I’ve said it before, but Rod Stewart’s fall from grace remains one of the saddest and most precipitous in rock history. In the early seventies the rooster-cropped, sandpaper-voiced party animal who took nothing seriously was fronting one of the greatest live acts of all time, the Faces, while simultaneously putting out solo albums that were heart-breakingly brilliant. And then? I wish I could say nada, but his post-1974 (hell, make it post-1972) output was far worse than nothing—it was flat-out debasing, both to Stewart and his fans.
It can be argued that his fans were anything but disappointed by swill such as “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” After all, the song did slither to the top of the Billboard Charts. To which I can only respond that nobody deserves such fans, and had Rod come to his senses he’d have made the best out of a bad job and laughed it off (to use his own words), ideally by sending each and every person who bought the abominable “Sexy” a letter telling them to bugger off. Instead the song’s success just encouraged the worst in Stewart, who turned himself into a veritable treacle machine until his muse deserted him (wisest thing it ever did) in sheer disgust, leaving Rod to torture us all with album after album of dull standards from the dreaded American Songbook.
Finding the present unbearable I sought solace in the distant past, and Stewart’s 1970 sophomore solo album, Gasoline Alley. I’ve never so much as listened to the damn thing, as I already possessed what I assumed were the LP’s premier tracks on various Stewart compilations, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise, combining (as was Rod’s wont in those days) rock’n’roll, R&B, and folk rock in the form of a few originals along with covers of songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, The Valentinos featuring Bobby Womack, Elton John, and Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriott of the great Small Faces, which had already morphed (with Ronnie Wood and Stewart taking Marriott’s place) into the equally great Faces.
Gasoline Alley is one gritty and hardscrabble LP, without so much as a hint of the slick and sleazy cocksman Stewart would slowly transform himself into, much in the same way Jeff Goldblum turned himself into an oversized insect in 1986’s The Fly. From opener “Gasoline Alley,” a Stewart-Wood collaboration so evocative you can almost smell the petrol fumes, Stewart plays his familiar role as down but by no means out wayfarer, and relies for assistance on the stellar playing of one fine assemblage of musicians, including Faces’ band mates Lane (bass and vocals), Wood (guitar), Ian McLagan (piano/organ), and Kenney Jones (drums), as well as the likes of mandolin savant Stanley Matthews, classical guitarist Martin Quittenton, and a host of others.
Anyway, to get back to the mid-tempo title track, it relies on one great electric guitar riff, some superb acoustic guitar and mandolin playing, and Stewart’s inimitable rasp to communicate Stewart’s desire to return to his origins in rough and tumble Gasoline Alley, “the place where I started from.” In this it has much in common with such Elton John classics as “Honky Cat” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and if you find the comparison absurd, well, all I can say is it behooves you to listen to some of John’s early material, because once upon a time the dude in the ridiculous glasses really had it goin’ on. From: https://www.thevinyldistrict.com/storefront/graded-curve-rod-stewart-gasoline-alley/
