100 Best Albums Of All Time

01 Every Picture Tells a Story

02 Seems Like a Long Time

03 That’s All Right

04 Amazing Grace

05 Tomorrow Is a Long Time

06 Henry

07 Maggie May

08 Mandolin Wind

09 (I Know) I’m Losing You

10 Reason to Believe

‘We had no preconceived ideas of what we were going to do,’ said Rod Stewart in a typically disingenuous summation of the making of Every Picture Tell a Story. ‘We would have a few drinks and strum away and play. That whole album was done in 10 days, two weeks …’ The album does sound rough and ready, almost sloppy. A couple of tunes seem like afterthoughts and one track is pilfered from Stewart’s ‘day job’ band, the Faces. But the reality is that there’s a fierce ambition at work here that makes the complex look effortless and disguises the extraordinary leaps this album takes. Stewart blends traditional English ballads to American folk tunes, an obscure Bob Dylan track and then some blistering R&B and a timeless midtempo ballad into a seamless whole.

By early 1971, when this album was begun, it was three years since Stewart had given up grave digging and soccer to be a professional singer. He had made two acclaimed albums (Truth, Beck Ola) as singer for the Jeff Beck Group and two well-received solo LPs and he was the singer with the Faces. He was match fit. The team was well selected: drummer Mickey Waller, whose style was referred to as ‘the Waller Wallop’, was a devotee of Buddy Rich. The bass player was Ronnie Wood, who had become Stewart’s best mate. Guitarist Martin Quittenton and pianist Pete Sears rounded out the core ensemble.

The title track opens with acoustic guitar that crashes into one of Stewart’s best and most honest lyrics: ‘Spent some time feeling inferior/Standing in front of my mirror/Comb my hair in a thousand ways/But I came out looking just the same’. Loosely autobiographical, it’s the story of an innocent abroad told with self-deprecating humour. But the key to its charm is Waller’s drums, rolling like a thunderstorm. He pounds out the beat and then lets fly with manic fills, always keeping the mood reckless and carefree, building the pace and then dropping away.

Another Stewart classic starts the album’s second side. ‘Maggie May’ is an anecdote from Stewart’s youthful odyssey, the story of a young man seduced by an older woman. The singer dispenses with his usual bravado and laddish wordplay and delivers this song perfectly straight and it’s impossible not to be moved. The track is dominated by Quittenton’s guitar until the coda when Ray Jackson’s mandolin comes in and elevates things further. Stewart follows, and maybe even tops ‘Maggie May’ with ‘Mandolin Wind’. As Nick Hornby wrote, ‘‘‘Mandolin Wind”’ is as tender and generousspirited as anything by any of those bedsit people, and a good deal less soppy’.

Stewart’s great talent in those days was his ability to judge a song. He said at the time, ‘I look for a song that’s probably been forgotten, that no one’s done for a long time. Something that can fit my voice so I can sing it right, and something with a particularly strong melody.’ He found Bob Dylan’s ‘Tomorrow Is a Long Time’ on an obscure folk album and he found new melodies in the song that not even Dylan realised were there. He tackles ‘Amazing Grace’ and makes it his own, thanks in large part to breathtaking guitar work from Sam Marshall, and his take on Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup’s ‘That’s All Right’ matches Elvis Presley’s. There are also a couple of wellchosen folk tunes, ‘Seems Like a Long Time’ and Tim Hardin’s brilliant ‘Reason to Believe’.

Just so you know that Stewart hasn’t gone completely wet he includes a cover of the Temptations’ ‘(I Know) I’m Losing You’ recorded live at Olympic studios with the Faces. This is perhaps the Faces’ finest moment (and it’s not their album!). The sound is just huge; the ensemble playing is perfectly balanced right into Kenny Jones’ drum solo and the battle between Wood and pianist Ian McLagen takes the song out.