Graceless, Charmless Rod
Tom Horan reviews Rod Stewart at the Sheffield Arena
The Rod squad were out in force for this one, the opening show of Stewart’s first UK tour for three years. But on the night that the Holloway croaker was announced as top of the bill for next week’s Glastonbury Festival, the signs were that he had better sharpen up his act. The Sheffield converted may have left feeling satisfied, but a fieldful of pie-eyed soap-dodgers may not give him such an easy ride.
It wasn’t that Stewart failed to deliver the hits. He unfurled his 30-year back catalogue with a huge degree of self-satisfaction. It wasn’t that “the voice” – as he is apt to call it – has failed him, in the way that it has so many of the rock and roll gerontocracy. It is in excellent condition. It’s just that from Maggie May to Baby Jane, the leathery old lizard was utterly charmless.
Stewart’s mean-spirited treatment of his sizeable band created an uneasy atmosphere on stage. An odds-and-sods assortment, they looked as if they’d met at Sheffield station a couple of hours before showtime, and were united only in palpably feeling that Stewart was a bit of a nightmare.
The only women on stage not obliged to wear leather minskirts for the duration of the show were the string section, who sported school uniforms and leather boots. They greeted the 57-year-old’s intermittent winks and pelvic thrusts with rictus grins.
Apart from any kind of warmth or respect toward audience or fellow musicians, what Stewart lacked was dignity. Mincing across the stage in a bizarre array of sashays, swerves and shimmies, he looked like an over-excited roue in the final minutes before being ejected from Tramp. A sustained bout of bottom-wiggling, beamed to the cheap seats in close-up by the in-house camera crew, had to be seen to be believed.
But when decrepitude compelled him to stand still for five minutes, Stewart showed, almost inadvertently, what he has that can sell 12,000 tickets and fill an arena with blind adoration. When he sang “I don’t wanna talk about it / how you broke my heart”, his voice fibrous and crackling, 30 years fell away to nothing, and every man and woman singing with him was young again and full of possibility.
These moments were all too brief. Each time he was about to establish a bond with the crowd based on the moment and not the distant past, he would blow it, looking away as he shook outstretched hands, striking Christ-like poses or simply walking blithely off to change his sweaty shirt.
Graceless to the end, he presented the band who had accompanied him for two hours, said “Jolly good, well done,” and was gone.
(courtesy: Daily Telegraph)