“I thank them”: Rod Stewart on the band that kicked his ass
By the late 1970s, the artist Rod Stewart hung around with felt almost untouchable. They had paid their dues as one of the founding members of the hard rock movement, and now that he was riding high off of singles like ‘Maggie May’, he could have practically released anything that he wanted, and it would have still sold in droves. Once this band started tearing up the London club scene, though, Stewart knew that his career was in for a shakeup.
Then again, it’s not like Stewart was a stranger to the club scene in England, either. Everyone has to start somewhere, and looking at what he did with the Faces, songs like ‘Stay With Me’ still sound as good blasting out of a sweaty pub as it does being played to millions of people in an arena.
That’s before he even got into his work with Jeff Beck over the years. Although Stewart has spoken numerous times about how he wasn’t treated the best while on tour with the guitar legend, it was all about part of paying one’s dues before they reach the big time. Once those people actually make it to the top, it’s easy for them to get too comfortable where they are and start making records that are meant to get a writeoff on their taxes than to actually push themselves forward.
So when Stewart was hanging out with Elton John and living out of limousines and private jets, hearing Sex Pistols across the British club scene was what the kids on the street needed to hear. It had become a lot harder to relate to someone who didn’t seem to be breathing the same air as you, so hearing someone like John Lydon scream about his problems over Steve Jones’s guitar was a welcome breath of fresh air.
And it’s not like Stewart was in the best position to catch up, either. As punk took over the airwaves in 1977, hearing Stewart coming out one year later with his disco smash ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ made him look more than a little bit washed up, especially when the loud guitars were replaced by glittery synths.
Although Stewart was proud of his legacy, he also had a hand it to Sex Pistols for throwing his generation for a loop, saying, “‘God Save the Queen’ was brilliant. I loved the Sex Pistols, and thank them for giving Bowie and Elton and me and all the rest of us a good kick up the arse. They showed that music can be made by anybody.”
Even if Sex Pistols weren’t around for very long, their damage had already been done. Despite the old guard still having hits, there was now a dividing line between what the hitmakers were doing and what the underground sounded like, which eventually was brought above ground when Nirvana exploded in the early 1990s.
However, while Stewart did manage to come out of the punk regime relatively unscathed and even managed to have some more hits into the 1980s, he was taught a valuable lesson when John Lydon opened his mouth. It doesn’t take much to entertain people for a few minutes, but getting someone to devote themselves to an artist comes when they are focused on the message of their music rather than the fashions.
