The one album Rod Stewart couldn’t stand behind: “I had it coming”
There’s a good chance that any rock singer would have given their left leg for the gift that Rod Stewart had.
He might not have been the coolest figure in the world at every juncture of his career, but when listening to the countless hits that he had, it’s shocking to think someone with that raspy voice could fit so well in every single era he found himself in. And while he was more than content with transitioning into the world of adult contemporary, Stewart did have a few times where he felt like he couldn’t really defend what he was doing.
But it’s not like Stewart was designed to be one of the most niche indie artists that the world had ever seen. He had grown up idolising stars, and he wasn’t going to rest until he had the kind of spot that some of his idols did. That looked like a pipe dream when working with Long John Baldry, but things did start turning around when people saw The Faces. Stewart was the best blues voice to come out of England in years, but even a stint with Jeff Beck wasn’t going to stop him from doing what he wanted.
For one thing, Beck wasn’t the best bandleader, and despite getting to work with one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, Stewart was far more interested in seeing if he could be a star on his own. The Faces would always be like a second family to him, but when listening to the song ‘Maggie May’, he had hit on something powerful. The song wasn’t the most pop-friendly tune in the world, but Stewart’s voice could have sang anything over that melody and still sound beautiful.
Then again, the minute that anyone gets that big can be an extremely mixed blessing. Sure, there are thousands of people cheering for you every single time they go up onstage, but even if Stewart loved the sound of his own voice, riding trends was always going to be a hard bargain for his fans to take. So when he started to become a pinup star, it’s not like the hard rock crowd was exactly cheering.
That’s not to say that all of the songs are downright terrible. ‘Hot Legs’ at least has a fairly decent hook behind it, but when Stewart started believing his own hype, he felt that he had lost the plot by the time he began work on A Night on the Town. He was capable of a lot of things, but being a disco superstar was not one of them as far as he was concerned, especially when listening to his hits from that time.
And while Stewart was still in rare form behind the mic, he felt that he could never truly stand behind that record ever again, saying, “I deserved a lot of the knocking that I got. I had it coming. I went through a period when I lost all contact with rock & roll. I was completely wound up in self-image; I mean, all you have to do is look at the album covers from that period. There I am on A Night on the Town, wearing that stupid boater hat. I can’t stand to listen to ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ anymore; that knocking I got did me a lot of good. ”
At the same time, Stewart might be going in a little too hard on himself. The songs aren’t necessarily the same as ‘Stay With Me’ or anything, but for someone who was looking for a strictly disco affair, there are plenty of rock artists that tried to defy trends that ended up a lot worse. I mean, considering there was also ‘Miss You’ by The Rolling Stones and ‘I Was Made For Lovin’ You’ by Kiss, the fact that Stewart’s entry in the disco world was a fun little pop song is all you could really ask for.
If anything, the fact that the song damaged his reputation at least gave him a wake-up call when he started working on tunes like ‘Young Turks’. He was finally back to sounding like himself again, and even if the tunes weren’t the same as they were back in his prime, the sound of synthesisers ended up looking a lot better on him than the average disco beat.
