ROD STEWART – “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”
HAHAHA “Do ya think I’m sexy?” heh heh well the answer to that Rod is…..
NO!
AHAHAHAHAHA!
It’s the gag no pop show talking head can resist, but the title line doesn’t actually show up in this admittedly odd record, and Rod isn’t singing about himself. This is a character piece, a study of disco pick-ups and their awkwardness. In fact Rod lays the awkwardness on very thick indeed – it’s a wonder the pair of shy mumblers he describes ever get down to it – and the song doesn’t quite convince because Rod obviously is, well, not sexy exactly maybe but sexually confident, and what’s he doing here anyhow? In the video the girl seems to be being chatted up by a TV with Rod’s face on it, and then has sex with a Rod lookalike while being watched by TV Rod: it’s an unintentionally fine illustration of how weirdly intrusive Rod’s shaggy presence in his own song feels.
The awkwardness isn’t confined to the narrative, of course: Rod is one of a number of big 70s figures gritting their teeth and ‘going disco’, and at least the song’s nightlife setting gives him an excuse. The results are musically mixed: that keyboard riff is imperious in its swagger, but the groove is woefully lumpy and the song has chugged into inertia well before it reaches the morning after. It’s a game try at a rock-disco crossover, and deserves more than a cheap laugh – but not much more.
4
Heh I really should check out the sleeves before I write the review as clearly the idea of Rod as sensitive emotional commentator hadn’t quite filtered through to his photography and design team :)
Possibly the most heartrending moment in the otherwise confused film of Roger Lewis’ The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers is the point just prior to Sellers’ first heart attack when he is deliriously and mischievously lost in carnal bliss with his new bride Britt Ekland; though he was literally twice her age (38 plays 19) at the time, they act like gleeful kids given the key to Hamley’s toy shop on Christmas Eve, utterly in (love with) each other. It doesn’t last, of course; the heart attack largely puts paid to that kind of activity, and then Ekland has the audacity to give birth to his daughter, whereupon he goes right off her – they fight, and the fight is climaxed by Charlize Theron’s Britt smashing a framed photograph of Sellers’ recently deceased mother over the head of Geoffrey Rush’s Peter, who is summarily baffled and bemused: “She ‘it me with me mum!” he exclaims, as though it were still second house at the Windmill Theatre in 1946.
Sellers is revealed as essentially a kid who never grew up, who basically wants nothing more than to get his end off without any complicated paybacks such as pregnancy, fathering or commitment. Cardiac tents notwithstanding, Rod might be the nearest thing rock has drawn up to a Sellers equivalent, and that doesn’t include the common denominator of Britt Ekland; but whereas there was a substantial reserve of evil flowing within Sellers’ mind, the usual reproachful headline has read: “Silly old Rod.” Yes, Rod may be old and silly, but somehow he has remained loveable; his public carpeting of Russell Brand over allegations of carnal knowledge of his daughter is the polar opposite of Sellers, who never avoided an opportunity to run as far from his children, physically and mentally, as possible.
“Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” is routinely derided as the most laughable of Rod’s hits, although it’s actually the least sufferable of his British chart-toppers; spectators routinely took the title and chorus (“If you want my body/And you think I’m sexy”) to mean Rod himself, still trying it in his thirties, and laughed it off as a crass chasing of the disco ambulance. But compared to the truly laughable “Hot Legs” – a top five hit earlier that year, whose chorus sputum bellow climax of “I love you ho-NEYYYYY!” elicits a weary sigh of “yes Rod, now get in the queue please, there’s a good fellow” – and despite its legally-acknowledged lift of an old Jorge Ben tune, “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” does quite a good job of re-placing Rod in the international lounge bar of late ’70s vapidity; you can imagine Stewart and Sellers propping up the bar at about three in the morning, blearily exchanging anecdotes and comparing notes on each other’s performance, cufflinks slipping into the cognac.
Its arrangement is skilful, too; initial exposure to the threateningly rumbling doubled-up bassline and the “Sound And Vision”-style drop-in string synths suggested Rod’s own Low, a depersonalised wander in the bleached corridors of whatever was left of his soul. But the song is not about Stewart himself; instead, it’s a rather touching one-night pick-up scenario with a nervous chap wondering if he’s doing the right thing, understanding her body language correctly, doing his utmost not to come over like a creepy careerist (“Give me a dime, so I can ‘phone my mother”). They retreat to his “high rise apartment” (no more squalid “Maggie May”-style Soho basements) and seem to have a good night, soundtracked rather unsexily by a ‘phoned-in sax solo. The morning after verse is well handled – “Outside it’s cold, misty and it’s raining/They got each other, neither one’s complaining” – with the real prospect that this will turn out to be something of considerably more value than a one-night stand; he apologises for being “out of milk and coffee,” but she’s fine about it (“Never mind sugar” – a nice triple entendre – “we can watch the early movie”) and they prosper.
The augmentation of a (synthesised?) soprano towards the record’s end is a nice little reference to Joe Meek, for whom the teenage Rod cut some early sides; though as usual it’s Rod’s own performance which lets the record down somewhat; the absurd and out of place “Sugar” ad libs at the beginning, the exaggerated inverted commas (“Two total strangers BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT THEY’RE THINKING nudge nudge and, as it were, wink wink”) of his delivery and the unnecessary standard posturing to which he yields at fadeout. The electro-Rod equation finally proved workable in 1981′s “Young Turks,” whcih works precisely because it’s one of the few Rod Stewart records where you forget that it’s Rod singing. But “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” is certainly the best of his British number one bunch. Although it is not the best of Rod’s 1978 hits; that honour goes to “Ole Ola,” his heartwarming collaboration with the Scotland World Cup Squad which manages to rhyme “Buenos Aires” with “fare is.”
No, Rod. Sorry.
There’s something terribly dated about this. When I say ‘dated’ I’m not disparaging the pop of earlier eras. Well I wouldn’t would I? But something here doesn’t belong anywhere. It’s the macho posturing of a washed-up rock star with a Peter Pan complex who, to be sure, had his day but his day has now long gone. The result is faintly repulsive.
Oh, and Tom’s initial comment:
You have to track down the Hybrid Kids version! You just do, OK?
OK, back to the record..
This has a really strong demarcation of Rod as sensitive singer/songwriter (the verses), and the rockstar/poser (the chorus).
The guy could write! and now he doesn’t, being a lazy git.
Hurray! This is the one Rod Stewart song that I really like.
I’m not quite sure of the reason why. There’s a part of me that thinks it’s the ‘Rod goes disco’ entertaining 1978 opportunism – perhaps the same reason that I really like ‘Miss You’ – hearing a very familiar middle-aged voice trying to fit itself into a young person’s trousers.
Then there’s another part of me that thinks it’s because of the arrangement, particularly that dated synth that overpowers the whole thing, that seems to evoke the yearning and awkwardness of the encounter, the vertigo of being in the high-rise apartment, the dawn breaking. I often want to play ‘Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie A Man After Midnight’ after listening to this, to keep the feeling going.
And then there’s another part of me that thinks that it might actually be the song itself, not the period trappings or the arrangement. It does do quite a good job as a song of evoking a sense of hope arising from vulnerability. What I’d really like to see is a cover version by someone like Cat Power, to hear the bare bones of the song.
We’re now into the post-SNF era where seemingly everyone “went disco”, presumably thinking “Well, if the Bee Gees can do it, then so can I”. The Stones made a decent enough job of it with “Miss You”, but Rod’s lumbering effort veers more towards the Ethel Merman’s Disco Album end of the spectrum, turning him into even more of a risible caricature than the Rod of “Hot Legs”.
The impeccably tasteful curators and crate-diggers of the 2000s, who trace everything back to Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage and throw their hands up in horror at the presumed racism and homophobia of the forthcoming backlash, forget that in mass-market terms – in the UK at least – “disco” meant your Auntie Doreen in a pencil skirt and your Uncle Cliff with his clanking medallions, galumphing away to crap like this in some horrible pick-up joint with smoked-glass table tops, Tiffany glass lampshades and etched Charlie Chaplin mirrors. It was Esther Rantzen and Patti Boulaye in that godawful Britflick The Music Machine, it was the graceless absurdity of the ITV National Disco Dancing Contest, it was wall-to-wall “Hondas and pea-soups”, and it was anything but underground (except to the underground itself, who had all the best tunes and DAMN DAMN DAMN I wish I had been part of it). And as such, the funk-less, sex-less, strained narcissism of “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” is as emblematic as they come.
Yes, I bloody hated it!
Ahum. OK, I am over-simplifying to make a point, and some of disco’s biggest hits over the coming twelve months stand as some of the best pop music ever made. And to give him his due, Rod went on donate all of the royalties from “Sexy” to UNICEF a year or so later, making his probably the biggest donation at the televised “Gift Of Song” mega-concert (a sort-of precursor to Live Aid, massive at the time but now long forgotten). But still, BLEURGH BLEURGH BLEURGH PUT IT AWAY GRANDAD!
My favourite cover version of DYTIS is of course the N-Trance one, which ditches the narrative pretty much completely and turns the record into what its many detractors claim it is: an absurd priapic megaboast.
Of course, the alternative option to “going disco” available for aging sixties people at this stage was “going punk”. I can think of two examples; ‘Ego’ by Elton John – which is a thrilling piece of soul-searching into the vanity of being a popstar, and ‘Respectable’ by The Rolling Stones – which is a lot of shonky twittery.
Re #9 – didn’t Neil Young tack his flag to the punk mast with some degree of (critical at least) success? (I don’t know very much about NY so I may be quite wrong).
That’s right – ‘Rust Never Sleeps’. There’s a 1979 live version where you can hear how the typical US stadium audience responds to his punk advocacy;
YOUNG: Hey hey my my rock ‘n roll will never die!
CROWD: WOOOOOOOOOOOOH!
YOUNG: Here’s a song about Johnny Rotten – he may be gone but he ain’t forgotten!
CROWD: (eh?)
The Faces went sort of disco at the end, on ‘You Can Make Me Dance, Sing Or Anything (long parenthetical addition)’, but that was great. I had been a huge Rod fan – I still love the earlier stuff – and I disliked this at the time. I don’t think it’s got any better, though the sense of a favourite in painful decline is lessened by the three decades of laziness and so on since, so this one record no longer carried much of that weight.
I thought this would get a 6 or even a 7. Again, quite enjoy the music (cod disco-funk whatever, good bassline, striking strings after the chorus and I like the guitar as I do on the Stones ‘Miss You’) and even Rod’s rasping here and there. I guess it’s not really sexy but at least Rod’s asking the question rather than making assertions.
Like the “this is how I get ‘em to sleep with me” sleeve photo too.
curious punctuation watch: Da’ ya’ think I’m sexy
(where and when is that sleeve from, stevem? )
#6 “What I’d really like to see is a cover version by someone like Cat Power, to hear the bare bones of the song.”
A suggestion of genius, I’d say.
I don’t remember this NOT being lampooned, as if it was always-already parody, as we witty deconstructionists say. It doesn’t offend me particularly and DJP’s observation that it’s not the braggart autobiography that it’s taken to be is quite right, I think. It’s a painfully sympathetic song about that situation, steeped in pathos, where two people want to get it together but neither can sum up the courage, perhaps for fear they’ve misunderstood the other. (That’s what a cool reading of the lyrics suggests but the lampoonery might also have been expected. Just as a cool reading of David Milliband’s article reveals a sober discussion of the future of the Labour Party, not a leadership challenge: but one is entitled do say, maybe so, but how did you THINK it would look?)
It’s the big fat, rather haunted synth riff that works for me. Where Gimme Gimme Gimme’s riff is snakey and triumphant, this seems to be about yearning: the slightly halting steps up the scale, and the swifter, skittering descent. And the mixture of ‘blues shouter’ vocals that he’d drifted towards here with the pulsing disco rhythms make it quite exciting, I think. And the lyric has some unexpected moments that the casual listener might not miss: “Give me a dime so I can phone my mother” says the girl at one point, in what must have been something of a curve-ball to this already awkward date. In a nicely observed moment, he admits in the morning “I’m sorry but I’m out of milk and coffee”, suggesting both his own bachelor habits and his growing opening up to her.
I don’t love this song but I find it hard to hate it too. I suspect the song is excoriated because of the leopard print and bad hair as much as anything else.
I love the synth riff, and the chorus is more understated than you’d expect it to be from the title.
It’s also not a token stab at disco. I bracket it with 1980′s Passion and 1981′s Young Turks and I enjoy listening to all 3 rather more these days than earnest singer-songwriter Rod.
It did lend itself to parody though. Wasn’t this the one that inspired Kenny Everett’s butt-expanding routine?
Oh, and the tabloid headline on the occasion of said birthday – Do Ya Think I’m Sixty? – always tickles me.
This did get to #1 in the US, but not for a while yet; in the meantime, songs like “Le Freak” and “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” and Donna Summer’s version of “MacArthur Park” were about to go to the top (with Barbra & Neil vs. Chic in a rare see-saw battle, with Chic winning in the end). But by February this song had made it to the top, and stayed there for a month. By the fall of ’78 we had moved from Atwater back to Silverlake, to a house on Hyperion. I still had my first radio and listened to the countdowns – both national and local – religiously. New Wave was appearing, about to appear, but disco was now in full bloom and something massive was gradually coming to life…
…and in the meantime, I liked this song. I liked the textures of it, the glossy synths (the audio equivalent of the Bonaventure downtown, all curved mirror-windowed futurism), the solid drumming, the uneasy riff that fluttered and in retrospect sounds rather Scottish in some way I can’t explain (maybe Simple Minds is the link)? Rod enjoys himself, as ever, but he seems to really like telling this story of doubt, risk and happiness. I never saw the video so I can’t comment on that, but I can say that this was the song that was parodied in the anti-disco movement (“Do You Think I’m Disco”), as Rod was seen as selling out to disco, an apparently unforgivable sin that would have its own pathetic consequences in about six months’ time.
#16 – yes, “Young Turks” is terrific, probably my favourite ever Rod track.
And credit to him for sticking with the disco/electro move, though I wonder whether he would have if this track hadn’t been such a success.
I have to say it: the wave of support for this track is, for me, wholly unexpected and quite fascinating (and by extension, one of the great plus points of the Popular project). The points made in its favour are perfectly legitimate ones, but for me it all still comes down to THAT BLOODY CHORUS!!!
I think the natural inclination of Popular comments ppl (and me) is to be quizzical when a record becomes a long-standing butt of jokes or abuse in the wider pop culture – this isn’t contrarianism exactly, more a sense of fair play (evidence: there’s no real urge to tear down ‘sacred cows’ on display in the c-box either).
Though of course some records are famously bad and also actually bad.
Right about the leopard skin and the bad hair. This is one I always enjoy more on actually hearing it than when the intro kicks in – in other words, you find it’s not that bad after all. As Marcello says, the morning-after verse is particularly well observed. This though was the point at which the image that had done so well for him in the early days began to backfire badly. We’re no longer laughing with him but at him, which is why this (as well as the Bee Gees) is one where Kenny Everett had a long-term influence (the balloon inflating in the butt of the leopardskin pants – enduring image).
Established acts “going punk” – late 1977 saw Queen doing this with the “News of the World” album including the punkish song “Sheer Heart Attack” (three years after the album of the same name, confusingly). Wasn’t this the time Freddie Mercury bumped into Sid Vicious and said something along the lines of “Ah, Mr Ferocious – delighted to see you”?
Re the Cat Power version – I’ve just been reading a Guardian blog about great Olympic moments and came across the story of Betty Robinson, who won a gold medal in 1936 five years after being driven to a mortician’s in the boot of a car, when someone pulled her apparently lifeless body out of a plane crash.
Someone said it would make a great Nick Cave song.
My favourite cover version of DYTIS is of course the N-Trance one…
In her penthouse apt, Paris Hilton is weeping into her chihuahua.
Some ascribe the Fred/Sid meeting at the recording session for “Anarchy” since Queen were next door working on A Day At The Races at the same time and Chris Thomas was producing/engineering both (“It’s Freddie Platinum!” “Ah, Mr Ferocious…”) but since Sid was not yet an actual Pistol at the time this may be wobbly. Some have also extrapolated that Brian May came in and helped out with the guitar work on “Anarchy” (while yet others attribute the guitar to Chris Spedding) but the reality was that Steve Jones did all of the guitar (as well as all of the bass when it came to recording NMTB given Sid’s technical deficiencies on the latter).
The Hilton one is awful – a missed opportunity. :(
As with Tom and Rosie, frankly, no, Rod. Sorry.
I think the plastic Jock was seriously pushing his luck here in Discoland. This is completely cheddar-infused vainglorious boasting and just because the spawny dwarf bastard was bedding and continues to bed all those gorgeous blondes (even stopping off to marry the occasional one), there’s no need to rub it in. Basically, the bloke’s angling for a dry slap. But please don’t think sexual jealousy has anything to do with this…
And another thing. Did that bird ever get her dime back after Rod called his dear old mum? Did she fairy cakes!
And another thing, Tinkerbell. Next time you want to take a sort back to your gaff to give her a seeing to, at least have the fucking decency to stock up on cow juice and Maxwell House first, you tight-fisted counterfeit tartaned tosser, you.