Rod Rocks Sheffield Arena
by TIM DE LISLE, Mail on Sunday
At the Jubilee concert, one of the least memorable performances came from Rod Stewart. His solo set consisted of one old album track, Handbags And Gladrags, and when he joined the mass singalong at the end he looked almost as uncomfortable as the Queen herself.
Perhaps Rod is just no good at not being the centre of attention.
Of all the old devils in rock, he is the most laddish, forever kicking footballs and chasing blondes. Even Sir Mick manages to be an adult some of the time. Despite a recent brush with cancer-Rod seems determined to die before he grows up.
He may be a bit of an idiot – thrown out of Ascot’s Royal Enclosure at 57 for wearing the wrong suit – but put a microphone in his hand and he suddenly shows some emotional intelligence. It’s a clear case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Lad.
Both sides of Rod were on display in Sheffield at the start of a UK tour which includes a rare double: playing Hyde Park with Diana Ross this Saturday and headlining at Glastonbury on Sunday.
On one hand, he kicks footballs into the crowd, sports a George Hamilton tan (they share more than an ex-wife), changes costumes like a diva, makes his all-female string quartet wear school uniform, employs a saxophonist who is almost comically glamorous (she’s sax on legs), and wiggles his bottom for the video screen during Da Ya Think I’m Sexy, which is destined to spend the next three years being converted by headline writers into Da Ya Think I’m Sixty.
On the other hand, he sings a dozen songs that touch the hearts of 14,000 people. Recently dropped by Warner Brothers, he returns the insult by forgetting all about his last album (well, everybody else has).
The Seventies ballads line up like classic cars: First Cut Is The Deepest, You’re In My Heart, I Don’t Want To Talk About It, Maggie May, Sailing. He applies himself to each one with loving care, standing still and varying his phrasing. And with their stirring tunes and honest words, these are excellent songs – with the possible exception of Sailing, but that is held back for the encore, by which time any old scarf-waver will do.
A strangely reluctant songwriter, Rod has lately added to his capital only by raiding the songbooks of Van Morrison and Tom Waits. But that’s all right because he makes the songs his own. Downtown Train, Have I Told You Lately That I Love You and Tom Traubert’s Blues are all part of his story now.
Ignoring all fashionable nonsense about beats per minute, he simply alternates slow spells with fast ones. Stay With Me, Baby Jane and Hot Legs get the joint jumping, no mean feat in one of Britain’s biggest entertainment warehouses.
The crowd – mostly his age, but plenty of them young enough to know his wife – know all the words. And although the evening is hardly forward-looking, good music is never just nostalgia.
‘A lot’s happened since I last saw you,’ he tells us. Indeed: Rod has had surgery for suspected cancer of the thyroid, and ex-wife Rachel Hunter has been seeing Robbie Williams. ‘Life changes, it moves on.’
He has probably not missed his vocation as a philosopher. But the voice is still there, and still unique – half sandpaper, half preheated bath towel.
The costume changes are a waste of time, literally: if only he did them during the overlong solos there would be room for a couple more hits.
But whenever you get restless, a classic track arrives to put things right – and when the crowd sing every word, it comes with added flavour, marinaded in its own history.
(courtesy of Tim De Lisle, The Mail)