“He still is”: The artist Rod Stewart called the best lyricist in England
Rock and roll has never been squarely focused on what a song has to say. The genesis of the genre was always about the energy created by getting a bunch of musicians in a room and having them unleash hell on their instruments whenever they got the chance, and that usually didn’t equate to everyone listening to the subtle nuance of the way that someone dissected the subject of their tune. But as Rod Stewart was coming up as a solo star, things had slowly started to shift towards the singer-songwriter style of writing.
There had already been people like John Lennon and Paul McCartney setting the precedent for what rock and roll could be if they had honest-to-God songwriters behind everything, but everyone from Carole King to James Taylor were changing the landscape by telling stories that only needed a few instruments to be brought across. It was a different breeding ground than before, and Stewart found his way in on Every Picture Tells a Story.
Looking at his career, though, Stewart was one of the few musicians who could manage to interpret other people’s songs and churn out heartbreaking personal stories in equal measure. Some people might only know him for being the voice behind such classics as ‘Maggie May’, but hearing him work with The Faces on ‘Stay With Me’ or performing second fiddle to Jeff Beck gave him permission to add his own spin to whatever someone else was doing.
But the softer songs were always going to be the biggest hits of his career for a reason. Even though some pieces of his catalogue are a little dated looking back on them like ‘Forever Young’ and ‘Young Turks’, the reason they still work is because of how well they are written. Stewart did find some time to work with songs by the likes of Tom Waits around this time, but even when he was first flying solo, his first love was always The Faces.
He had never intended his solo career to last more than a few albums, so when the rest of the band started to resent him becoming the biggest draw, he had to part ways with them to focus on where he could take his music. But even with his star rising with each passing day, Stewart admitted nothing compared to what he could when singing along to the words Ronnie Lane was writing.
At the height of his career in 1973, Stewart still claimed that Lane put every other rock and roll songwriter to shame, saying, “There’s no bad feelings. If you look back at the interviews I`ve done since we first got together, I’ve always said Ronnie Lane is one of the best lyricists Britain’s got, and he still is. He’s got a great career ahead of him.”
And while Lane’s career did manage to flourish in his solo years, it was bound to be disheartening seeing Stewart take all the glory later on. That’s not to say everyone didn’t try to give him a great career. Ronnie Wood would contribute to his albums, and Lane would eventually play bass on some of Stewart’s solo records like Never A Dull Moment, but there was never that sense of magic that came when listening to albums like Ooh La La at the time.
It was hardly fair to see Lane not receive the same kind of adulation as his more famous bandmates, but that’s often how the biggest names in rock and roll operate. It’s sad to see some of the most talented people get left by the wayside, but no matter how much an artist’s star continues to rise, they will never forget what those people did to get them to where they are when they were penniless trying to get gigs.
