“For the rest of my life”: The band Rod Stewart wanted to play with forever
There’s no real rhyme or reason for where someone’s career goes after they become famous. Some people may have enough star power to carry an entire show, but no one should be surprised when someone else in their band has more stage presence than them and ends up hogging the spotlight whenever they sing or play their instrument. Although Rod Stewart wouldn’t trade anything in the world for his solo success, he said that he would have been satisfied if he could have played with this band forever.
When looking at his track record, though, Stewart was never afraid to take a few chances in his solo career. Since he had cut his teeth with people like Jeff Beck and become one of the greatest rock and roll singers of all time, seeing him start to embrace a rootsy take on music was perfect for him, considering how much his signature rasp worked with acoustic instruments.
But if he had a more democratic approach to his music, chances are his band would have been able to tell him when he was hitting a brick wall like on ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’. While Stewart can look back and laugh about it more these days, one can’t help but watch the video of him writhing on the floor amongst his bandmates and practically feel the moment when a bunch of rock and roll fans lost their innocence.
Because coming after his work in bands like The Faces, this made absolutely no sense. It would have been a nice change of pace to see Stewart play acoustic ditties after his old band, but The Faces had always been known as one of the greatest bluesy acts to come out of England, playing booze-soaked rock songs like ‘Stay With Me’ that are meant to be blared out of bar bands until the end of time.
Then again, there were always going to be limits on where Stewart could go with his old mates. He was always going to be musical soulmates with Ronnie Wood, for instance, but if he had kept that streak for the rest of his life, it was clear that things were going to start getting boring or the band would break up altogether because of not getting everyone on the same page for a record.
So while Stewart did manage to break himself out of The Faces, he said that he would gladly trade back any of his hits to have that camaraderie back, saying, “Even when ‘Maggie May’ was huge in 1971, I would have stayed in the band. I don’t think I ever did convince them that I wanted to be a band member, and I swear from my heart that’s all I want to be. If I’d have been a member of The Faces for the rest of my life, I would have been happy.”
At the same time, Stewart would have been leaving a lot of great music on the table had he stayed. There were always bound to be compromises in bands, but if everyone hadn’t gone their separate ways, The Rolling Stones would be short one guitarist today, and the world would have missed out on some of Stewart’s 1980s tunes like ‘Forever Young’ and ‘Young Turks’.
While Stewart’s period after The Faces is still an acquired taste, chances are history worked itself out exactly how it was supposed to in this case. Anyone can try to stay loyal to their band until the end of time, but there will always be moments when they start realising that the ‘band of brothers’ mentality is actually holding everyone back.
