ROD STEWART : BBC RADIO 2 LIVE IN HYDE PARK 2015

 

  1. Every Beat of My Heart
  2. The Motown Song
  3. What Am I Gonna Do (I'm So in Love With You)
  4. (I Know) I'm Losing You
  5. You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything (Even Take the Dog for a Walk, Mend a Fuse, Fold Away the Ironing Board, or Any Other Domestic Shortcomings)
  6. Gasoline Alley
  7. The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II)
  8. Ooh La La
  9. Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)
  10. Please
  11. Angel
  12. I'm Every Woman (Background vocalists)
  13. Rollin' and Tumblin'
  14. In a Broken Dream
  15. Love Is
  16. Can't Stop Me Now
  17. I Was Only Joking

Label : no label

Venue : BBC Radio 2 Live In Hyde Park "A Festival In A Day", Hyde Park, London, UK

Recording Date : September 13, 2015

Length : 79:02

Quality : FM Recording (A+)

Concert Review (The Guardian) : 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.

Concert Review (The Standard) : Now in its fifth year, Live In Hyde Park has become the almost-official closer to the outdoor concert season. For the BBC, it offers the double whammy of relentlessly promoting its output and showcasing Radio 2, Britain’s most popular radio station. Its 55,000 tickets all sold, but while 2014 had the shock and awe of Jeff Lynne fronting Electric Light Orchestra, 2015’s jawdropper-free line-up was more ho-hum and humdrum, and the first and second on the bill are both in their eighth decade. Normally the safest of bets, Rod Stewart fled his comfort zone. “This isn’t a normal Rod Stewart concert,” he explained. “We won’t be playing Sailing, Maggie May, Do Ya Think I’m Sexy or Baby Jane. I wanted to make tonight special.” So the 70-year-old mostly dipped into his solo and Faces back catalogue for the rarely played Gasoline Alley, Tom Traubert’s Blues and Ooh La La, while his former guitarist and co-writer Jim Cregan guested on the curtailed closer I Was Only Joking. Those in a crowd, which included Scotland manager Gordon Strachan, weatherwoman Carol Kirkwood, Kaiser Chief Ricky Wilson and swimmer Mark Foster, who wanted a standard Stewart singalong were dismayed, but not being able to coast galvanised Stewart’s performance and The Killing Of Georgie was sensational.

Concert Review (The Telegraph) : Last month Rod Stewart’s wife Penny Lancaster controversially claimed that the 70-year-old rocker will from now on be wearing looser trousers in order to aid the conception of a second child. But the 55,000-strong crowd at his Hyde Park gig bore witness to the falsity of this statement: old snake-hips emerged in skin-tight leather trousers. After an afternoon of tame pop and soft rock from the likes of Will Young and Leona Lewis, we were treated to an energetic headline set covering recent material alongside rarely-played classics from Stewart's early career. Stewart made a name for himself in the Sixties, playing in a number of groups while beginning a solo career that would run alongside his band work. He kept up this dual approach even when he achieved fame as part of The Jeff Beck Group and Faces, with whom he played just last week at the Hurtwood Park Polo Club after a 40-year absence. His smoothly ragged vocals, drenched in R&B and soul, nonetheless anticipated heavy rock and metal. He has released 62 singles and sold 100 million albums. The flamboyant old ways of Rod the god were certainly in evidence, with the singer shaking his knees and sliding across the stage between vocal sections, but there were also subtly contemporary takes on his oeuvre. 1970’s Gasoline Alley is naturally folksy, but in an American blues mould: here it was bolstered by strings and a double bass, which gave it the flavour of the festival folk pop the likes of Mumford & Sons have made popular over the last few years. Performances of Faces classics such as I’m Losing You and You Can Make Me Dance had those members of the audience who had remained sitting on their picnic blankets up on their feet. New tracks, too, though slight as songs, were valuable in showing what the older singer can do. Please, from Stewart’s forthcoming album Another Country, gave him a chance to hit clear high notes. The set no doubt appealed to die-hard fans. Faces track Angel hadn’t been played live since 1976. Other songs Stewart put in the vague past, as having “not been played since 1960-something-or-other”. Ever the troublemaker, Stewart crowned a performance of 1976’s The Killing of Georgie by berating his hosts at Radio 2: “That was a controversial song when it came out because it dealt with homosexuality. The BBC refused to play it. And look where I am now.” Later in the set he’d take another swipe at the broadcasters for curtailing his set time. Yet Stewart knew the time he had to play with, and it was no one’s fault but his own that the setlist was criminally short of festival-nuking audience hits. Would it have killed him to slot Maggie May, You Wear it Well, or First Cut is the Deepest between the rarities? Bryan Adams had played earlier in the day, meaning two thirds of the intergenerational trio who released 1993’s global mega-hit All for Love were in attendance (the final member was Sting). Welcoming the Canadian master of the American power ballad to join him on the stage could have been an opportunity for double vocal gravel. The set ended, encoreless, before 10 o'clock. But as the energy dissipated one group of festival-goers, making for an exit, could be heard chanting the lyrics to Maggie May at the top of their voices.