Rod Stewart razzled, dazzled and shimmied in place at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage on Tuesday.Tom Pandi/Supplied
Years ago, I interviewed Rod Stewart. Late getting to the phone, he got on the line and apologized. “Took a bathroom break and had to do up my trousers, mate” he said cheerily.
The Londoner is one of those entertainer types, always on. God love them.
The 80-year-old Stewart was on, and then some, at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage on Tuesday. He razzled, he dazzled; he shimmied in place, no longer up to his old struts. A lot of rasp, a little thrust − he crooned his poppiest hits in a handsomely snazzy Las Vegas-style revue.
On opening number Infatuation, a dance-rock hit from 1984, Stewart rhymed “big bass drum” with “losing all equilibrium.” Ninety peppy minutes later he closed with his cover of a Persuaders tune that was also a 1984 hit for him.
“Some guys have all the luck,” he sang, “some guys have all the pain.” Well before that point in the show it was already clear that Stewart was of the former cohort, not the latter.
The press release for the tour says that the artist, in the sixth decade of his career, is “not slowing down.” And yet the tour is called “One Last Time.” Sounds like a farewell, unofficially. A nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse, and one supposes that when it comes to Stewart’s retirement from the road his fanbase would rather be blind to that suggestion.
There’s a torch ballad about that, I’d Rather Go Blind, famously interpreted by Etta James in 1968. Stewart recorded it four years later for his excellent Never a Dull Moment album. When he sang “something deep down in my soul” in 1972, it sounded real. On stage in 2025, not even close.
A lot of rasp, a little thrust − Rod Stewart crooned his poppiest hits in a handsomely snazzy Las Vegas-style revue.Tom Pandi/Supplied
When Stewart and his capable team of accompanists performed Cat Stevens’s The First Cut Is the Deepest, the disconnect was obvious: The memorably deep expressiveness of early career Stewart had been mostly abandoned a long time ago.
Rod the Mod, for a time one of rock music’s finest singers, only skims surfaces now. Stage wear was switched often − he wore the hot pink suit well − but the mood never changed. Blondes have more fun, and Stewart is the happiest of lads today.
The throat is fine. Stewart’s bourbon-and-burlap timbre was always going to age better than the high-voiced belters of the 1970s and ’80s. Take Robin Zander of Cheap Trick, the rockers on tour with Stewart. The 72-year-old front man could have used a ladder for the high notes in an otherwise charismatic set stockpiled with such classic rock staples as I Want You to Want Me.
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Stewart also wants us to want him. Entertainers are needy that way. He’s still asking Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? (Honestly, he looks pretty good.)
Needy or not, he shared the stage. The saxophonist had his moments. Stewart departed for the band’s take on Lady Marmalade, all showtime and “gitchie, gitchie, ya-ya, da-da.”
He returned with an applause request: “How about them girls?”
Well, the “girls” were six talented singers and fiddlers and harpists and mandolinists who, with one exception, conformed to a uniform appearance: blond. Whereas the male musicians came in various shapes and sizes, their female counterparts were a parade of Britt Eklands in short, sparkly dresses with shoes to match.
The set list leaned on soft-rock crowd-pleasers such as You’re in My Heart (The Final Acclaim), a tribute to Swedish actress Ekland, a onetime flame. Stewart’s career with the Faces was represented by Ooh La La.
The sold-out crowd loved Maggie Mae but wasn’t quite on board with a cover of the O’Jays’s Love Train.
The one clunker came in the cringeworthy form of Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright). Though there were decades when soft-porn ballads with lines such as “Let me pour you a good long drink” and “Don’t deny your man’s desire” barely raised an eyebrow, the 2020s are not one of them.