1977 Rod Stewart: I Don't Want To Talk About It/The First Cut Is The Deepest

A double A side, but in truth both tracks are the left and right feet of a pair of very comfy slippers for the boy Stewart. It's coals to Newcastle; Rod has always had a keen ear for interpreting of other people's songs and any half arsed singer could make either of these pair listenable. And whatever else Rod Stewart may be, a half arsed singer he is not.

Originally appearing on 1975's 'Atlantic Crossing', Rod's version of Danny Whitten's 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' benefits immeasurably from a thick Muscle Shoals production and Rod has sense enough to sing just underneath the backing instead of going at it full throttle, giving the affecting lyrics the room they need. It's not a song that welcomes bombast and Stewart gives it none though the overbearing saxophone solo that tries to usher in the eighties three years early is more intrusive than it need be and ends the song almost mid-sentence with no sense of closure.

Though recorded a year later, 'The First Cut Is The Deepest' was a product of the same studios, albeit with a sharper sound all round. Again, Stewart reins in Cat Steven's lyric of emotional anguish ("Cause when it comes to being lucky, she's cursed") and casts it in a more wistful tone of wariness rather than the outright emotional rebellion at the thought of a new relationship that PP Arnold brought to the song; she makes being alone sound like a choice while Stewart makes it sound an inevitable circumstance born out of fear.

So, two good songs, two good cover versions - fine as far as it goes, but neither are great and in truth this is a lazy release at heart, a cherry picking of Rod's patchy recent output that tries to remind his old fans that underneath all the wealth, fame and supermodel girlfriends, he still knew how to hurt along with the best of us.

But I can't leave it there.

On December 14 1976, the Sex Pistols were due to play a concert at Cardiff's Top Rank. That show (as were so many others on the Anarchy tour) was cancelled and the venue switched to a cinema in nearby Caerphilly. When the band rolled into town they were met by a crowd of picketing Christians who sang hymns outside while the band played. One of the 'congregation' was interviewed by a BBC news reporter and he gave a soundbite to the effect "I'd let my daughter go and see Rod Stewart, but I wouldn't let her come and see something like this". One view maybe, but somebody else had a similar idea.

According to the figures, 'God Save The Queen' outsold Rod Stewart's single by a considerable margin and should have been number one in the Queen's jubilee week. But it wasn't. Remarkable enough really that it even got to number two - no mean feat for a single you could neither hear nor buy. Banned by Radio One, WHSmith, Boots, Top Of The Pops, Woolworth, all local radio and debated in Parliament ("If pop music is going to be used to destroy our established institutions then it ought to be destroyed first" - Marcus Lipton MP), both song and band were persona non grata in a country immersed in feverish, flag waving patriotism.*

A lot of this goes back to the dual nature of this thing we call 'rock and roll' that I brought up back on Showaddywaddy's effort. If we take it as the rebellion side of the coin then 'God Save The Queen' must stand at the pinnacle of the art form. Controversy has never been far away from its orbit. But although (for example) Jerry Lee Lewis may have been run out of the UK on a rail when the age (13) and familial relation (first cousin once removed) of his new bride was discovered, and The Beatles (for another example) may have had their albums burned on mass pyres in the USA, I can't think of a single example in Western Democracy where the powers that be simply tried to deny the existence of a song. To that end, I was sorely tempted to list this as a bona fide 1977 number one alongside Abba and Co, just as it was so listed on every honest chart of the day. But I can't. Whether I like it or not it's the 'official' UK chart I'm using as my guide and that places it at number two. Fine. And probably just as well - I'll leave the re-writing of history to those better at it.

So what of the song anyway? What lurks within those shiny black grooves that was so subversive, so terrifying to so many? Well, the fact it was having a pop at the monarchy was something still well beyond the pale as late as 1977 and it's something that's perhaps hard to comprehend thirty years on. But even then it wasn't the simple case of a bunch of louts kicking over the statues for the sake of it. Derogatory yes, but the much despised "moron" lyric, as any fool who took the time to listen, was not a simple equation of Queen = moron. Rotten was too smart for something so basic and - come on - if he was out to simply insult then he could have done a lot worse than that.

But regardless, looking at it from a modern perspective then there's something quaintly unthreatening and anachronistic about using the word at all, almost like describing today's tooled up hoodies as 'hooligans' or 'scallywags'. And not only that, that second 'fascist regime' line was well wide of the mark even in 1977 and would have wound up a country that had true fascism within mass living memory with the audacity of its inaccuracy. Neither has worn well. And yet the neo situationist text of "When there's no future, how can there be sin? We're the flowers in the dustbin, we're the poison in your human machine" sounds as mysterious and brilliantly subversive now as it did then, giving the song an intellectual air designed to catch the ear of all those prepared to listen. Or even listen perhaps a bit too hard, like Greil Marcus's stringing them alongside Guy Debord and Rosa Luxembourg as a linked series of black pearls to represent a more subversive version of history**

But all this is academic (literally) - in terms of music, 'God Save The Queen' is a dense three minutes, twenty second slab of pure rock and roll power. Steve Jones still sounds like he's playing twenty guitars all at once while Rotten still manages to sneer and snarl over the top of it all right through to the explosive carrion call finale of 'no future' that lifts the song heavenward on a whirlwind of sound that still feels like it has the power to stop the world spinning on its axis and slowly start it turning in the opposite direction.

That it didn't is a mere matter of observation - neither socially, politically or musically. Musically? Ha! A cursory glance at the rest of the charts show 1977 to be as anger free as it ever was. There will always be bands preaching a message that sticks it to 'the man', though typically they remain underground, too angry to do anything but shout to a partisan audience happy to be shouted at. 'God Save The Queen' is an intelligent slice of pure venomous anger that brought the underground overground into a face to face stand off with the establishment. The establishment won (obviously), but for a few glorious weeks at least the Sex Pistols and all they represented made it feel like anything was possible. What more can anyone possibly ask of a song?

* I myself can remember trying to buy a copy of 'Never Mind The Bollocks' in 1980 and finding it was still banned in my home town's WHSmith and Woolworth.

** See 'Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century'. If you're a music fan and you haven't read it, then I recommend that you do instead of reading anything else of mine. It's far better, trust me on that.