Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 28, 1993 TAG: 9305280244
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LEONARD PITTS JR. KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The dry-ice fog billows, the synth sounds rise, and the blond in Spandex flounces across the stage, lost in the throes of the trashiest disco anthem of all.
"If ya want my body, and ya think I'm sexy, come on, sugar, tell me so."
"Rarely," said Rolling Stone writer Greil Marcus, "has anyone betrayed his talent so completely."
It was a harsh, if inarguable, assessment. You wouldn't blame Rod Stewart if he foamed at the mouth even today at the mere mention of that infamous comment. But Stewart handles it with surprising calm.
"Greil Marcus," he says, " . . . was dead right. How could I sing such trash?"
It sounds like a set-up, and I wait for the punchline. But it never comes.
"If you ask me, `Would you release it again now,' no, I don't think I would," he says. "But then I was a different person. I wanted commercial success at any level.
"I wouldn't do that now. I don't think we'll play it [in concert] anymore. I don't enjoy singing it. The audience absolutely loves it, [but] I think by the time I go out on the road, I'll have some songs to take its place. `Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?' will be totally forgotten about. It'll be obsolete. It's obsolete now."
It's a stunning admission, made with disarming, deadpan cool. It's my first clue that it's time to throw out everything I thought I knew about Rod the Mod.
Stewart is on the interview circuit to promote his new album, "Unplugged," which comes out this week. He has just finished an interview downstairs with a woman from "Live With Regis and Kathie Lee." One of the last things she asked him had to do with desire. What's left for a man to want once he's got money, hits, critical acclaim and a wife (supermodel du jour Rachel Hunter) who's the envy of practically every straight male with a pulse?
Nothing, he told her. To ask for anything else would be greedy.
Don't buy it. That was just Rod dishing up a TV sound bite. There is at least one more thing he wants, something he lost during the "Sexy" days, something that's been chafing him ever since. Namely, critical respect for his artistry.
Somewhere, that got lost. Somehow, the music became secondary to the adventures of Rowdy Roddy, legendary carouser and discriminating connoisseur of bimbos and ale who spent endless nights consuming both with lusty abandon.
"It was a hell of a long time from about '78 to maybe '86, '87, where the image of Rod Stewart was far larger than anything the music could ever compete with," he says. But now, "it's beginning to turn around. You stay around long enough, they start writing nice things about you. I think the `Unplugged' album is going to help." That's right, Rod's gone acoustic. "Unplugged" is something of a live greatest-hits package that eschews recent hits in favor of classic material from some 20 years ago. The album features a reunion with Stewart's old buddy from his Faces days, guitarist Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones.
Stewart, who begins a world tour in late August to promote the album, says, "We never even thought about doing things like `Some Guys Have All the Luck,' `Infatuation,' `Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?' Those things were completely out the window. We concentrated on [material from] the first three albums ["The Rod Stewart Album," "Every Picture Tells a Story" and "Gasoline Alley"], which were all acoustic anyway, so it was like second nature to me."
Stewart is proud of "Unplugged" and the fact that it draws material from the earliest stages of his career. "Those first three albums of mine were landmarks -- they really were. Especially `Every Picture Tells a Story.' Critics think that's one of my best albums. They're right."
"Critics?!?" Now that's a shock. Since when does your basic mega-star admit to caring what the critics say, good, bad or indifferent?
"There are certain critics, I do actually listen to," he says. "You've got to try and go with the majority. If they say this is a terrible album, then there's got to be something wrong with it. Now, if it sells when the critics have said it's bad, then I don't know where you go. But the albums that I've had panned -- like `Camouflage' . . . didn't sell. Bad album."
The math would not be that simple for many performers. For them, panned album plus poor sales equals "The public didn't understand where I was coming from" or "The record company didn't get behind the album." For someone in his position, Stewart seems uncommonly sensitive about what people say and think about him.
"There isn't a person on earth who wouldn't like to pick up the newspaper and read something nice about themselves," he explains. "There isn't a person on this earth that, when they do read something bad about themselves, isn't hurt a little bit -- especially if it's accurate. You think, `Maybe I WAS screeching a little bit there.' "
Maybe I've just caught him a remarkably reflective mood. Or maybe his whole life is a remarkably reflective mood these days. Stewart turned 48 in January. He's at that time in life when a person begins to look back and sum up. Indeed, a sense of summation has suffused his entire career in recent years. Sure, he's had his big hits, but he has also spent a considerable amount of time looking back: first with "Storyteller," his boxed-set collection from a few years back, and now with "Unplugged."
Not surprisingly, Stewart isn't a big fan of modern pop.
"I don't think a lot of kids that get into music now [are] committed to it," he complains. "It doesn't run through them. I've always said it makes me so happy. Just talking about it sometimes makes me happy. If you haven't got that, then you're foolin' yourself.
"I think a lot of them now just want to get into music for the glamorous side of it, . . . for the wrong reasons." He taps his chest. "It's got to be right deep in here."
It's almost sacrilegious. Rod Stewart carping about the kids. What's next, perpetual juvenile Steven Tyler extolling the virtues of spinach?
Of course, the myth of the rock superman, invulnerable to the ravages of age, has cost more than one rocker his career. Even his life. The smart ones change. And so, Rowdy Roddy isn't so much concerned about the next party now. Or even the next hit. He's thinking about the long haul. He takes better care of himself. He frets over his voice.
"I'm sure Bobby [Womack] doesn't have to look after his voice like I do," he says enviously of his soul-singing contemporary. "I have to warm it up considerably before I sing. The older you get, the more you have to look after it -- like any muscle in your body."
As part of his voice-care regimen, Stewart has even cut back his legendary drinking. "When I'm touring now, I limit [my drinking] to maybe half a bottle of wine, whereas in the old days, it used to be rum and Coke all day. I just had to face the music: Unless I stop drinking -- that's really my only vice; I don't smoke, I don't take any drugs -- the voice is not going to last. And I WANT it to last. I don't want to join the millions of unemployed. I still think this is a job I've got to do. I'm so lucky to be able to do it."
Stewart's 1990 marriage seems to have been a powerful catalyst in raising his sights from the short term to the long. Once upon a time he said, "I don't think it's in me to be domesticated. I'm still restless and need to get out and see what's going on."
What a difference a Rachel Hunter makes. Sitting there in his suite high above New York, Stewart points out with pride that this morning he went shopping for his wife. Picked up some things she needed but couldn't get because she was working.
"I'll tell you what my biggest help has been over the years," he says. "You'll never believe this: I read Cosmopolitan. I don't read it so much now, but I used to. Because you see a woman's side, what they want out of a man, what they want out of a relationship, what they want out of motherhood and fatherhood. . . . It's very enlightening. You realize what you're doing to piss women off. You read it, and you go, `Jesus, that's what I'M like.' "
But he's working on it with a fervor that would make Oprah proud. And here's another shock. Stewart, whose soccer fanaticism is legend, says he'll probably be hanging up his cleats in a year or two. The old bod, it seems, doesn't bounce back like it used to.
It's like his life is a house, and he's doing spring cleaning, tossing out the winter-weary things that once seemed so indispensable and polishing up the stuff that's left, the stuff that matters. Music and love.
by CNB