$2.99 Wax Necessities
A Column By Tim Midgett

ROD STEWART
EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY
MERCURY 1971

The Scottish are put-upon people, and Scotland is a put-upon land. It figures that the best white rhythm and blues singer to ever live would be Scottish by blood. And that he'd betray his talent gruesomely at times, like most great r&b singers who live long enough to do so. And that he'd succeed so wildly early in his career that he'd deserve a license to kill for the rest of it.

Rod Stewart, like most great vocalists, knows how to pick his material. The songs on this album are perfectly chosen, and most of them come from people more songwriter than singer. But Stewart's three originals would be on the top half of any record he happened to put together. Anyone who understands the hardscrabble side of rock and roll can relate to the title cut, anyone who understands youth and sex can relate to "Maggie May," and anyone who understands being goofy in the head with love can relate to the almost-surreal "Mandolin Wind."

The liner notes refer to the record's "nonchalant construction," and it is hard to imagine this album getting released by Mercury today. Superficially, Every Picture Tells a Story is as loose and cobbled-together as any album on a major label. The enthusiastic musicians barely know the songs; the bass parts in particular are completely ad hoc. But the slopbucket playing--an ethos for Stewart's then-band, the Faces--is just a setup here. The record starts to throw itself at the listener like a playfully cheap date, but it soon overpowers him like a real heavy one, all the while gleaming with a singular, audacious beauty that would be tough to repeat. Stewart almost repeated it once (on his follow-up, Never a Dull Moment), and I can't really fault him for not trying again.

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