Sunday, December 18, 2011

"I'd Rather Go Blind", Rod Stewart

Pursuant to the previous post, it dawned on me that Rod Stewart had a version of I'd Rather Go Blind as well. It's from 1972, the Never A Dull Moment album, and though it's technically credited to "Rod Stewart", I think it is, in essence, a Faces album. (Steve Goldstein, can you weigh in on this, please?)

In any event, it's sometimes hard to remember now what a great singer Rod Stewart was then; this demonstrates that nicely, I should think...

I'd Rather Go Blind...


IBL:mm

2 comments:

  1. Rod Stewart's first batch of consistently excellent albums did use his band--though it wasn't really his band--the Faces, as backing musicians. When I say it wasn't really his band, I mean to say that it was a real band, with serious input from all five people. The Rod Stewart Album, Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story and Never a Dull Moment represent quite a run. He used the Faces on some tracks and on others he used a different batch of musicians (Micky Waller, Pete Sears, Martin Quittenton), but in both cases he had Ron Wood pitching in. It can be pretty difficult to tell which band he's using on any given track. Never a Dull Moment kicks off with "True Blue," one in a long line of prodigal son songs from these musicians. You take the first four Rod Stewart records and the records the Faces made in that period, you have a British Isles version of what Memphis must have been like in the early '50s, or St. Louis in the immediate postwar era. An inspired and seemingly effortless blending of elements and cultures, yet you can still make out the individual strands.

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