Rod still rocks, but his pop-jazz hits a flat note
Will the real Rod Stewart please stand up? This question was begged by Stewart’s schizoid show at the FleetCenter, where he tried to be Rod the Mod in a rocking first set, then a neo-Frank Sinatra in a slick second set that reeked of artifice.
Stewart has gotten away with many stylistic poses during his career, but Sunday’s show was dramatic evidence that, at least in concert, he should keep rocking rather than try to be another interpreter of pop-jazz standards. Stewart’s last two albums devoted to the Great American Songbook have each sold more than a million copies, but he struggled unsuccessfully to bring the tunes to life onstage. Worse, he sounded like a pandering Las Vegas crooner.
Far better was his 75-minute first set, which reprised many of his rock hits from back in the days when he was with the Faces. Stewart sang these with all-out heart before turning to paint-by-number standards that have been done with more feeling by Natalie Cole and Linda Ronstadt.
To illustrate just how strange things got at the near-capacity FleetCenter, consider:
In the first set, Stewart looked playfully raffish in an orange jacket and orange-striped sneakers, while the band stood on an all-white stage reminiscent of the Beatles’ appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
In the second set, he looked uptight in a black tux and black dress shoes fronting a seated 15-piece horn section arranged on a multitiered bandstand with a gold curtain backdrop.
Stewart eventually loosened the tux but not his vocal cords as he performed methodical versions of “As Time Goes By” (with video of Humphrey Bogart in “Casablanca” behind him) and Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered” (which Stewart seemed to be), though it was nice to see backup singer Natasha Pearce come forward and shine as his duet partner. (She has sung with Diana Ross and has an album out this week.)
Stewart eventually swung back into his more familiar hits such as “Maggie May” and “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and, as an encore, Sam Cooke’s “Having a Party.” Otherwise, almost all the highlights were in the first set, where he started strong with “Forever Young” (igniting an immediate singalong) and hit genuine highs with “Hot Legs” (“When I was a young guy, I wrote about pretty dirty things,” he said with a laugh), the soul classic “It Takes Two” (a ’60s hit for Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston), the driving “Some Guys Have All the Luck,” and two old Faces tunes, “Ooh La La” and “Stay With Me.”
At the very least, Stewart should have flip-flopped the sets and gotten the slow-moving jazz numbers out of the way first. Let’s hope in future visits he trims the standards back considerably. Nothing against those songs, but if you pay $100-plus per ticket to see Stewart, you want to see him do what he does best.
courtesy: Steve Morse, Globe Newspaper Company
