As the 80-year-old gears up for Worthy Farm, we pick the best of his post-Faces career, from moving ballads to silly, sleazy pop, and cover versions that became definitive
This is essentially a lyrical update of (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone or Where Do You Go to (My Lovely)? – in summary: peeved ex complains that former girlfriend now moves in lofty circles. But Baby Jane was as good as 80s-pop Rod got: very of-its-era arrangement, great melody, big old chorus, a UK No 1.
“I hear you’ve written songs for your new album,” Elton John remarked to Stewart on stage in London. “What’s it called – Rarities?” And indeed, Time’s standout track was good enough to make you wonder why Stewart didn’t make the effort more often: a sweet, sad acoustic memoir of love lost in the singer’s beatnik youth.
The title track of Stewart’s second album is his early solo approach in a nutshell. Folky and sensitive yet tough in sound and mood, it somehow manages to rock despite the languid pace and lack of drums. The interplay between Rod’s rasp and Ronnie Wood’s slide guitar is a marvel.
A perfect example of Stewart’s skill as an interpreter of others’ songs: he digs deep and finds a melody in the verses not fully evident in Tom Waits’s original – it’s masked by Waits’s trademark vocal approach – and emerges with a song transformed into the stuff of arena singalongs.
