^BH^BVHB He has the ease of the natural raconteur and amuses with tales of being legless on trans-Atlantic flights, of his practical joking mates embarrassing him by inserting a slice of bacon in his passport and spreading peanut butter in. his shoes. "Even the BBC announcer reading the news had to laugh ..."

There's a great deal of mateship about the Stewart entourage, and being accepted as one of the lads seems important to him. Liking the boys in the band helps. He's going to be seeing a lot of them. "We have another six or seven months of touring before we think of a new album. Touring really is a drug. It would be very hard to give up" The blondness of the famous thatch is cause for comment. "It's just peroxide. I don't think I'll be blond next year. I was a redhead,two ; years ago. I might just go back to what 1; was, sort of like that," he says, gesturing towards a rather mousey barnet. He gives the impression that he finds much of what goes on about him a bit of a lark. Meanwhile, in a corner, Billy Peek, who does.the Chuck Berry guitar bits; is delighted by the tale of how his old boss, Mr Berry himself, recently duckwalked out of an Auckland promoter's life, taking his fee without delivering the goods. Billy's convulsed by the story and gathers other band members around him to regale them with the story. "I told you, I told you, Chuck's still doing it/' ENTER CARMINE Carmine Appice strolls in from 7 giving a drum clinic in Mt Eden. Appice, . formerly of Vanilla Fudge, Cactus and Beck, Bogert and Appice, has an outside career, giving drum clinics for the Ludwig company, writing drum tutors, and.teaching the rudiments of his craft. His clinics, here . and in Australia, have . been • extremely popular. Justifiably so. Appice is not only a drummer of extraordinary power and skill, he is affable and a good talkerjSjfiH^PjJg Appice's ambition is to become the Gene Krupa of rock, to bring the drums up front, and he joined the Stewart band on the proviso that he had a solo each night. He enjoys the work with'Stewart ("I might as well work with the best") and gives full credit to Rod for his own success. "With my drum clinics I try and do like production things. When the kids come in I play Stanley Clarke's new album, have T-shirts and make it an affair. I learnt all this from Rod. He told me when you come into town make it an event. Don't just do a clinic and leave. Do press, TV, make people aware of it." Appice is a man of enormous energy ("natural New York energy"). He sleeps scarcely at all on tour, and says Stewart introduced him to an energy aid. SECRET OF SUCCESSjHBMHMIM "On this tour I got into ginseng tea. Rod introduced me to it. One night before a gig I said I felt a little tired. He said try this. I got so much energy. It's a natural Asian vitamin, sort of. I couldn't believe it. "I take a couple of ginseng tablets before every gig. It's so hard to work here in the humidity." So, there you are, Rod Stewart is powered by ginseng, not alcohol. Another myth shot down. On stage at Western Springs, the ginseng kid is all go. It's a huge crowd, slightly more or less than Bowie, depending on which figure you take. It's always difficult to nail down an accurate total. Somewhere between forty two and forty four thousand. A brief "hooray for Hollywood"-type overture segues into Stewart's traditional entrance "The Stripper" and the band jumps into "Hot Legs" followed swiftly by "Born Loose". This is one hell of a rock and roll band. While they lack the personality of the Faces, they enable Stewart to do things on stage that the lurching Faces never could. An early hoarseness on Stewart's part soon passes, and it's an hour, and a half of his best music}-;jBBHfcB^BBBBMBBftfI@BW|BKpB The oldest tunes are "Maggie May" with . Billy Peek racing on stage to take a spotlight solo before running back behind the amps, "Sweet Little Rock and Roller" and "Twisting,the Night Away". VIDEO VIEW The new and the old are equally well received, and a stage-height video screen gives an added perspective to the events on stage.

The material is paced well with rockers and slower tunes given equal prominence. And, of course, there's the massed singing that Stewart has made his signature. With a voice like mine (I don't even sing in the bathroom) you can feel rather excluded by this massed choir stuff, but the crowd love it, and they respond enthusiastically to Rod's entreaties to sing on “Tonight's The Night," “You're in My Heart," "Sailing," and “Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" The latter works especially well live. He does it about midway in the show and then reprises it (with even more punch) as the encore. So vital is the Stewart sound in person that one wonders whether live sound reproduction techniques have outstripped those of the recording studio. The skill of the band (and that includes Stewart; that froat is one of rock's greater instruments) is best demonstrated on a sizzling Motown workout, an amalgam of “(I Know I'm) Losing You" and "Standing in the Shadows of Love" where the transition from one song to another is imperceptible. The rhythm section (kudos to Carmine) steams like the Flying Scotsman and drives to an unrelenting peak before leaving the stage and the spotlight to Gary Grainger for an extended bit of guitar flash. Phil Chen also shows he's no man's fool on the bass, before Carmine goes to town on that superkit, complete with demonic lighting and the pings and pows of his synthesised drums. How do you follow that? Well, they just stroll back on stage and wrap it up with hammering ferocity. FEEL THE SOUL Soul music is still very important to Stewart, The Motown set and Luther Ingram's “If Loving You is Wrong" stand out as heartfelt performances. While in Auckland, Rod buys from Taste new tapes for his tour listening. His choice includes Al Green, The Stylistics, Donna Summer and Blondie. "I'd like to do a whole album of songs by Otis Redding, Luther Ingram, Sam Cooke, Bobby Womack," says Stewart, enthused by discussion of the music.

Are there any plans for such a record? “I don't think so. I don't know who buys my albums any more Whoever he is, I don't think he's ready for it."