“Smiler suffered a poor critical reception mostly because Rod Stewart’s first four solo albums — The Rod Stewart Album, Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells A Story and Never a Dull Moment — were of such high quality. Stewart had nowhere to go but down.”
The fifth studio album in only five years, and - attesting to the above quotation from Apple Music - was a massive step down in what was to be expected from the next superstar of rock and roll. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but compare it to a single project (sans maybe Steampacket) he had been involved with and this album does not hold a flame. Funny enough it's chock full of things that were tailor-made to make it a hit, but the thing about Rod Stewart is the second he tries is the second he fails. To become a hitmaker was not in his cards, he was simply supposed to be rock and rolls resident best crooner and wordy lyricist. But, diving into Smiler showcases exactly why that didn’t happen.
Smiler was originally supposed to be released in about March of 1974… the late September release date was a result of the push and pull between Warner and Mercury - the latter having the rights to Stewart and the former Faces. Stuck in release hell for months, the album was probably received poorly because of that. The main band comprises of Stewart on vocals, and writer of three whole songs, Ronnie Wood on guitar (acoustic and electric) as well as bass, co-writer of two whole songs, and fellow Faces Ian McLagen and Kenney Jones make appearances. There’s also common Stewart collaborators Martin Quittenton and Micky Waller, as well as Willie Weeks and Spike Heatley on bass, Pete Sears on piano, and Andy Newmark on drums. There’s also appearances from The Memphis Horns and Tropic Isles Steel Band. Oh, and Ray Cooper, Elton John, and Paul McCartney make appearances.
The gatefold of the Smiler LP, featuring most of the band on the album; Noteable collaboraters from L to R include percussionist Ray Copper, guitarist Ronnie Wood (and his parents), pianist Ian McLagen, Stewart, drummer Micky Waller (and his dog,Zak), and the Tropic Isles Steel Band.
The album's cover is - apologies - tacky. It's a portrait of Stewart in some sort of silk suit that would become his signature costume for the foreseeable future. Ronnie Wood has said in interviews Mick Jagger would poke fun at the outfits, calling them pajamas behind Stewart’s back and only adding a certain layer of animosity and jealousy between the two that was already beginning to fuel fires soon to be raging. The photo is edited to look like a brooch on a tartan scarf (homage to Stewart’s Scottish pride), and overall lacks the certain flair that other covers of his had to the point.
“He [Mick] used to come along to Faces gigs, and hide behind the amps. I used to say, 'What are you doing, Mick?' and he’d say 'I want to see what color pajamas Rod’s wearing tonight.' Rod used to wear these stripey, silky numbers and feather boas and everything, ‘See what she’s wearing tonight, dear?’” - Ronnie Wood, 2023 NME interview
The album starts with the cover of a Chuck Berry classic, that being Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller and boy, is it perfect showcase of how exactly Stewart was seen as such a threat to his much more established colleagues. A Berry cover is far from anything original or new in the grand scheme of the British rock stars of the time, the kids raised on his music and forever indebted to the pioneer of true rock and roll music, but a Berry cover in the hands of Rod Stewart? The thing about Chuck Berry is what is so admired about him, his pieces were so perfectly honed the first time, so completely understood that the only cover one could do is an exact replica, albeit with a certain flair of their own style. However, the thing about Stewart’s covers is the way each song takes on a completely new and exciting life within the world. While some get on him for leaning so far into his cover work after proving himself as such a unique and talented writer, it cannot be overlooked how much work his covers actually took. Many times the arrangements would be switched around to fit his voice and image more accurately, take his cover of the Stones Street Fighting Man as a perfect example of this. The song, by all accounts, is perfect in the Stones version, could not be delivered by a single voice other than Mick Jagger, the loud music showcasing the confusion youth were living and creating an atmosphere of unrest with nothing more than words and music. Not even a year later Stewart would release his version, talking in 2013 about his decision stating: “There was a point to it. I loved the Stones song to bits, but it always frustrated me that you couldn’t hear the words better. The lyrics are brilliant, but they got chewed up a bit in the noise. It was nice to do an arrangement of the song that brought the words to the front. And was sung by a proper singer. (Only joking.)”
While cover artists often get by doing color-by-numbers versions of already great songs, Stewart dissects the songs in an almost calculated way. Taking what he likes, discarding what he doesn't, adding his own spin on it. It’s not the typical approach, but its what makes Stewart’s covers so interesting and different from what others do, a key to success that he not only hid but actively played down in this time. Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller as an album cut is great, but in the live setting, especially during the last few tours with Faces, is when the song truly took off as it’s own entity. A version with Berry’s most loyal disciple, the ever present Keith Richards, may just be the best the song ever sounded in this rendition.
Lochinvar is an instrumental piece written by Peter Sears, and leads right into Farewell, one half of a double A-side single from the album. Farewell was written by Stewart and Martin Quittenton, who had also collaborated on past hits Maggie May and You Wear it Well. Farewell was a success in the UK but a more or less flop in the US, not even peaking. The song is an melancholic yet positive goodbye, the perfect foil to Every Picture Tells a Story and it’s story of a boy running from home in search of those who understand. Fare thee well my brother, please don’t stand in my way / I’m going down to that dirty town no matter what you say / You fooled me and you ruled me and played in every part / I gotta go, it’s no use in
me staying home. The song, in many ways, is a love letter to fame and it’s heartbreak, how to become what you want you must jump from the nest despite the protection said nest gives one. Gonna be a star someday no matter what they say / When you hear the crowds all calling and shouting my name / Until then, my little friend, I’ll be unsatisfied. The song evokes the same feelings as the scene of Tiny Dancer in Almost Famous - how the lack of a house doesn’t equate to the lack of a home, how the scary and uncertain life of the stage and performance is the calling that cannot be replicated in any half measures. I’ll miss you all, even if you try to hold me back. The verse pointed towards the family at large illustrates the most autobiographical portrait of the song, The stage is set so understand I can’t hide in the wings no more. There’s a story Jeff Beck would tell of the earliest show of The Jeff Beck Group, Stewart’s first “successful” group, where Stewart would hide behind speakers in fear of the North American audiences, singing from the shadows while Beck would try to convince the crowd they had a singer. Obviously, the stage fright would escape shortly, making way for a song like Farewell to take place in such an earnest way, the description in conservative words about the high of life given once on top of the world. The story ends tongue and cheek, You won’t get no mail now, you know I’m in jail - Convincing of the fears whilst reveling in the uncertainty. Sailor brings the mood back to the typical nonsense you’d expect of Stewart and Ron Wood when tasked with songwriting, telling the outlandish story of a man running from his wedding - I ran to the door / Damned if I was skippin' on my way - and follows the typical misogynistic trope you’d expect it to. The poor man’s Dear Doctor, if you will.
Stewart went back to his “roots” with the next song, a medley of Sam Cooke classics creating track five, Bring It On Home to Me/You Send Me. Stewart has never been shy of his influences, in particular his love of Cooke has always been on full display. He wrote in 2021 of Cooke, “My one and only influence. How many thousands of hours I spent trying to sound like you and never came close. Without Sam, there may not have been a Rod.” The
medley here showcases this admiration, taking two of Cookes most beloved pieces. Oftentimes, Stewart’s voice struggles to sound gentle, a crooner with no sense of volume. Already covering his talent of taking a song and molding it into what’s best for his voice, the medley in his hands comes across as a joyous celebration of Sam Cooke. Released ten years after Cookes untimely death, there’s a certain happiness found within the interpretation of these songs. Taken from beautiful ballads, ones where a lyric like I know I laughed when you left / But now I know I only hurt myself can go from a lyric of pain to sung with a smile. There’s something in this cover that is missing from more than a few others on the same album, the sense of singularity to Stewart and rejuvenation of a classic that is different enough yet respectful to its already perfect classic. Let Me Be Your Car is a Elton John and Bernie Taupin piece, written during their era of unmatched creative output. Is it the best of the duo's work? Far from it, but this is one of the few times we get to hear John and Stewart properly recorded for an album (even if the production work makes it near impossible to hear any of the lyrics), and that alone makes it a gem. The song is, in my opinion, a perfect example of how when Taupin was tasked with nonsensical writing he could not hit out of the park. One of the joys of his work is how inspired his stories were, how everything means something and can be viewed through an analytical lens. How a piece like Crocodile Rock, stupid as it is, is still a commentary on how the changing times harm those they pass through (Learning fast as the weeks went past / We really thought the Crocodile Rock would last). However, Let Me Be Your Car is still begrudgingly enjoyable, another throwback to 50s rock classics with a metaphor so obvious that you question why a metaphor was even used. You say I'm just a specimen, and baby I can crawl / My physique just don't look the way the physiques really should / But then again I've got an engine underneath my hood. I think John’s piano solo is what really carries the song, as well as Ronnie Wood’s phenomenal opening riff, truly showcasing how each could save any song, and together are unstoppable. Unfortunately there is no live performance of the song (and likely never will be), but Stewart and John would team up again in 1974 to do yet another performance with poorly produced vocals. At John’s football club, Watford, he did a show dressed like a bumblebee and invited Stewart to perform a rendition of a few songs, namely Country Comfort, a John/Taupin composition Stewart had covered on one of his first albums. Stewart’s microphone wasn’t working properly, but he proceeded to perform the entire song despite. John would say of the performance in 2024, “It [the show] was loads of fun, especially as Rod joined me onstage about halfway through the show. It was so generous of him to come out. [..] Rod performed three songs with the band and me in the middle of my set. The crowd screamed as he appeared. He sounded brilliant. Rod and I have had an up-and-down relationship over the years but he is good fun on stage.”
John and Stewart at Watford Football Club for their May 1974 performance, photograhs by Watal Asanuma; They would perform a renditions of Country Comfort, Sweet Little Rock 'n' Roller, and Angel.
To cover Aretha Franklin is a step towards disaster. To cover Aretha Franklin as a man is a leap towards disaster. In all honesty, Stewart doesn’t do terribly on (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Man, but it was never bound to be a great song in the hands of someone who should’ve never touched it. Here is where the pitfalls of Smiler - and Stewart as an artist - start to reveal themselves rapidly. For a few years, there was no one to rival the chunk of real
estate Stewart had carved for himself, someone who could be liked for his bad behavior by the young and enjoyed for his talents by the older, who had introduced a generation to classic tunes that inspired him and created standards of his time, juggling the idea of the quintessential rock and roll frontman while still being able to sit as a singer-songwriter on the sidelines for his solo career. Make that clear, while Stewart did view his solo work as above Faces output, he never treated it as such. Said it, yes, but toured as a unit and performed his songs as mere compensation for the people who ended up at Faces show to hear a ballad of pain now being sung out by a man with a fluorescent feather boa tied around his waist and a bottle of whiskey in his hand, the far cry from the man painted upon album covers, sitting politely in a three piece suit reimagining the idea of the songwriter with each breath. To walk that line has proven to be impossible by every person who has staggered across it in the years since, but to be the first? To be the first to play the role of two different artists, working a schedule that changes at breakneck speeds hailed for your work being different as you’re accused of stealing by bandmates who are attempting to stage a coup behind your back as you record another album bound to go number one. At what point does the benefit of the doubt start to
appear, looming like a cloud over work that is by all accounts a step down? At 29, how do you continue a streak of ten stellar albums in a row, all of which required a change of genre, writing style, and tone? At what point do you sit back and do what you want? To record favorite songs in your own style, to write nothing songs with your friends? To use the goodwill you’ve garnered after working toward it for most of your adult life to just… do whatever you want? Perhaps Smiler is bad, it’s a shell of the artist Stewart had proven himself to be, but consider this: it's just not working toward anything. Every album had been progressing Stewart to this point: Truth proved him a formidable singer, Every Picture Tells A Story showcased a songwriter unfazed by structure, A Nod Is As Good As A Wink... To A Blind Horse proof that he could do rock and roll just as good as anyone before him, and Never A Dull Moment proof that the voice of generation is to be aged like fine wine before added to respected standards, and Smiler? Well, you still have phenomenal songwriting, a handful of worthy covers, and most of all it’s helmed by someone aware of just how good they are. It’s nothing, but it’s good nothing. Not offensively bad, just not surprisingly good. Perhaps this is where Stewart chose to remain, after working toward respected acclaim around the clock for six years straight, can you blame someone who just wants to do whatever the hell they want simply because they can? Dixie Toot, written by Stewart and Wood who had been in tandem those whole six years, attests to some of these points in their normal irrelevant way: It's been so long since I had a good time, I'm gonna lose control of my powers / I might even lose my trousers / Smash some glass, act like trash if I want / Wear a skirt, be a flirt if I want / 'Cause it's been so long since I had a good time / This prodigal man from Dixieland needs a good time. While I doubt that fame and fortune were hard for either to adapt to, this song introduces the idea that even if the bad behavior rock and roll became
synonymous with is upheld, masking horrible actions under the guise of “boys will be boys”, that having a good time while under increasing scrutiny about making another classic is not all it’s cracked up to be. Keith Richards spoke of this in 1973, “You put a record out and then you get the feeling everybody’s disappointed with it. Then two years later you bring another record out and you suddenly realize that they’re all holding this other record up and saying, ‘If only it was as good as this one.’ And I know it’s not because we’re ahead of our time, because that’s not ever what we’re trying to do. It’s not avant-garde, no, that’s not it, it’s just that when you’ve been around as long as we have, people have got their own fixed idea of what they want from the Stones and it’s never anything new. A lot of the time with records it’s the experiences that people have been through while that record’s been playing that make it special to them. Although they’re interested and they’ll buy the new record, it doesn’t mean as much to them as the one they heard that magical night when they screwed fifteen chicks" He gets sidetracked toward the end, but the point of scrutiny stands. How to be a rockstar at the time was to know everyone was going to hate your album upon release as they judged every move you made, before suddenly loving all those things the second you change - I took my luck, I didn't give a fuck, I had a good time / Tell all my friends only all my best to have a good time.
Hard Road is a Faces song, only thing missing is being released as a Faces title. Ian McLagen gives these glorious keyboard parts at the beginning, followed by this unmistakably Wood guitar. It showcases Wood a lot, actually, more than most of the album. The last collaboration between the two till 1993, it’s songs like Hard Road that illustrate this loss for the audience. The work between the two was effortlessly good, bringing out the best in each other and seemingly tying each other to reality when it was ever so easy to blow away in those years. After this, Stewart would lean into balladry, Wood would comment on how different he would become, how the face the portrait was painted upon was nothing like the artist he once knew. Wood would go on to be in the Stones, tales of debauchery would start to follow him and he would become one of the longest surviving characters in their extensive run, with Stewart claiming he was stolen from him and his guitar player was permanently on loan without his permission. The song sounds very of its time, sounds like a generic rock song of 1974, in line with the releases of it’s day while not standing apart in any real way, be that good or bad. Another instrumental interlude that leads into the following song, there is is I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face. Similar to the Sam Cooke cover being an ode to one of Stewart’s biggest inspirations, Girl from the North Country is an ode to another, Bob Dylan. This is far from the first time Stewart had done a
cover of a Dylan song, a few standouts include Faces first LP First Step and a superb cover of Wicked Messenger as it’s opener and this album’s predecessor, Never a Dull Moment, featured a cover of Mama, You’ve Been on My Mind. Unfortunately, similar to Natural Man, this cover struggles to make any sense or really prove itself. It’s not bad, it’s just unremarkable, something that is arguably harder to do when you have the talent to cover pretty much any song. Stewart’s former girlfriend, Johanna Lumely, has said the cover was done for her, how one morning she had been awoken by Stewart to him singing the song and dedicating it to her because of her love of Dylan. Sweet story, but still doesn’t make it easy to overlook the lack of inspiration in this cover.
“I’ll never do a cover version unless I think I can do it better than the original.” - Rod Stewart to Creem magazine, 1974
Mine For Me closes the album on an incredible note. Written by Paul and Linda McCartney, the song came about out of pure spite of both parties. During a press conference to promote Wings most recent tour, Paul was asked why he was still writing songs for Ringo Starr if he was so firm in his anti-Beatles outlook, to which he responded, “I would do it for any friend. I would do it for Rod Stewart if he rang up.” to which Stewart… rang him up, seeing how firm he was to his word. Paul would give Stewart Mine For Me, stating to the press about the song in 1974, “It was just the result of another drunken night, I suppose. It’s nice to write for someone like Rod, because he’s got such a distinctive voice. You can hear him singing it as you are doing it. Certain people… well, they are just a bit boring, and you
write boring songs for them.” Mine For Me is anything but boring, even if its topic is less than revolutionary. Following a musician’s thoughts as he returns home from his duties, the opening verse starts with gentle steel drums, In a couple of hours I'll be drivin' home to the one I love / So save your breath, sweet painted lady, it won't be me / Over the mountain and under the sea / They'll never be another one like mine for me / It was only an hour or so ago that I sang my song, persuaded painted ladies that I could say I'd been free. The idea of a musician being tempted on the road is far from a crazy idea, one of the most common pitfalls of the job one may say, but a song about turning temptation away to return to the woman at home is a crazy concept to hear from a rock star circa the mid-1970s. Mine is always, mine is grand / Don’t you know the woman that loves me, she understands / Can’t you see that it’s mine for me? The lyric is read in a snarky tone, sounding as if the narrator is so proud of his girl, disparaging anyone who doesn’t know her. There’ll never be another one like mine for me, so clearly a song about Linda McCartney it’s almost a shame Paul never recorded it solo for her. Paul’s high notes are also great on this, sounding just as good as the classic Beatles days. The song's nautical instrumentation sets it apart from the rest on a musical front, bringing the listener to the seaside not in word but in sound. Paul and Linda can be heard on the backing vocals and their harmony with Stewart is amazing - exactly what was lacking in some Wings songs as it was with Faces. The powerful vocal and attempt at soft delivery from Stewart with the McCartney’s doing a cavity-inducing sweet sing-song behind him. It’s subtle, you can barely hear the McCartneys as Stewart’s delivery swallows them up but when you can it adds a layer to the song, a depth that makes it feel less like a song pawned to another singer and more so a fully fledged artistic rendition of a song by it’s one true auteur. Paul and Linda would find themselves at a Faces show later in the year, and Stewart would encourage them on stage for a rendition of Mine For Me, that just perfectly illustrates it’s subtle perfection even if it’s slightly drunken and also incredibly under-rehearsed.
Linda McCartney, Rod Stewart, and Paul McCartney backstage at a show in 1974, photographed by Ian Dickinson
Smiler was in many ways the end of Rod Stewart as he was known. It was the last glimmer of Faces in the studio, the final album after twelve collaborations of the Rod Stewart-Ronnie Wood partnership. There was a moment, in the mid-1970s, that Rod Stewart was known as a jack of most trades, master of some. To be a glam rock icon, a balladeer with no contemporary, a song writer unlike any other, an artist so effortlessly talented he was the leader of one of the most successful touring outfits of his day while carrying on with one of the most unique album runs to be seen by a solo artists of his time. He was posh without being snooty, rude without being mean, and respected by his idols while being hated for being everything they never could. To carry on like that would've ensured a short career - to not change with the times would already be unlike the man who was changing every single. Maybe he began to play it safe, but after being so ahead of the game it would take the most almost a decade to catch up, who wouldn't?
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