If you’ve only been following along to see which artist would “win,” you can rest assured that the Stones held on through the worst of times. They have taken this Battle Royale 5 rounds to 3. If you were more interested in helping us test the initial hypothesis: From 1969-1976, Rod Stewart, including his work with Faces, released music on par with or better than the Stones, you can rest assured that he did. He did not release as much music on par with or better than the Stones during this period, but he performed better than I bet most of you expected. Thanks for your patience, objections, and sportsmanship throughout this examination.
How ’bout we let this happy Stones’ fan take us out? Well done, Stones! Way to hang tough!
ROUND 8: Stones!
FINAL SCORE: Stones, 5; Stewart 3
In case you missed this thread, reports from previous rounds follow: ROUND 7…ROUND 6…ROUND 5…ROUND 4…ROUND 3…ROUND 2…ROUND 1.
I always knew that those Stones would win this thing. I wouldn’t have even betted. But, God, I sure do love those Faces.
TB
How did you find that clip of David Johansen fronting the Stones on Hot Stuff?
It was the moment at 1:46 that got me as a pimply-faced adolescent, and which now makes me bust out laughing.
I mean in the “Tonight’s the Night” vuh-deo.
I’ve enjoyed this whole series a lot. It hasn’t made me sick of Rod’s music; in fact it has allowed me to think about it more consistently than I’ve had a chance to before. I feel convinced that he actually made great music for a few years, and I feel unashamed to say so. It’s not easy to be unashamed about liking Rod Stewart’s music, especially given those horrendous mid-70s outfits and what they led to. So here I am, admitting it: I am a fan of Rod Stewart’s music. A few years of it anyway.
From the current poll though, I see that some of us are sick of Stewart’s music and all this talk about rock and roll that actually rocks. I suppose now it’s back to trivia questions and deep critical problems such as how the haircuts of synth pop fanboys are influencing the latest crops of wannabes on International American Idol. I wish all of you well while pointing out that the legend of Stewart casts a shadow over even that discussion.
Thanks, Mod, for a great series of pieces. My final count has Stones 7, Stewart 1, but with a few twists, it might have been 5-3 or even 4-4. Who knew.
Tonight’s the Night is a good song (icky video though). Too bad Rod and/or Ronnie Lane couldn’t come up with very many of them during this period.
One factor may have been that the Faces toured relentlessly, and I think they got caught up in living the life of rock stars and didn’t have anything left to put into songwriting and making decent albums. The Stones were not exactly choirboys during this period, but somehow they managed to come up with songs to fill those albums, and a lot of them were memorable.
Somewhere along the line Rod seems to have decided that being a star and fucking ever younger models was what he really wanted, and that music was only a means to that end. Many musicians would make that deal, given the chance. Cranking out the songs is hard work when you’re not young anymore.
Looking at the videos, it’s so strange to see the glam influence start to filter in. Seeing Rod ponce about in that clip where he mimes Tonight’s the Night on German TV is so sad. His eyes are completely dead. He’s over 30 at this point and really too old to carry this off.
Jagger was possibly more successful at it because he never really seemed human in the first place. It was Rod’s ‘one of the boys’ persona that was part of his original appeal, so his evolution into a one-dimensional cad was more painfully disappointing. He had so much promise, and he blew it so badly.
Well said, BigSteve. I love the part about Jagger never seeming human. We’ve learned a lot during the course of this examination. Some might say too much.
I’m late on this one, but the knockout here is that, while the Stones could still turn out a perfectly good Rolling Stones song like “Hand of Fate”, they also show up with “Fool To Cry”, which makes the career of post-Faces Rod Stewart irrelevant. A song like “Tonight’s The Night” and everything else he’d do in that style could never be as effectively funny as Fool To Cry. They’re hitting Rod with his own finisher. Jagger does Stewart better than Stewart, which probably explains Rod’s total drop-off from here on out: the world no longer has need for him, and so he continues to walk the earth a beaten man.
I was kind of curious to read more RTH takes on Fool To Cry. I can’t think of much else in music that cracks me up in an enjoyable way like Jagger’s spoken-word “I gotta wau-mon!” and “She said, Daddy!” stuff, that little “oooh-hoo” with the hitch in it at the end and “I’m a certified foo’!”