From Rod Stewart’s first solo album (1969), released not long after he broke with the great guitarist Jeff Beck. This was before Stewart stopped singing songs about working-class misfits and turned into a Hollywood poof (“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”).
I like this from Paul Evans, writing for Rolling Stone Album Guide:
An object lesson in the perils of pandering, Stewart’s career proves that “selling out” wasn’t just some thought crime dreamed up by ’60s idealists. For a golden hour, Rod the Mod was one of rock’s finest singers, with a lock on, of all things, sincerity, taste and self-mocking humor…
Odd Man Out 
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Rod was NEVER better than when he and Ronnie Wood joined the ‘Small’ Faces , proceeded to provide some fine rock and roll, in no ‘small’ part, in fact even to a very LARGE part with the Excellent Ronnie Lane and the boys as musical foils.
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Should have been one of those who passed on at 27!
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That’s too harsh. If he’d died that young he would have missed being serviced by super-models and scoring that $5 million payday from Steven Schwartzman, the hedge fund billionaire who bitches about having to pay taxes. I just wish Stewart had stopped putting out new albums after age 27, or maybe 30. The best analogy I can think of is the talented boxer who is washed up but refuses to quit and ends up with a mediocre record and brain damage because he “needed the money.”
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