In the liner notes to Storyteller, Rod points out how I’ve Been Drinking was actually meant to be A Change is gonna come…but the plan changed. He may have dodged Change then, but he has developed a fine track record of managing change in the fifty years since. Some gurus will tell you change is always good, others say it is inevitable, some say it just an event and it is up to the individual to make it good or bad for them. Whatever the truth, Rod has changed things many times.
Leaving Jeff Beck, leaving the Faces, leaving the UK were all Rod-moves in the first decade of his career (we’ll let leaving various women out of this piece about music!). He has changed his band regularly since the RSG was first formed. Sometimes in chunks where wholesale changes were made to the band to make room for fresh blood (like both the early and late eighties changes) and sometimes just minor tweaks where a one-in one-out alteration was made to the line-up. The changes usually worked just fine. Albums like Tonight I’m Yours and Out of Order came after a changing of the guard. Emerson Swinford brought something new when he came in a few years ago, Andy Taylor helped freshen the sound in 1988, Jeff Golub beefed it up live when he joined.
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Photo The start of it all with Kevin Savigar The Rod Squad members[Later SMILER] greet Kevin and Gary Grainger on Kevin’s first RSG tour-Photo thanks to Mark Herd.