Rod Stewart's "Blondes Have More Fun" is a sleazy, stupid, amoral album made by an extremely talented man who threw most of it away in favor of cheap sex, peroxide and booze. In other words, a damn good choice for Guy Record from the Vault.
Far from being his best album (and just as far from his worst), "Blondes Have More Fun" is almost as honest as earlier, universally-acclaimed classics like "Gasoline Alley" and "Every Picture Tells a Story". This time, rather than a sentimental young man, the protagonist is a hardened celebrity going through a highly-publicized break-up. He's older and more aware of his proclivities, which are at odds with a genuine sincerity that informs the best of his work as a singer and songwriter.
This was Rod's big break-up album, standing alongside such classics as Marvin Gaye's "Here My Dear", Roxy Music's "Siren" and John Lennon's "Walls and Bridges". Those albums are eloquent, well-crafted statements of personal pain; therefore, they are not as good as Rod's childish, misogynistic blast in terms of expressing the blunt honesty of a failed romantic relationship. Rod's whole career seems to revolve around one ethic: fucking up with women.
Generally when a guy tells someone, "I hear you're a mean old jezebel, let's go upstairs and read my tarot cards," spiritual guidance tends to be the last thing on his mind. From his earlier days with the Faces and throughout his career, he has played the scamp, the artful dodger of British Rock. Raised poor and savoring every facet of his wild success, he worked his way through an assembly line of beautiful blonde models and actresses with alarming regularity.
His sexual myth is such that his detractors have felt the need to create an urban legend about Rod having a gallon of sperm pumped from his stomach. When I was first told this ludicrous yarn, I said, "What? You must be kidding. He could swallow two gallons, easy." As homely as Mick Jagger, Rod is slightly less flamboyant but just as charismatic. Any woman entering a relationship with him must understand that he will be unfaithful. He proudly wears his badge of lust alongside his periodically broken heart--one can seemingly not exist without the other.
In 1978, Stewart was in a strange place: Los Angeles. With a bad dye job. And a rapidly eroding image as one of the premier recording artists of the 70's. He had moved there three years earlier from England, as symbolized on the cover of his "Atlantic Crossing" album. The general assumption among fans and critics was that he had sold out, and not just geographically.
"Blondes Have More Fun" was his ninth solo album (not counting a greatest hits compilation and five albums with the Faces). His production values grew increasingly smoother, and his songwriting partners became talented session musicians like Jim Cregan and Gary Grainger, as opposed to, creative forces in their own right, ex-Faces Ron Wood and Ronnie Lane. He fell into a pattern of soft and hard sides of albums, with the hard side featuring Faces-style romps and the soft side a collection of awful-to-brilliant ballads and cover versions. The formula wasn't much different from his earlier work; it's simply that the participants and environment changed (for the worse, although not as bad as some early-Rod snobs insist), and Rod seemed uncertain of which way to go.
The lead-off track from "Blondes Have More Fun" answered that question in a hurry: "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy." Love it or hate it, Rod's #1 disco smash permanently changed the course of his career, adding an even slicker pop sheen to his already questionable image. His fans wanted "Mandolin Wind"; Rod wanted to shake his booty.
And so he did in the song's tacky video, dolled up in black eyeliner and skin-tight satin pants. The video chronicles Rod's effortless seduction of another blonde floozy in a bar, who seductively sucks on her swizzle stick while Rod wiggles his eye brows.
It was an awful moment for rock music--but necessary. With the Rolling Stones beating down the disco door with "Miss You" and the rampant success of the Bee Gees' "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack, disco had become such a force in music that nearly every major rock act, save for progressive rock dinosaurs hanging on for a slow death in the early 80's, were often coerced into a disco single by record companies foolishly believing their fans wanted this.
If the act was big enough, this wasn't a problem. The Kinks putting out an average song like "Superman" wasn't such an affront, although any rock fan hearing that incessant beat at the time either projectile vomited or turned the station. Paul McCartney was prone to such outbreaks of blatant pussiness that his disco song "Goodnight Tonight" was actually more listenable than some of his other misfires. For acts not as well established, the disco single, or the refusal to make one, was often their early death, as their fan base was so relatively small that the bands couldn't afford to offend them.
In retrospect, "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" is a good pop single. Stewart simply studied disco lyrics, recognized they all came down to dancing and sex, and structured a song accordingly. To this day, he takes too much heat for this song. The Bee Gees have since gone on to receive critical acclaim for their disco period. Even a bad disco song like Electric Light Orchestra's "Shine a Little Love" doesn't sound that offensive in the context of their work at the time.
It was simply a strange time in music. Most major rock acts either paid lip service to or ignored punk music. New wave acts like Elvis Costello were in their prime, but not succeeding commercially on the same level as rock stars, which afforded many of them a few more years of artistic credibility, assuming they lasted that long. (Blondie may have been the only new wave act to "go disco" with the brilliant "Heart of Glass"; however many fans they lost, they surely gained a thousand for each.) Disco wasn't evil, but it had rapidly become such a cliché that any hack with dollar signs in his eyes could put out the worst load of shit and watch it go Top Ten--witness Rick Dees' "Disco Duck," Ethel Merman's disco album, or the Pete Rose tribute, "The Charley Hustle."
The only other disco song on "Blondes Have More Fun" is a respectable cover of the Four Tops' "Standing in the Shadows of Love." The album is constantly referred to as Rod's "disco album" but it isn't. The rest is his formula: hard, nasty rockers and pensive ballads. In this case, many chronicle the downward slide of a failed romance, as Rod had recently split from long-time girlfriend, Swedish actress Britt Ekland. Hindsight is 20/20 (with Rod Stewart and blondes, so is foresight), but when Rod sang, "A big-bosomed lady with a Dutch accent" less than flatteringly on 1977's "You're in My Heart," we should have seen it coming. It became crystal clear with the song's video: he was singing a love song to his favorite soccer team, Glasgow's Celtic Rangers!
Rod's nadir has to be "Dirty Weekend," wherein he graphically describes a planned sleazy rendezvous in a Mexican hotel with his "best friend's girl." I'll let Rod weave his magic spell:
I'll bring the red wine you bring the ludes
Your mother's doctor must be quite a dude
We'll hang the 'Don't Disturb' outside our door
I'm gonna rock you till your pussy's sore
I guess he deserves credit for not trying to rhyme "ludes" with "pubes." The song makes the previous album's naughty hit "Hot Legs" sound like Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch." (Rod later covered that regrettable piece of shit on his "If We Fall in Love Tonight" album.)
After the one/two punch of a disco song and the above aria, Rod slowed things down with a sweet ballad, "Ain't Love a Bitch." It should be noted that he's asking a question here and not stating that he will not love an unmarried female with a child. The song is nowhere near as good as similar-sounding classics like "You Wear It Well," but it does have that whimsical quality which seemed like second nature to Rod.
Next came one of his lost gems, "The Best Days of My Life." With a melody that would have fit on the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" album, Rod lays it all out for his lost love, thanking her for their time together. It's hard to say whether this was an honorable goodbye to Britt Ekland or a love song to the next blonde in line, Alana Hamilton, ex-wife of tanned Hollywood vampire George Hamilton. Most likely, it was Rod singing to a mirror. Whatever the case, it was one of the last gasps of the classic Stewart sound before he succumbed to 80's synth pop on his next album, "Foolish Behaviour".
With all niceties out of the way, Rod got down to business on "Is That the Thanks I Get?" For all the warm charity summoned on the previous song, he reached way down and pulled out his gut feelings of hurt and anger. Never before or since had Rod explored feelings this harsh, and for this alone the song stands as one of the better break-up songs ever recorded. The melody ambles along on a lazy beat and exudes a bitter sense of calm after the storm. Some sample lyrics:
With your lawyers and your two-timing friends
I guess you know who I mean
Your detectives and your private eyes
could never win me back again
Just where did it get ya
What satisfaction was had
You kicked the shit right in my face
Is that all the thanks I get?
Perhaps spooking himself with such blatant honesty, Rod retreated into the goofball horniness of "Attractive Female Wanted." With a camp melody and his backing band whispering the title after each line, Rod let loose with such gems as "I've been lonely too long/all of my family think I'm gay" in between pining for centerfolds. The irony of it all is his celebrity has allowed him to be a phone call away from those centerfolds, and he has cavorted with more than a few over the years. It's this kind of phony self-pity that puts a weird twist on the album. On one hand you want to slap him on the back for having such a good sense of humor about his situation; on the other, you want to slap his face for coasting on his talent.
"Blondes (Have More Fun)" was Rod's last great rock song, with a memorable opening riff that simply underlines the irony that he's a dyed blonde, and his dogged attraction to blondes, real or otherwise, has given him loads of grief throughout his adult life. The implied message of this song and the album: more fun needs more misery to balance it out.
The rest of the album should have been b-sides. There's the aforementioned "Standing in the Shadows of Love"; "Last Summer," a forgettable, lightweight ballad; and "Scarred and Scared" a truly awful song wherein Rod imagines himself as a man sentenced to die for murder.
The album is a maddening mix of the best and worst of Rod Stewart. It's true that he sold out. The album cover itself--Rod grab-assing an anonymous raven-haired tart in a leopard-skin leotard on the front and nuzzling with Alana Hamilton on the back--was a sign that his "bad boy" image had taken over. The genius of his earlier solo work and albums with the Faces was that this image played a lesser role to the kind of material (like "Every Picture Tells a Story" or ""Gasoline Alley"") that proved he was functioning on a level most artists can't reach. Rank blow-outs like "Stay with Me" were a playful respite from his softer folk and country-influenced songs; they were never meant to become his bedrock image. It was this not-so-subtle shift that fans were upset with more than the music itself.
With songs like "Young Turks" and "Passion" leading the way into the 80's, Rod totally gave himself over to synth pop, which was simply the sound of the time, and he consciously down-shifted from any earlier aspirations of greatness. It would be wrong to say this work is totally invalid--it simply functions on a different level, albeit an arguably lesser one in terms of his potential.
What might have been for Rod Stewart is hard to figure, as what was still made him into a superstar who sells out arenas everywhere he plays. Everyone who bemoans his artistic downfall must also realize he couldn't go on making that same style of music forever. Then again, I wouldn't argue with anyone who pointed out that he never reached the same level of excellence with the new styles he explored.
"Blondes Have More Fun" is the final, struggling chapter of his early greatness. It's the moment where he kissed it goodbye, offering glimpses of what he was capable of, and pointing at the more pop direction he was already headed towards. He can still manage the occasional great single, like his celticized 1998 remake of the Faces classic "Ooh La La," but it's hard to imagine him ever again putting out an album rivaling his early work. It's about as likely as him dating Kathy Bates.
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