Rod Stewart – Absolutely Live

This live album assembles the best known Sir Roderick CBE's songs up at that time and just sums up in a definitive way his period of relevance for pop rock music. Liner notes stress out how these live recordings are raw as they are authentic, with no overdubs, no editing of performing mistakes, no tamper of audience response and maintain clear report of female stage invaders. However the overall quality is a bit flat and the sound quite muffled, so maybe Rod the Mod should have not retained for himself the producing and mixing duties. In the end this live 'outing' could have just remained an 'internal' for the Stewart's camp, because a release should have required a better care or a reason wider than just a celebration of the star that goes meet and greet with his audience, resulting an audio experience filled with extended singalongs of the singer repertoire and the band kicked a bit too far in the listening background. Despite that, all the hits are here, from the rousing rockers and rollers ("Sweet little rock and roller", "Hot legs", "Little queenie", "Tear it up"), to the beautiful big hits ballads ("Tonight's the night", "You're in my heart", "Maggie May", "Sailing") and the (by then) latest ventures in that pop/new wave/disco mixture ("Tonight I'm yours", "Passion", "Young turks", "Da ya think I'm sexy?") that also the Stones were trying at the time (starting from the "Emotional rescue" lp, from which "Dance pt. 1" was clearly reworked by Rod creating "Passion"). There's even room for resurrect old numbers from the Jeff Beck Group and Faces days ("Rock my plimsoul" and "Stay with me" respectively) and an embarassing cover of the Platters' classic "The great pretender" (with no surprise excluded from the cd version of this live album), that's an incredibly hard song to perform (it will be tackled more graciously later on in the decade by Rod's dear friend Freddie Mercury). The best bits are a mellowed relaxed rendition of Stewart's solo career golden age hymn "Gasoline alley" and a hot infectious lead vocals terzetto version of Faces' "Stay with me" featuring Kim Carnes and Tina Turner. 3 stars out of 5.