Rod Stewart

Firstly, a brief intro to Roderick David Stewart....

As for many of my contemporaries, it was actually Maggie May that first captivated me as a twelve year-old, watching soon to be legendary cocksman kick footballs around on Top Of The Pops. I liked his flamboyant, laddish cheekiness and it was just such a great song, wasn't it? I duly bought the single and then the equally good (if not better) You Wear It Well, followed by What Made Milwaukee Famous and Oh No Not My Baby as they duly came out. I became a Faces fan too, unsurprisingly. Rod was a lad. The Faces were lads. I was a lad. The deal was sealed.

As the decade continued, I faced the dilemma that faced many Rod Stewart fans as he turned up on Top Of The Pops in make-up to sing The First Cut Is The Deepest just as punk was beginning to take off and, by 1978 was coming out with the awful cod-disco of Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? What to do? A hugely credible artist was becoming a preening self-parody in front of our eyes.

The thing is, though, old Rod could still come out with a killer song - I Was Only Joking and You're In My Heart were two such examples. Despite my immersion in punk at the time, Rod was still an unashamedly guilty pleasure. The eighties saw him decline into synth pop, as did Elton John, The Rolling Stones and even Bob Dylan so I guess he could be forgiven (just) but I have to say I paid little attention to him during his period.

As the years have passed, I have come back to him with his later albums and caught him live on a few occasions and a good time was had by all, as Stewart himself may have said. He is another of these artists, like Dylan, Elton, The Stones, Springsteen, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello that I have never given up on, over so many years.