Rod Stewart is an artist reborn. Two years ago, with his record sales in steep decline and having departed from Warner Brothers, his label of 30 years, he released ‘It Had To Be You . . . The Great American Songbook’, a collection of standards from the 1930s and 1940s. The album was so successful that a follow-up ‘As Time Goes By’ was quickly released.
With combined sales of those two albums now past the 10 million mark, and a third volume, ‘Stardust’ lined up for release on Monday, Stewart is suddenly riding a tidal wave of popular approval among a generation of baby-boomers now sliding gently into their cardigan years. Hence, last night’s concert in aid of the Prince’s Trust, in which Stewart performed with the 60-piece BBC Concert Orchestra and backing singers together with the 40-piece London Gospel Choir.
The show was opened punctually with a flourish by Dame Edna Everidge who later joined her “Little Roderick” Stewart for a typically eccentric duet of Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered. Looking trim and tanned, Stewart paused only to announce the football scores in the England and Scotland matches, before a relaxed, almost subdued version of ‘Tonight I’m Yours’.
Curiously, it was the first time he had performed at the Albert Hall. His last visit, he told us, had been to see Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball.
With the stage transformed into a huge neon-lit bandstand and television cameras swishing through the air above the audience’s heads it did not feel like an ordinary gig.
For the first half, however, Stewart was accompanied mainly by a regular, six-piece electric band and backing singers as he embarked on a trawl through some of his best known hits and other favourites. A medley of ‘Some Guys Have All The Luck’ and ‘Addicted To Love’ was dedicated to the late Robert Palmer (“A good drinking buddy”), before Stewart was joined by everybody’s good drinking buddy Ron Wood for a predictably shambolic canter through ‘Stay With Me’. By the time he embarked on a lively version of ‘Rhythm Of My Heart’, during which his girlfriend Penny Lancaster wandered on in a micro-kilt with a set of bagpipes, followed by his 1977 hit ‘Hot Legs’, he had worked up quite a sweat.
All was cool, calm sophistication, however, as Stewart was joined after the interval by the full orchestra.
Resplendent in penguin suit and a white carnation, he embarked on a string of songs from the new album — which he plugged repeatedly. A silky ‘Blue Moon’ and a joyful ‘What A Wonderful World’ were followed by ‘As Time Goes By’, sung as an initially hesitant duet with a darkly smouldering Chrissie Hynde.
Stewart has found himself a handy niche with this “new” music — which is older than anything in his entire back catalogue — especially now that his voice does not have the raucous power of his youth. The songs are all sitting there waiting for him to get round to recording them, and if the enthusiasm of last night’s crowd was anything to go by, there could be several more volumes to come yet.
Courtesy: The Times
