Rod Stewart – The Story
Rod Stewart (live with The Faces) at the South Melbourne Cricket Ground. February 2, 1974
Here is Rod Stewart at his peak, performing with his band The Faces. That Saturday afternoon they gave an incendiary performance – Ronnie Wood (Guitar), Tetsu yamauchi (Bass), Ian McLagan (Keyboards), and Kenny Jones (Drums).
It was very hot with a northerly wind blowing, which was appropriate as the band was on fire playing all their greatest songs including: Stay with me, Every picture tells a story, It’s all over now, Reason to believe, etc.
There was the usual mayhem at the front of the stage and it was very loud… I remember taking a shot of a guy who was actually sitting inside the guts of the PA speaker system…
Rod was the consummate front man, strutting his stuff and making certain that it was party time for all in the arena – along with Mick Jagger at that time no one did it better.
I was deliberately shooting the show with high-speed uprated film to emphasize the heat of the day and the power of the performance – this increases the grain structure and contrast of the film and in the prints that I later made in the darkroom.
The whole performance built to a crescendo with the audience going increasingly bonkers, doubtless helped by clouds of marijuana smoke that appeared to be drifting around the stage… the encore was a mind blowing version of Sam Cooke’s ‘Twisting the night away’.
What a show!