The biggest danger to health as Rod Stewart closes BBC Radio 2’s “festival in a day” in central London isn’t any of the singer’s old vices, such as riotous behaviour and blizzards of cocaine. Instead, it’s the risk of broken limbs from people tripping over an Ikea’s worth of garden furniture that litters the park and is invisible in the darkness.
It’s a curious event – Stewart is preceded by the Corrs, Bryan Adams and a DJ set from Giorgio Moroder (in a backwards baseball cap), that he keeps interrupting with short anecdotes – made even more curious by Stewart’s choice of set. Instead of his usual, slightly tired arena set of singalongs, he promises to showcase less familiar material. Given that he has been a global superstar for 45 years, the concept of “less familiar” is relative, but the result is fabulous.
There’s no Baby Jane or Sailing or Da Ya Think I’m Sexy. But there is a wonderful run that encompasses (I Know) I’m Losing You, the Faces’ You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything, Gasoline Alley, The Killing of Georgie (Parts I and II) and a song introduced as Stewart’s favourite of those Ronnie Lane wrote for the Faces, Ooh La La. Later on, he throws in his version of Jimi Hendrix’s Angel and, magnificently, the Python Lee Jackson hit In a Broken Dream.
Stewart’s voice, although less fragile than on his 2013 tour, isn’t what it once was – he is 70, after all – and there are a couple of moments when his pitch sounds approximate. For the most part, however, he hits the notes he needs to – ascending into a falsetto, and summoning enough power when the song calls for it. It’s a show that leaves you wondering quite how brilliant Stewart might be if he would dispense entirely with the Hollywood material and do something similar in theatres. But for a festival show from an MOR superstar, this is special stuff.
