The Rockaliser 30: Rod Stewart, Never A Dull Moment (1972)

[Welcome To the Rockaliser 30, a month-long series devoted to classic albums that have been eclipsed, forgotten, misheard, or otherwise not given their propers. This is Day Twenty Four. Archive here.]

Throughout Never A Dull Moment, Rod Stewart cuts a meek figure. His characters are lonely lads, sitting around catching colds in towns where they don't belong. He sings like he’s Jagger’s younger brother--a scruffy and eager kid. Like Mick, Rod is a great interpreter--here he covers Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Sam Cooke, and Etta James, finding a home in their forlorn tunes even as his narrators drift. (Etta James loved Rod’s “I’d Rather Go Blind”; we’ll never know what Cooke or Hendrix thought, but he does Bob proud on a definitive “Mama You’ve Been On My Mind.)

On Never, Rod has the same problem on nearly every song--girls he can’t get over. Fictional Rod gets in these spots because he’s so damn indecisive. “I’m not asking you to say yes or no, please understand me,” he sputters on Dylan’s “Mama You Been On My Mind.” In opener “True Blue,” Stewart begs “please can you make up my mind?”

It’s a persona at odds with most of what Stewart projected publicly (a few fine albums excepted), but one in keeping with his 1971 solo breakthrough, Every Picture Tells A Story. That album featured a hapless young man stranded in an affair with Maggie Mae, and brought Stewart his first huge hit as a solo star.

For Never A Dull Moment, the follow-up, he works from the same blueprint. This is a harder-edged version of Every Picture’s folk-rock. The tunes, half of them originals, are gorgeously played. Ron Wood, who co-wrote most of the originals, is scrappy throughout. On the Hendrix cover “Angel,” Wood summons the pub-rock spirit inside Jimi’s riff.

The other musicians--a rotating cast, including several members of Stewart and Wood’s group The Faces--find the warm, wistful heart in these tunes. Fiddle, organ, and accordion all age these tracks, giving them the sharpness of a fine whiskey. But it’s Stewart who makes them worth endlessly revisiting. His raspy voice is as loose and assured as his narrators are adrift.

Of Stewart’s transformation into a megastar, Greil Marcus has remarked “If it was necessary to become a great artist in order to get the money to spend and the stars to fuck, well, Rod was willing.” On Never A Dull Moment Stewart is a great artist, just starting his journey towards those reviled, sometimes catchy pop hits. But the stories he sings on this album aren’t about having money or girls. They’re about building up a lot of regrets in a few short years, and on Never, Stewart sells every word.

Rock & Taxes: A Treasury of the Whiny Rich

The tax man's taken all my dough,
And left me in my stately home,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
And I can't sail my yacht,
He's taken everything I've got,
All I've got's this sunny afternoon. 

So sang The Kinks' Ray Davies in 1966, in "Sunny Afternoon." That was the same year that George Harrison kvetched about the taxman taking 95% of his income. There was quite a bit of artistic license in these gripes from newly wealthy rock stars.

It turns out Davies and Harrison weren't the only classic rock legends with money on their mind. Indeed, nearly every British classic rock band of the 60's and 70's has tussled with taxes in song or in their lives. It's astounding, actually, the lengths to which these groups--all of these groups--went to complain about paying taxes and protect their assets.

For a genre that reveled in revolutions in consciousness, politics and sex, it was an unusually conservative stance. In more ways than one, these guys had regressive attitudes towards tax policy.

Many of these acts were happy to take on the mantle of the working man. They just didn't want to help pay for his health care, his children's education, or his public transit. And why would they, when there were mansions to buy. So who were these tax-averse Brits?

• The Beatles--George Harrison's "Taxman" has become an iconic song to American conservatives, and not for its richeous Paul McCartney guitar solo. Bob Dole used it in his 1996 campaign, and online you can find organizations like Americans for Tax Reform claiming that taxes broke up the Beatles. Harrison and Ringo Starr both chose to leave the UK in the 1970s as "tax exiles."
• The Rolling Stones--The Stones fled England in the early 70's, penniless, to escape onerous british taxes. That's the story Mick and Keith tell about how the Stones wound up recording their 1973 classic Exile On Main Street in a French Chateau. But, if the Stones ever had real problems with taxes, those days are long behind them. Between 1986 and 2006 they paid just 1.6 percent in tax on hundreds of millions of pounds in income.
• Rod Stewart--Probably the second most famous tax exile on this list. Stewart's "Atlantic crossing" to Los Angeles came as his solo success eclipsed The Faces' profile. According to Stewart, taxes had made it "not worth living in England any more." 
• Pink Floyd--The Floyd spent the entirety of 1978 abroad, for tax purposes. This seems to have been a more important concern than visiting Syd Barrett. Roger Waters has changed his tune on taxation since, and is currently promoting himself as a pro-Occupy musician.
• Led Zeppelin--Taking their accountants' advice, Led Zep left the UK for 1975 as tax exiles. During this time, Jimmy Page would screen his answers to questions in interviews, to make sure they didn't jepordize his tax status. And Robert Plant was whisked out of the country shortly after a serious car accident, so that Led Zep's tax status wasn't affected.
• The Who--The quartet went on their own 1970s tax exile. Bassist John Entwistle's song "Success Story" contained the lyrics: "Away for the weekend/I've gotta play some one-night stands/Six for the tax man and one for the band." Sounding a different note, Roger Daltry recently criticized U2's efforts to dodge taxes in Ireland.
• David Bowie--Bowie kicked off his "Berlin period" by moving to Switzerland--a decision motivated, in part, by the desire to avoid British tax rates.

This is hardly a complete list. The next generation, including Sting, Phil Collins, Ozzy Osbourne and Queen, carried on the tradition of tax-dodging. More recently, Adele claimed her tax bill made her want to "go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."

So what is it with Brits and taxes? American musicians haven't made a similar stink about taxes, and anti-tax sentiment is far higher in the US.* Of course, British tax rates are somewhat higher. But structuring your life to avoid paying taxes--as all the above artists have done--is about the least rock and roll thing you can do. Seriously, even Drake is cooler on the subject of taxes than Jagger, Bowie or Page.

In a definitive article on this subject, Simon Firth chides tax exiles for not taking advantage of a great number of options for reducing their tax bills in the UK. He also makes the point that taxes apparently don't pose a threat to artistic innovation, as free market fetishists might claim.

And let's talk about that term--tax exile. Exile is a strong word. Musicians have been exiles before: Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil had to leave their native Brazil for England, to escape political persecuption. Arnold Schoenberg was driven from Germany by the Nazis. These are not remotely similar to the situation that Led Zeppelin faced. Tax exile is a histrionic turn of phrase for millionaires who want to keep more money to themselves. These wealthy Brits haven't been persecuted or exiled out of principle. They were just greedy.

*American musicians do complain, sometimes. Take Big Boi's verse in "Gasoline Dreams," where he complains that even though he has the key to the city, "I still got to pay my taxes and they give us no pity."

Trip To The Store

Temporarily in possession of a car last Tuesday, and without much to do, I drove myself to Minneapolis' Cheapo Records. There's a Cheapo four blocks from my apartment in St. Paul, but the Minneapolis branch is bigger, cooler, and, crucially, has a basement "Viynltopia." I blew an afternoon and a few dollars there, here's what I found:

•Isaac Hayes, The Isaac Hayes Movement--Ike's at the height of his powers on this album of four lengthy covers. As a songwriter, he's part proto-hop-hip visionary, part master arranger and interpreter. He picks apart his source material, shuffling around and recombining an original's lyrics, melodies, and rhythms with his own words and arrangements. He often sees enough in a song to stretch it to three or four times its original running length. Accordingly, the bittersweet album opener "I Stand Accused" gains a five-minute spoken word intro in which Ike, speaking to his best friend's fiancee, says everything but what he really means--that he's in love with her. As the song transitions from the intro to the bulk of the tune, the sparse drums, piano, and guitar gradually gain strings, horns, and a gospel choir in a build that would make Jason Pierce jealous. Jerry Butler's lyrics, as sung by Hayes, are an affecting and desperate plea for love, all the more potent for following the Hayes-penned monologue.

The rest of the album is hardly a let-down. Side one's other track, "One Big Unhappy Family," can't quite compete with the twelve-minute "Accused," but Hayes' baritone sounds wounded there as well, and carries the song. As an interpretive vocalist, his only true contemporary was Rod Stewart (who the same year would release his great, mostly-covers album Gasoline Alley). Side two begins with the Bacharach/David tune "I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself." I hear it as the lament of "I Stand Accused"'s protagonist, after he wins and then loses the girl. The song's been drastically reconfigured, at least in comparison to the (also excellent) White Stripes cover I know, with an oddly lovely passage that features the gospel choir singing "Don't know what to do" in progressively higher registers.

The album closes with a 11:45 cover of The Beatles' "Something." While the guitar sounds eerily like George Harrison's, the song's sufficiently different to discourage comparison: let's just say they're both gorgeous. John Blair's contributions on violin nearly steal the song. 5/5

•Low, "Santa's Coming Over b/w The Coming Of Jah"--Low's eerie UK-only Christmas single from last year. The packaging's cool--you can barely make out Low's name on the all-white cover--and the song's a grower. Creepy, quiet verses erupt into loud, nervous choruses. Deeply unsettling, even for Low. The b-side, a cover, is an attempt to merge Low's sound with reggae, a genre Alan's been name-checking for a while. It doesn't quite succeed, and that Al and Mimi invited their grade-school children to sing on the track doesn't help. 4/5

•R.E.M., "Radio Song b/w Love Is All Around"--The song's got it's haters, but I've always enjoyed the upbeat, KRS-One-featuring "Radio Song." I bought this for the b-side, however, and I dig it. Mike Mills' vocals and Peter Buck's guitar render this delicate song even more fragile. Not as good as The Troggs version, still cool. 4/5

•Charlotte Hatherley, "Summer b/w Commodore, S.M.U.T."--Hatherley's "White" is one of the best songs of 2009, and I enjoyed what I heard of 2007's The Deep Blue. "Summer" is culled from her first solo album. Power-pop sadly bereft of the fluid guitar work she's capable of, the A-side is enjoyable enough. The two b-sides are forgettable. 3/5

•David Vandervelde, "Jacket b/w Murder in Michigan"--Vandervelde has a serious Marc Bolan fixation, but since when was that a crime? I bought this because it was cheap and had loved another T. Rex-biting tune of Vandervelde's, the towering, youthful "Nothin' No." "Jacket" works the same angle, to awesome, glam-tastic effect. The b-side is more "Ride A White Swan" than "Jeepster", and less fun. 4/5