From Faces to disco hits: a career built on voice and timing
Roderick David Stewart was born on January 10, 1945, in Highgate, north London, the youngest of five children. His father had come down from Edinburgh to run a newsagent and sweet shop in Archway. The family were Celtic supporters; football was the first language. Stewart played football seriously enough in his teens to trial with Brentford, before deciding that music required less discipline and more of the restlessness that was already in his character.
The early career was journeyman and instructive. He sang with the Hoochie Coochie Men, briefly with Steampacket alongside Long John Baldry and Brian Auger, and then as second singer in the Jeff Beck Group from 1967 to 1969. Two albums with Beck – Truth (1968) and Beck-Ola (1969) – introduced him to American audiences who had not heard a British voice quite like his: rough, warm, built on American blues and English folk clubs in equal measure. He was learning how to use it in large rooms.
In 1969 he joined the Faces, the band formed from the remnants of the Small Faces after Steve Marriott left for Humble Pie. Ron Wood, Ian McLagan, Kenny Jones, and Ronnie Lane completed the lineup. The Faces were a live band first: loose, beer-soaked, shambolically charming, and genuinely popular with audiences who felt the music was being played for them rather than at them. “Stay with Me” (from A Nod Is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse, 1971) caught that quality on a record. They were simultaneously one of the best touring bands in Britain and a group whose studio work never quite matched what they did on stage.
The solo career ran parallel from the beginning on a separate label, Mercury Records. “Maggie May” arrived in 1971, on side two of Every Picture Tells a Story as an afterthought, a B-side on the original UK release. It went to number one on both sides of the Atlantic after radio programmers flipped the single. The arrangement was acoustic and uncluttered: twelve-string guitar, mandolin played by Ray Jackson of Lindisfarne, and a story about an older woman and a younger man that ended without resolution. The song is still the most complete version of what Stewart could do.
Every Picture Tells a Story (1971) is the essential document. It ran from the title track, which opened with a drum figure borrowed from Sam Cooke, through acoustic folk balladry to R&B, and demonstrated that the voice could handle all of it. Never a Dull Moment (1972) was nearly as strong. The combination of Faces live work and solo recording in this period was unusual by any standard.
The pivot came with Atlantic Crossing (1975) and A Night on the Town (1976), recorded in America with larger productions and hired session bands. “Sailing,” a Sutherland Brothers composition, became an anthem. Stewart’s image shifted toward the international jet-set world he now inhabited. “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (1978) was a disco track that worked commercially and infuriated the audience who had loved “Maggie May.” The 1980s and 90s produced consistent radio fare and strong moments – “Young Turks,” “Baby Jane,” the Great American Songbook series later – without returning to the coherence of the early 70s.
The voice is the product of a specific collision: Muddy Waters absorbed young, English folk clubs in Twickenham and Richmond, London pub culture, football terrace singing, and an instinct for the right note at the cost of technical precision. It is a raspy instrument that sounds lived-in and authentic precisely because the edges have not been smoothed. The upper register is less reliable than it was, but the midrange and the timing remain intact.
Start with Every Picture Tells a Story for the complete statement of the early peak. “Maggie May” for the single that defines the voice and the character. “Stay with Me” for the Faces period in three minutes. A Night on the Town for the transition. Atlantic Crossing for “Sailing.” Beside Elton John: less piano-driven, more physically rooted in American rhythm and blues. Beside David Bowie: less conceptual, more direct, no reinvention for its own sake. What Stewart built was a persona that made sense because it was not entirely constructed.
