Rod Stewart has spent the past decade belting out Great American Songbook staples by the likes of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter and, later, crooning his hits to adoring Las Vegas audiences.
But while it seemed unlikely that the man behind 1971’s soulful and chart-topping Maggie May would ever pen another original, he’s back with a songwriting vengeance on Time.
Eleven of the album’s dozen songs were written and produced by Stewart.
“Songwriting’s never been easy for me,” Stewart says. “I treat every line as a jewel. I’ll go back and change something if it’s not right. Change the rhythm. Change rhymes. But it was cathartic in a way.”
Although he admits that he thought his muse had abandoned him, revisiting his life story for 2012’s Rod: The Autobiography helped open the emotional floodgates.
Time’s tracks tackle events such as an early romance that produced a child who was given up for adoption and the pain of divorce, which he has endured twice.
“My life’s always been a bit of an open book,” he says. “There’s nothing I’m ashamed of, there’s nothing that I’ve done that I wouldn’t let people know about, and it’s reflected in the songs.”
Stewart’s songwriting forte has always been conjuring a memorable line and then cementing it in the listener’s memory with that inimitable emotive rasp.
Think Tonight’s the Night and You’re in My Heart.
Even more so, think Maggie May, whose “Wake up, Maggie, I think I got something to say to you” opener forever captures the heartache of a Mrs. Robinson relationship.
“Covering other songs has led to huge success for Stewart, and as a result his songwriting is under-appreciated,” says Andy Greene, associate editor at Rolling Stone. “He’s brilliant at it. This is a return to his roots.”
Stewart at first demurs when asked to recite his favourite lyrics. “I like ’em all,” he says. “If I didn’t, they wouldn’t be in the song.”
But when pressed, he rattles off a few lines.
“OK, here’s one. ‘Youth’s a mask, but it don’t last,’ from ‘The Killing of Georgie.’ I quite like that,” he says. “And ‘Me and the boys thought we all had it sussed, Valentinos all of us, my dad said we looked ridiculous,’ that’s from ‘I Was Only Joking.’ Not bad.”
For Stewart, the songwriting process often starts with the idea for a title. The next step is hearing a few chords. So you won’t find him writing entire poems that are then set to music.
Ad Feedback
“I think that’s the way Bernie (Taupin) and Elton (John) do it, but not me. I’ll write titles that I find interesting, and then whoever I’m writing with will come up with a few chords and bits and pieces, and get a melody. Then I try and hook one of the titles to it,” he says, noting that those melodies are usually rudimentary tracks that later get fleshed out by a band.
“That’s what I did for Young Turks and (one of the new songs) Finest Woman. I’ll find a home for a title. But the track has to generate in me some sort of feeling. If the chords are sterile, it won’t spark anything. The music’s got to work.”
The only problem the singer has now: deciding which new songs to omit from his upcoming tour shows. “I’m in a quagmire, because I could sing them all and go on for five hours,” he says, winking. “It’s a nice problem to have.”
-USA Today
–
