Every Picture Tells a Story

by

Rod Stewart

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In retrospect, Rod Stewart's early career appears to have been a miracle. His later career was a huge disappointment, not because his music was so terrible (it wasn't, really), but because fans like me couldn't believe that an artist who seemed to have developed a seamless blend of folk, rock, soul and country that at once sounded highly traditional and completely innovative would turn his back on his muse. But the muse is in full control on this album, as she was on "Gasoline Alley" "The Rod Stewart Album" and "Never a Dull Moment."

Listening to this album in totality after many years (I confess I heard it not as a stand alone, but as part of the highly enjoyable "Complete Mercury Years" set, which is worth getting if you're ready to go the whole hog, and intelligently programs the albums rather than trying to re-sort the songs), what stands out to me is that the hit songs were somewhat arbitrarily chosen. "Maggie May" and "Mandolin Wind" are great songs, with the characteristic viewpoint of Rod's self-penned songs in those days, the betrayed innocent looking back on the bittersweet episodes of his past. He was a troubador for those emotions. But he probably could've gotten just as big a hit out of his gorgeous version of Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow is a Long Time," or his fierce, slide guitar anchored cover of Elvis' "That's All Right," (which has a strange but lovely coda of "Amazing Grace"). It's that consistent.

My favorite era of pop music was the late 60s and early 70s, when it seems to me rock music was at its most creative and yet its most deeply-rooted to the American culture. Whether it was Rod Stewart or The Band, or early Little Feat, or that period of the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, or Eric Clapton, or George Harrison, or Van Morrison, or Taj Mahal, or Fairport Convention, or even Dylan himself with albums like John Wesley Harding or Nashville Skyline, the music of this time had a strength, confidence, beauty, and vision that it has never achieved so consistently since. This was more than music--it was literature. It was not about teenage rebellion. It was not solely about sexual frustration or idealized love. It was about life. And for a few years, "life" dominated the charts!