(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
There are seldom few singers that have been able to match the pure rasp that Rod Stewart always had.
It’s easy for anyone to get more than a little bit turned off by that scratchy voice every now and again, but throughout his career, Stewart’s vocal tone is half the reason why tunes like ‘Maggie May’ and ‘Every Picture Tells A Story’ sound so personal. They were always coming from a place of vulnerability, but learning to open up your heart to the audience doesn’t always come easy.
In fact, it took Stewart a few months before he even had the courage to make his debut appearance with a few of his groups. The Faces may have been a fun way for him to cut loose and play rock and roll, but when Jeff Beck came calling convinced that Stewart was the man for him, it took a lot to get the singer to the front of the stage, let alone singing with feeling when he saw the audience.
Once he was greeted with open arms, though, it was up to him to choose which kind of musical direction he wanted to go in. The bluesy sounds of The Faces always had their place in the world, but Every Picture Tells a Story was a much more acoustic affair that helped showcase his more intimate side. But looking through his body of work, Stewart knew that there wasn’t any genre that he didn’t want to at least try out.
He had the songwriting credibility from Tom Waits when working on tracks like ‘Downtrain Train’, but whether that was working in the world of disco or embracing synthesisers once the 1980s kicked in on ‘Young Turks’, there was always room for him to explore a genre he hadn’t tried. And while his later career saw him slowing things down with a lot of ballads, the reason why his softer tunes had a lot more power behind them came from listening to the best soul singers in the world.
After all, the best rock and roll singers were always copying the old bluesmen, and while R&B had its place in the world, artists like Sam Cooke and Ray Charles set a new precedent for what was expected out of singers. People could try singing bluesy runs, but no one else was going to put the same amount of passion behind it as the true legends.
And when Stewart first heard what they could do, he knew that was the genre for him, saying, “I would listen to all the black singers that came over from America — Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, blues singers like Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters. This was a new world for me. I wanted to be able to sing like these people.”
While it would be considered a massive stretch to say that ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ had anything to do with typical soul music, it’s easy to read between the lines with a lot of Stewart’s greatest tunes. The bluesy sounds of Muddy Waters were still accounted for, but when listening to the way that Stewart bends the notes a little bit whenever he sings, he seemed to be pulling from even the Motown legends like The Temptations in a handful of his tracks.
But even if the soul world was never meant to be Stewart’s true home, there would always be something drawing him to that kind of music in between the staples of hard rock. He could morph his voice into a lot of different shapes, but nothing can compare to the kind of singers that can get to your heart without even knowing what they’re singing about.
Related Topics
