The song Rod Stewart hates playing live: “That’s gonna be gone forever”
When I think of Rod Stewart, I have two versions in my head.
The first is a fresh-faced rock star who sports a charming yet awful shaggy haircut. He sings about young love and friendship through the lens of 1970s Britain and America, with a soulful voice that flirts between the soulful and gravelly with every syllable. This Rod sings ‘The Killing Of Georgie’ and is a truly captivating artist whose nuance as a rock star paints an exciting future.
The second Rod is one who has wholly abandoned that future we all got excited about and deserted it in favour of cringeworthy narcissism. Trading in the shaggy mullet for hairspray-fuelled spikes, the soulful voice for a karaoke-like drawl and the observational charm for sexually fuelled egotism. This Rod sings ‘D’Ya Think I’m Sexy’ and is but a shadow of the musician we once adored.
His co-writer for the latter track, Carmine Appice, was keen to draw parallels between the two, however, stating, “If you look at the lyrics, it was a story. Rod told stories in his songs: ‘The Killing Of Georgie’ was a story, ‘Tonight’s The Night’ was a story. Any of his songs are like little mini-stories. This was a story of a guy meeting a chick in a club”.
He added, “At that time, that was a cool saying. If you listen to the lyrics – ‘She sits alone, waiting for suggestions, he’s so nervous…’ – it’s the feelings of what was going on in a dance club. The guy sees a chick he digs, she’s nervous and he’s nervous and she’s alone and doesn’t know what’s going on, then they end up at his place having sex, and then she’s gone.”
Story is an arbitrary term, and its vagueness has been leveraged by Appice here to try and deliver it some merit. Sure, it’s a story, much like ‘The Killing Of Georgie’, but one story is good and the other is bad. And Stewart knew that. He was, after all, the artist who wrote tracks like ‘The Killing Of Georgie’ and ‘Maggie May’, and so knew what he was capable of from a songwriting sense.
Which is why in 2006, when the dust had settled from all of his hits, he decided to scrap some of the big hits that didn’t fully represent him as a songwriter and that included the toe-curling bedroom hit. “All the standards are gone. ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ is gone,” he claimed. “That’s gonna be gone forever. I always say that, but it seems to creep its way back in because people like it, right? I hate singing it.”
His outlook on the song is probably born from how it was performed during his 1978 tour. Back then, Stewart would perform the song in full spandex and make sure each drum beat was paired with a hip gyration from him. Or maybe it was because in 2006, the year in which he gave that definitive quote, Paris Hilton decided to record her own version of the song. Either way, Stewart came to his senses.
