TV watch: Imagine: Rod Stewart
Aug. 9th, 2014 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
callmemadamYesterday evening I watched a repeat of this programme, which was timed in 2013 to plug Rod’s latest album. Yes, that ridiculous man Rod Stewart is my guilty secret. He’s everything I ought to dislike and disapprove of, yet I forgive it all: the string of identical, leggy wives and girlfriends, the laddishness, the football, some of the terrible records he’s made (e.g. Do You Think I’m Sexy), for the sake of That Voice. Anyone can sing a song; it takes a special kind of voice to, as Bob Harris put it, get you right in the heart.
The best thing about the programme was the old black and white footage from the sixties. We saw Rod’s dad in his Highgate shop (Scottish, my foot!), Rod the Mod buying shirts in Carnaby Street, Rod with various bands (for my money the early stuff is the best). By the time we’d got through Long John Baldry, Jeff Beck and The Faces I was regretting having sold Rock Family Trees. Rod and Ronnie Wood put on a very entertaining double act as two old Faces. Despite his habit of looking, in the noddies, like a psychiatrist listening dispassionately to a patient, Alan Yentob seems star struck on these occasions and didn’t ask any hard questions. Not very revealing, then.
To me, Rod Stewart seems rather like Frank Sinatra and Dolly Parton: essentially vulgar yet deeply serious about his music and artistry.
The best thing about the programme was the old black and white footage from the sixties. We saw Rod’s dad in his Highgate shop (Scottish, my foot!), Rod the Mod buying shirts in Carnaby Street, Rod with various bands (for my money the early stuff is the best). By the time we’d got through Long John Baldry, Jeff Beck and The Faces I was regretting having sold Rock Family Trees. Rod and Ronnie Wood put on a very entertaining double act as two old Faces. Despite his habit of looking, in the noddies, like a psychiatrist listening dispassionately to a patient, Alan Yentob seems star struck on these occasions and didn’t ask any hard questions. Not very revealing, then.
To me, Rod Stewart seems rather like Frank Sinatra and Dolly Parton: essentially vulgar yet deeply serious about his music and artistry.
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Date: 2014-08-09 10:01 am (UTC)It was just what we needed last night.
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Date: 2014-08-09 10:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-09 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-09 02:17 pm (UTC)