ROD STEWART : A NIGHT ON THE TOWN

1. Tonight's The Night
2. The First Cut Is The Deepest
3. Fool For You
4. The Killing Of Georgie (Part I And II)
5. The Balltrap
6. Pretty Flamingo
7. Big Bayou
8. The Wild Side Of Life
9. Trade Winds

Label : Warner Bros. Records

Length : 41:39

Release Date : June 18, 1976

Review (AllMusic) : In some ways, it's easy to think of A Night on the Town, Rod Stewart's second album for Warner, as a reprisal of the first, cut with many of the same musicians as Atlantic Crossing, produced once again by Tom Dowd, and even following its predecessor's conceit of having a "Slow Side" and "Fast Side" (granted, this flips the two around, opening with the slow one first). Superficially, this seems true, but A Night on the Town has a crucial difference: despite its party-hearty title, this album finds Stewart folding folk back into his sound, a move that deepens the music tonally and emotionally, particularly in the case of "The Killing of Georgie (Pts. 1 & 2)," Rod's most ambitious original. A winding, sensitive narrative about the murder of a gay friend - a hate crime years before the term existed - "The Killing of Georgie" finds Stewart filtering Dylan through his own warm, conversational style, creating a remarkable work unlike anything else in his body of work, yet the song's smooth synthesis of folk storytelling, soul, and incipient disco act as an appropriate conclusion to a side-long suite of songs of seduction, beginning with his classic come-on "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)," running through his splendid reading of Cat Stevens' "The First Cut Is the Deepest," and his fine original "Fool for You." On the Fast Side, Stewart has only one original - the lewd, riotous "The Balltrap" - but he more makes up for it by spinning two country classics, Gib Guilbeau's "Big Bayou" and Hank Thompson's "The Wild Side of Life," into thick, Stonesy rock & roll, and turning Manfred Mann's "Pretty Flamingo" into a rave-up. With all this in mind, A Night on the Town isn't a revival of Atlantic Crossing, it's its inverse, with Stewart shining as an interpreter on the fast songs and writing the best slow ones, but it's also its equal, proving that Stewart could still stay true to his open-hearted, ragged soul while on a big budget.

Review (Wikipedia) : A Night on the Town is Rod Stewart's seventh album, released on June 18th, 1976. The cover art is based on Pierre-Auguste Renoir's painting Bal du moulin de la Galette, with Stewart inserted in the centre in period costume. On 30 June 2009, Rhino reissued the album as a two-disc CD with bonus tracks. A Night on the Town was Stewart's last UK number-one studio album until Time in 2013. The album is regarded as one of Stewart's finest. "The Killing of Georgie" is one of Stewart's most hard-hitting sets of lyrics, a melancholic tale of a gay friend who is cast out by his family and becomes a sensation in the New York nightlife, only to be murdered by a New Jersey gang during an attempted robbery. Controversial "Tonight's the Night" was a No. 1 hit but was banned by some radio stations due to the very obvious lyrics about sex and loss of virginity. A cover of Cat Stevens' "The First Cut Is the Deepest" was also a success and has since become one of Stewart's signature songs.