Rod Stewart -- "Every Picture Tells a Story" (1971)

My body stunk but I kept my funk

At a time when I was right out of luck

If I was ever called on to debate whether the words or the music was the more important element in a rock song, I would choose "music," play this song, and simply declare victory – I wouldn't need to say a thing.  

"Every Picture Tells a Story" – the first track on Rod Stewart's album of the same name – is a great song.  But it has some of the least thoughtful lyrics you will ever want to hear. 

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Every Picture Tells a Story was Rod Stewart's third album, and it was hugely popular, making it to #1 on the Billboard LP chart.  "Maggie May" was on the radio constantly in 1971, and still is.  

I'm pretty sure I got my copy of this record by joining a record club.  Remember when you could get 12 records for a penny (plus about twenty bucks in S&H) as long as you agreed to buy another dozen at full price over the next year?

Hey, when you're a college student, you're usually somewhere else when the next year rolls around.  I didn't know anyone who actually fulfilled his or her obligations to a record club.   I can't imagine how the clubs didn't go bankrupt.  (Maybe they did.)

(I remember joining a record club when I was in high school -- I only got two free records, so the obligations must have been pretty minimal.  The two records were the truly remarkable Surrealistic Pillow, by the Jefferson Airplane, and a record with music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. television show, which i was crazy about.)

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Rod Stewart put out some appallingly bad records over the course of his career, but even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.

Not surprisingly, this record is uneven and consists of a real grab-bag of songs that have nothing in common.   There are three Stewart originals (the title cut, "Maggie May," and "Mandolin Wind") and a bunch of covers.

The covers include an old blues song ("That's All Right," the first song Elvis Presley ever recorded), an obscure Bob Dylan song, a Tim Hardin song ("Reason to Believe," which was released as a single with "Maggie May" as the B side – who was the clueless dope who made that decision?), and a surprisingly good version of the Temptations' classic, "(I Know) I'm Losing You."  Oh, I almost forgot -- there's a version of "Amazing Grace" as well.  Go figure.

"Every Picture Tells a Story" tells the story of a young man who takes his father's advice to see the world before he gets old, and travels to Paris, Rome, and Peking.  Here's the verse about the Rome part of the trip:

Down in Rome I wasn't getting enough

Of the things that keeps a young man alive

My body stunk but I kept my funk

At a time when I was right out of luck

Getting desperate, indeed I was

Looking like a tourist attraction

Oh, my dear, I better get out of here
For the Vatican don't give no sanction

The double negative doesn't really bother me, but I don't know what to make of lines like "My body stunk but I kept my funk" – especially when you rhyme "funk" with "luck."  

I see only three possible explanations for lyrics like this:

1.  Rod was drinking when he wrote this song.

2.  Rod was up against a tight deadline, and had to write the song in 15 minutes or less.

3.  Rod is taking the piss at our expense.

Believe it or not, the lyrics get even worse as the song progresses.  Here's the next verse:

On the Peking ferry I was feeling merry

Sailing on my way back here

I fell in love with a slit-eyed lady

By the light of an eastern moon

Shanghai Lil never used the pill

She claimed that it just ain't natural

She took me up on deck and bit my neck

Oh people, I was glad I found her 

I suppose we can overlook the oh-so-politically-incorrect "slit-eyed lady" (a term he repeats in the next verse just in case we didn't catch it the first time), but the line about said lady eschewing the use of the birth-control pill because "it just ain't natural" is a real headscratcher.

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Believe it or not, some people think that Rod's lyrics are just Jim Dandy.  

One Rolling Stone reviewer said Stewart's lyrics "are just about the finest lyrics currently being written, lyrics constructed solidly of strong, straightforward images that convey intense emotions."  (Say what?) 

Speaking about this song in particular, that reviewer went on to say, "Where [Stewart's] momentarily intent on rhyme things get a trifle forced here and there (as when he mates Rome and none), but such objections evaporate instantly in the face of such delightful lines as: 'Shanghai Lil never used the pill/She said, "It just ain't natural!"'"  You have GOT to be kidding me.  (Sorry about all those quotation marks, by the way – very confusing.)

Another Rolling Stone writer (Greil Marcus, a scholarly sort who is widely considered to be one of the most thoughtful rock music critics to ever put pen to paper) was even more enthusiastic:

Rod Stewart's "Every Picture Tells a Story" is the greatest rock & roll recording of the last ten years.  It is a mature tale of adolescence, full of revelatory detail (Rod combing his hair a thousand different ways in front of the mirror), and it contains the only reference to the Dreyfus case in the history of rock.  It is also hilarious, and one of the friendliest pieces of music ever recorded.  It is rock & roll of utterly unbelievable power, and for most of its five minutes and fifty-eight seconds that power is supplied by nothing more than drums, bass, acoustic guitar and Rod's voice.  [Drummer] Mick Waller should have received the Nobel Prize – in physics, of course – for his demolition work at the end of the first verse; Martin Quittenton's acoustic guitar playing is well beyond any human award – for that matter, it is beyond human ken.

An editor should have dumped a bucket of Gatorade on Professor Marcus and told him to tone down his overheated prose.  I certainly agree with him with regard to the drumming and the acoustic guitar work on this record.  But "the only reference to the Dreyfus case"?  I have no clue.

  

Finally, we get to these lines, which bring the song to a close:

I couldn't quote you no Dickens, Shelley or Keats

'Cause it's all been said before

Make the best out of the bad, just laugh it off

You didn't have to come here anyway

I hate to sound pedantic, but no one who knows anything about literature would write a line like "I couldn't quote you no Dickens, Shelley, or Keats," and I ain't talking about no double negative neither.  

John Keats (1795-1821)

The line is like one of those which-thing-doesn't-belong questions on the SAT.  Having said that, I have to admit that I haven't really come up with a very good alternative to Stewart's line.  I think you have to get Shakespeare in there, and maybe a poet – say, Wordsworth – and a novelist.  Maybe Mark Twain?  "I couldn't quote you no Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or Twain"?  It's an odd threesome, I admit, but they are each very quotable – and their names have the right number of syllables.

Click here to listen to "Every Picture Tells a Story."

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