Not Coachella: Rod Stewart, Stevie Nicks revive their hits at the Hollywood Bowl

 
“It's Saturday night, so let's enjoy ourselves,” Rod Stewart suggested from the stage of the Hollywood Bowl, and his typically affable directive raised an important question: On which night of the week exactly does Rod Stewart not enjoy himself?

This 66-year-old English singer, at the Bowl on Saturday for the first of two odd-couple gigs with Stevie Nicks, has spent well over half his life honing a scruffy superstar insouciance. You'd call him a roué if he appeared to put any effort into the pursuit of pleasure; rather, Stewart's style is to encourage pleasure to come to him, which has kept his act remarkably free of the desperation that can sour a show composed, as this one was, of familiar material.

Leading a 13-piece band that included several female instrumentalists wearing red-fringed cocktail dresses, Stewart paired old hits such as “Maggie May” and “Rhythm of My Heart” with covers of even older songs by Sam Cooke and Chuck Berry. The music wasn't bashful about cycling through the styles that have marked the progression of Stewart's career: “Reason to Believe” had stand-up bass and fiddle, and “Young Turks” rode a crisp new wave pulse; later, a disco ball appeared for “Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?”

Whatever he was singing, though, Stewart exuded the same low-impact charm, shuffling across the brightly lighted Bowl stage as though he were on his way to dinner. (He changed colorful suit jackets several times even though he never worked up much of a sweat.) As for the singing itself, Stewart's signature rasp continues to edge toward a wheeze; it wasn't always audible Saturday over the sound of his band's pumped-up accompaniment. No matter: It's unlikely that anything he might have uttered would have said more about Rod Stewart than the sight of his kicking several dozen soccer balls into the crowd during “Hot Legs.”

Performing first at this hometown stop of what she and Stewart are calling the Heart & Soul Tour, Nicks, 62, revealed that she's lost a portion of her vocal range as well: The Fleetwood Mac frontwoman dodged high notes in “Dreams” and “Rhiannon” and took a low harmony line in “Edge of Seventeen,” leaving her backup singers to do the song's heavy melodic lifting.

Yet where Stewart used old-pro stage business to distract us from his limitations, Nicks turned hers into an asset, the rough grain of her voice concentrating the weird imperiousness of her music.

“Stand Back,” “Sorcerer,” “Gold Dust Woman” — these were powerful invocations of a type of mystery we rarely get from artists who've put in as much time as Nicks has in the public eye.

“There's no one that can take my place,” she sang with fists shaking in “Outside the Rain,” and it wasn't desperation she was expressing. It was total confidence.

--Mikael Wood

Photo: Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks take their bows at the Hollywood Bowl Saturday night. Credit: Barbara Davison/Los Angeles Times

 

Lucy in the MRI with diamonds

The Big Money site tosses out an intriguing theory from Thomas Goetz's new book "The Decision Tree": that the Beatles, in a roundabout way, helped drive up the cost of healthcare in America.

It's a counter-intuitive vignette of pop music's mid-century largesse colliding with science and technology. In short, Goetz proposes that the electronics division of EMI (the parent company of the Beatles' label, Capitol Records) became so unexpectedly flush with cash after the Fab Four's ascent that it funded the personal project of an in-house engineer that, eventually, became the CT scanner -- a revolutionary machine that threw a major kink in the healthcare marketplace.

Go read the whole thing here, and the next time you break a toe and it sets you back a grand, thank George Martin.

-- August Brown

Photo: The Beatles, shown in 1964, in a photo from the "Past Masters" CD booklet. Credit: Apple Corps. Ltd.

The scent of a 'Pretty Woman'

Here's one product you didn't see during the Super Bowl. Roy Orbison's signature song "Pretty Woman" now shares the name with a perfume. Julie Neigher over on sister blog All the Rage has the details, and sampled a scent of "Pretty Woman" last week at Apothia Fred Segal. Amber, bergamot and cedar were the aromas she signaled out. She writes:

Barbara Orbison (Roy’s widow) has created a fragrance aptly named “Pretty Woman.” Of course, one thinks immediately of the iconic song and film. Not a bad thing, considering both were hits (and you know what they say -- three’s a charm). However, Barbara claims that she had this fragrance fantasy long before knowing Roy. “It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to create a perfume that speaks to women everywhere. I believe that within every woman there’s a pretty woman, and my signature fragrance helps bring out that inner confidence and spirit.” 

When I chatted with Barbara (who has the most extraordinary green eyes), she captivated me with her intelligence, business savvy and effusion about her work. She plans to extend the line to face creams and candles. (She already sells a pure perfume oil in the form of a roller ball -- great for women on the go.)

Besides creating “Pretty Woman,” Barbara is an entrepreneur and also manages Roy’s legacy. She executive-produced a limited-edition box set of the definitive Roy Orbison collection (including 107 songs, a 96-page book on his life, and tracks never heard before). Packaged in linen in a chic monochrome black and white, the collectible is available for purchase at Apothia. You can indulge yourself by buying some tunes as well as Barbara’s fragrant opus, making it the perfect one-stop-shop for Valentine’s Day.  

--Julie Neigher, All the Rage

Read: 'Pretty Woman' may score a hat trick with new fragrance

Photo: Roy and Barbara Orbison. Credit: Barbara Orbison

The Who at the Super Bowl: Playing their younger selves

It was an old-fashioned laser light show at Miami's Sun Life Stadium during the Super Bowl halftime show, as vintage rockers the Who energetically went largely without gimmicks and shtick during its brief mini concert. Relying on little more than the sturdiness of its riffs and Roger Daltrey's still arena-piercing yell, the Who tried to pump some life back into its classic rock hits, many of which have since been reclaimed as the soundtrack to a CBS crime show. 

If not a wholly obvious choice -- the Who have not been on the promotional circuit in a couple years -- the Who were a relatively safe one. Chosen, perhaps, by default, as one of the few (only?) giant boomer bands to have not yet received the Super Bowl stamp of approval, the Who weren't heading into the halftime show for Super Bowl XLIV as a band of surprises. Having released only one album of new material in more than 25 years, few have perfected the art of the greatest hits set like the Who. 

Such predictability has been a staple of the halftime show since the infamous Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake performance of 2004. With the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney snaring post-nipplegate slots, Pete Townshend had a right to be wondering when the group he stills calls the Who would get the promotional benefit the Sunday stage provides. As he swung his trademark windmills on "Baba O'Riley," he certainly looked the part, playing the role of a man 30 years younger.