“Long live Prefab Sprout”: Rod Stewart’s curious 10 favourite songs of all time
In the latter half of the swinging 1960s, Rod Stewart rose from the madding hippie crowd as a singer and songwriter of unique talent. He could pull off pink with aplomb and had hair with more wispy angles than your average bingo hall in Dumfries.
Alongside his work with the Jeff Beck Group and, later, Faces, he launched a solo career, with his debut LP arriving in 1969. An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down was a laudable start, but Stewart’s solo ventures truly took off in 1971 with the arrival of his third studio album, Every Picture Tells a Story.
The album was home to Stewart’s breakthrough hit, ‘Maggie May’, and its double A-side neighbour, ‘Reason to Believe’, a cover of Tim Hardin’s 1966 original. It was an engrossing effort full of spunk, wit, and rasping anthems that blended folk, rock ‘n’ roll, and blue eyed soul in a way that easily endeared the beer swigging lad to the radio.
Like the songs he loves, Stewart simply has a way of appealing to the proletariat in a spirit of freedom. “I don’t think people expect Bruce Springsteen to come out in a pink satin jacket, but Rod Stewart, they do,” he said. “And I like doing it; I don’t wear it just because I think I have to. I’m a very flamboyant person.”
Today, Stewart remains active at age 78, frequenting major global stages with a towering oeuvre of staggering variety, from the lyrical poignance of ‘The Killing of Georgie’ to the danceable cheese of ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ In the words of David Byrne: ‘Well, how did I get here?’
Like most of his British Invasion peers, Stewart set off as a keen student of American blues-based rock ‘n’ roll. In 2018, the singer appeared on BBC Radio 2’s ‘Tracks of My Years’ and singled out Muddy Waters as a foundational influence while picking ‘Feel So Good’ as a favourite song.
“It was one of the first albums that I bought,” he revealed. “It was ‘Live at Monterey’, I think, it was a live album. Was also a great influence on the Faces because we used to play this song. I think we recorded it and just lovely, Little Walter on the Harmonica, Francis Clay, Willie Dixon on bass, just haunting!”
Also present in Stewart’s early work was the influence of soul music. It would appear no soul men inspired him more than the ‘King of Soul’ himself, Otis Redding. “I saw Otis in 1967 at the Kuban State, and I cried my eyes out when he sang this song,” Stewart recalled. “What was interesting about the show is that he only played for 20 minutes, they have booked Booker T & the MG’s, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, Sam & Dave and they all did 10, 20 minutes and the show was all over in an hour and a half.”
Following Stewart’s meteoric rise to stardom in the 1970s, he began to embrace an increasingly pop-conscious sound. Although they formed in 1978, the County Durham pop-rockers Prefab Sprout caught Stewart and half the world’s attention in the mid-1980s when they released their exceedingly popular albums, Swoon and Steve McQueen.
Speaking to BBC Radio 2, Stewart pledged his allegiance to the band and picked out the 1988 single ‘Cars and Girls’ as a personal favourite. “Just gorgeous, Paddy McAloon has got a song on my new album [‘Who Designed the Snowflake’ on 2018’s Blood Red Roses], they wrote for me,” Stewart revealed. “Although we never met, we e-mail each other all the time. This band, I’ll tell you, it’s just wonderful. He takes [his music] outside the rock and roll genre, it’s jazz almost. Long live Prefab Sprout!”
With his finger ever on the pulse, Stewart saved his final selection for something a little more contemporary. “Bruno Mars for me, I don’t wanna say he is a new Michael Jackson,” Stewart began, picking out Mars and Mark Ronson’s ‘Uptown Funk’ as another favourite. “I think he is a man on his own. He is doing something totally brilliant.”
It’s a quote that evidences Stewart’s outlook on artistry: he happily accepts that Mars is made up out of an assortment of influences and helping hands, but that does little to detract from his individualism. Stewart is much the same.
As his quote continues, “This song, I believe, is one of the best records ever made into our world. I love it so much. The production, Mark Ronson, it just goes without saying, it’s just a different class. The actual brass riff that goes around, it’s been around [for a while], it’s a James Brown thing. But that is what makes it appeal to you and me.”
There isn’t much rhyme or reason to Stewart’s curious assortment of songs, but they are jams that could prompt a singalong in a library. And in that respect, they perfectly reflect Stewart’s own hodgepodge discography of ‘belt it out’ bangers that erode your initial reservations faster than a shot of tequila.
Rod Stewart’s 10 favourite songs:
- Eddie Cochran – ‘Three Steps to Heaven’
- Muddy Waters – ‘Feel So Good’
- Otis Redding – ‘Try A Little Tenderness’
- Al Jolson – ‘Sonny Boy’
- Bobby Womack – ‘Lookin’ For A Love’
- Sam Cooke – ‘Cupid’
- Prefab Sprout – ‘Cars and Girls’
- Billie Holiday – ‘These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)’
- Little Richard – ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’
- Mark Ronson – ‘Uptown Funk (feat. Bruno Mars)’
