sailing

And B-Sides… Rod Stewart

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

For our latest B-sides feature, I thought I’d look back at the man who belted his way through a greatest hits set during the Glastonbury ‘Legends’ slot last weekend. He may be eighty, but Rod the Mod still has a bit of life left in him yet.

Rod scored six UK #1s between 1971 and 1983, and here are the B-sides to three of those chart-toppers…

‘Lost Paraguayos’ – B-side to ‘You Wear It Well’

A lively rocker, very much in the folksy story-teller vein of his earliest hits. And much like ‘Maggie May’, it’s another tale of Rod upping and leaving a lady. But unlike the older Maggie, the unamed filly in this one may be dubiously young… Your ridiculous age, Start a state outrage, And I’ll end up in a Mexican jail… (Ah, the nineteen seventies…) It ends in a flurry of guitar licks and a brass band, and is a whole lot of fun.

‘Stone Cold Sober’ – B-side to ‘Sailing’

Another rocker, this time with a countryish bent. The bar room piano, the glam rock licks… Why wasn’t this version of Rod a greater presence at the top of the charts, over the more earnest (and sometimes slightly dull) balladeer? Plus, we have lyrics which argue that waking up hungover in an alley is worth it as long as you had a wild night (a compelling debate topic, for sure). But on Thursday prepare for your weekend, And let Friday disappear into Saturday morning, When you’re stone cold sober again… Nobody plays the loveable rogue better than Rod Stewart. Speaking of which…

‘Dirty Weekend’ – B-side to ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy’

Those who feel that he slipped too much into parody with ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy’ had better avoid the B-side, in which he’s off over the border again… This bawdy barroom brawl of a tune peaks in the second verse, which deserves to be quoted in full:

I’ll bring the red wine, You bring the ‘ludes, Your mother’s doctor must be quite a dude… We’ll hang a ‘don’t disturb’ outside our door, I’m gonna rock you ’till your pussy’s sore…

I mean… It’s preposterous. But I love it. In the eighties he tried to, probably sensibly, move away from this uber-lothario image, yet I respect the fact that he spent the entire second half of the seventies making a career out of being a borderline sex pest, culminating in this ode to banging your best friend’s girl under a fake name in Mexico. And he brings ‘Dirty Weekend’ to an abrupt end inside two and a half minutes, as if fully aware that this nonsense can go on no longer.

If anything, it’s also been nice featuring some guitar-heavy, balls to the proverbial wall, rock ‘n’ roll tunes back on this blog. I’ll have to do it again sometime soon. Next time we’ll be back to the regular rundown, in 2001, where guitars have become endangered beasts, and rock music but a distant memory…

377. ‘Sailing’, by Rod Stewart

/ UK #1s blog / 17 Comments

It’s been three years since we had Rod Stewart at the top of the singles chart. Back then, he was a folky troubadour, spinning yarns about older women and long-lost lovers. The songs were acoustic, and lyrically driven, lots of mandolins and fiddles…

Sailing, by Rod Stewart (his 3rd of six #1s)

4 weeks, from 31st August – 28th September 1975

‘Sailing’, while still unmistakably a Rod Stewart song (the voice is there, for a start), is a different proposition. The lyrics now are very simple, borderline nursery rhyme: I am sailing, I am sailing, Home again, ‘Cross the sea… He’s sailing, he’s flying, he’s on his way… To be with you, To be free… It builds, it grows, until organs and a full-blown choir have been added. It’s still got those little Celtic touches that litter classic Rod Stewart songs; but it’s overblown, and more than a little ridiculous.

It’s tempting to argue that in the past three years, as Rod has become possibly the biggest pop star on the planet, he may have disappeared, somewhat, up his own behind… I’d bet that drugs were present in the recording studio when they cut this disc. ‘Sailing’ had originally been written and recorded by The Sutherland Brothers, a Scottish folk duo, and their version is much more earthy.

What saves ‘Sailing’ is the moment when, after the guitar solo, it changes to We are sailing… Suddenly it isn’t a song for a self-indulgent rock star; it’s a football crowd singalong, a last song at karaoke night, a song to bellow out as you stumble home from the pub. It definitely moves something in you, deep down, and I am right this moment crowning it the ultimate drunk singalong tune, above even ‘Delilah’ and ‘My Way’. Change my mind!

The ending came as a bit of a surprise, I have to say. I thought it just continued with the We are sailings… ad infinitum. But no, for the last thirty seconds the vocals drop away, and the strings take it home. Which means that there’s a good chance I have never actually heard this record the whole way through. It’s a sign of a song’s ubiquity, of its classic status, when you think you know it simply through cultural osmosis.

‘Sailing’ is Rod Stewart’s best-selling single in the UK, and was a huge hit around the world. Everyone knows it. I have met people from many different countries: when they find out you are Scottish, and after mentioning whisky, of course, they will wrack their brains to think of another Scottish thing. This will invariably be Rod Stewart – even though he was born in London, and never lived in Scotland – and the song they sing will invariably be ‘Sailing’. (Still, at least it’s not The Bay City Rollers.)

Just a couple of weeks ago, ‘Sailing’ featured in a French movie that I stumbled across, ‘Ete 85’, in which the climax of the film involves a boy dancing on his dead lover’s grave while listening to the song on a Walkman, having promised to do so when said lover was alive. Which is a completely melodramatic and ridiculous storyline; but then this is a ridiculous, melodramatic song, and so, in the end, pretty appropriate.