Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Rod Stewart - Missed You - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1976)

As I've mentioned previously, when it comes to Rod Stewart, I'm mostly a fan of his music from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, though I do think he had a revival in the early 1990s. (I especially like his involvement with the Faces, and I plan on posting a lot of their stuff in the future.) 

In my opinion, there's a pretty sharp drop off in the quality of his music around 1975 and 1976. That's when the Faces broke up and he went all in on with the hedonistic rock style lifestyle. It was only a few years later when his updated persona was solidified with the huge hit "Do Ya Think a Sexy?" which is both a good disco song yet also a terrible sign about the direction Stewart's career was going.

With all that in mind, I still have enough interest in his early to mid-1970s solo work to be interested in putting together a stray tracks album. It turns out there's exactly enough good material for one such album, so here it is.

All the songs here have been officially released. I'm not a big fan of the first two songs, but I've included them for completeness's sake. The first is a B-side, and the second is from a various artists version of the Who's concept album "Tommy." The next six songs appeared on the archival collections "Handbags and Gladrags" or "The Rod Stewart Sessions 1971-1998." All the songs after that are bonus tracks from his 1975 album "Atlantic Crossing" or his 1976 album "A Night on the Town."

By the way, there's one Stewart single that I haven't included here. In 1973, he released a single with "Oh No Not My Baby" on the A-side and "Jodie" on the B-side. The reason I haven't included that is because, although it's often considered a Stewart solo single, the A-side featured all of the Faces, so it's really a Faces song. The B-side was actually written by Stewart and two other Faces, and it's straight up credited as a Faces song. So both of those songs will fit better on a Faces stray tracks album I eventually plan on posting here.

This album is 47 minutes long, which is a long but acceptable length for albums of that era. This isn't a great album, but it's very much of a piece with his early to mid-1970s albums, and I think it's considerably better than his late 1970s and 1980s albums.

01 What's Made Milwaukee Famous [Has Made a Loser Out of Me] (Rod Stewart)
02 Pinball Wizard (Rod Stewart)
03 Missed You (Rod Stewart)
04 You Put Something Better Inside Me (Rod Stewart)
05 Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying (Rod Stewart)
06 Every Time We Say Goodbye (Rod Stewart)
07 So Tired (Rod Stewart)
08 Think I'll Pack My Bags [Mystifies Me] (Rod Stewart)
09 To Love Somebody (Rod Stewart)
10 Holy Cow (Rod Stewart)
11 Return to Sender (Rod Stewart)
12 Rosie (Rod Stewart)
13 Share (Rod Stewart)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gGbf7

The cover art photo shows Stewart in 1975. I don't know any other details of it. By the way, I chose the title "Missed You" since it's the title of one of the songs here, and it seems fitting for a bunch of songs that got overlooked back in that era.

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