Do ya think he's sexy? Well, actually, he's 57 and way past his best.Brian Boyd laments the fall and fall of Rod Stewart, who struts his stuff tonight at Lansdowne Road
Rod Stewart is the biggest betrayal of talent since Elvis went to Vegas. His show at Lansdowne Road tonight is billed as "the most anticipated show of 2002", which comes as a surprise to those of us who were in the Ambassador Theatre last Sunday night for the return of another 1960s survivor, Arthur Lee.
While Lee was always more concerned with music than stardom, it was the other way around for the ex-grave digger from north London who still labours under the illusion that he is somehow Scottish.
The only saving grace with Stewart is that he is the first to admit that he has recorded some truly terrible albums.
The great shame here is that once upon a decade, Stewart was one of the great interpretive singers, and a deft songwriter who could seamlessly blend folk, rock and blues.
Instead of developing his talent when success came knocking, he reached for the blonde highlights and headed for Los Angeles, forgetting to pack his soul in the rush to cash in on his pop appeal.
Next week he'll be appearing at the Glastonbury Festival, probably in the slot occupied in previous years by talents such as Rolf Harris.
Music today is littered with people who favour commercial returns over creative endeavour. It's an ineluctable fact that the greatest albums of all time, works like Pet Sounds, Forever Changes and Astral Weeks, barely troubled the charts at the time of their release, but karaoke sing-alongs, the likes of which Stewart has been indulging in since the 1970s onwards, sell by the truckloads.
It's a choice you make: dilute your sound and go after the lowest common denominator with ephemeral pop and the rewards are plenty, or stay in the margins (and the garret) by refusing to compromise your artistic ideals.
Many just give up because the slog is too hard and too long and the music industry is only concerned about the bottom line - how many "units" shifted - and not about critical acclaim and a 10-page retrospective of your genius album in Mojo magazine 20 years after it has been deleted.
In between all those horrible pub anthems tonight maybe Rod, now 57, will take a few minutes to remind his audience of another time, another place, when he really meant something. His work with the Jeff Beck Group, particularly on the Beck-Ola album, is superb, but his real body of work was carried out when he and now Rolling Stone guitarist Ron Wood joined The Small Faces, who became The Faces. The band played rock 'n' roll blues with Stewart's sandpaper croon the featured instrument. With an eye on the main chance, Stewart had a simultaneous solo career. Songs from both periods, like Maggie May, Handbags and Gladrags (now a hit for the Stereophonics), Stay With Me and You Wear It Well were exemplary instances of folk meeting r 'n' b to produce a resonant acoustic-based rock 'n' roll sound.
From Atlantic Crossing onwards, though, he was lost to the world of real music, the nadir coming with the risible Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? It was, however, one of his biggest hits, and the models and actresses soon came knocking. Things got so bad at this time that he even released two cover versions of Tom Waits songs, obviously not knowing that some things in the musical world are sacrosanct and Tom Waits's songs are strictly verboten, especially when attempted by pub rock singers.
It's all been diminishing returns since then, but then try telling that to the thousands tonight who will sing along with Sailing with all the enthusiastic tunelessness of your average folk mass.
And by the way, if you're leggy and blonde, don't sit in the front few rows as you'll probably end up getting married to him.
Brian Boyd is a music journalist with The Irish Times