The 1971 Rod Stewart song made beautiful by mistake: “There is one big cock-up in the middle”
Rod Stewart is no stranger to a cock-up or two.
For a man who crafted one of the most beloved careers in rock and roll history, he’s consistently proven that his musical decision-making is wildly erratic and misguided. When he was a part of The Faces, Stewart passed up vocal duties on their seminal hit ‘Ooh La La’, claiming that the song was in the wrong key and that he rather plainly disliked it. When it was passed to bandmate Ronnie Wood, who sang vocals on the now mega-hit, Stewart’s misguided choice was proven to be the wrong one.
Then there was a whole load of creative missteps that came after. High on his own supply of sexuality, he doubled down on romance with the truly toe-curling ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ and then there was the 2009 Motown/soul covers album, Soulbook, which Stewart later admitted was a project no one asked for and openly labelled the decision as a “cock-up” on his part.
It seems that the idiom is locked firmly into his vocabulary, because it’s not the first time he’s publicly used it in reflection of his own career. So if any Stewart super fans read the opening sentence of this article and got defensive, just know that it only came from a place of fact, confirmed by the man himself.
One of the lesser-known career “cock-ups” Stewart made was in relation to his 1971 album Every Picture Tells A Story. Largely speaking, this album serves as his finest musical feat, not least for the success of the standout single ‘Maggie May’ but for how it platformed him as a songwriter of serious value, blending his rock sensibilities with lyrical vulnerability.
But not even Stewart’s very best album is immune from the “cock-up” treatment, as he looks back on ‘Reason To Believe’ as a song that hosts a genuinely glaring mistake. It’s a rather sweet folk-rock track, packed with a whole lot of instrumental layering that builds tension to be slowly released in the middle section during a period of hushed silence. But that wasn’t deliberate, rather the cause of an unexplained mistake.
Stewart explained that within the session, there was a “very lucid upright bass played by Spike Healey and a beautiful guitar played by Martin Quittenton create an almost ethereal quality. Nevertheless, there is one big cock-up in the middle where everybody stops playing for no apparent reason. We overdubbed a couple of things – one ironing board and two deck chairs – and all was well.”
Unlike Stewart’s other wrongdoings, this one actually proves to be beneficial for music. It shows how spontaneity is at the heart of great music, how those moments of unexpected turns, resolved by the ingenuity of musicians, that makes human created art the very best.
But maybe that was the moment that sparked a string of bad decisions from Stewart? Decisions that made him think he was immune to experiencing the true consequences of his “cock-ups” to a point where he thought a horny disco ballad and a half-arsed covers album would actually be artistically successful.
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