ROD STEWART – “Baby Jane”
A blowsy wreck of a single, this, keys and sax and guitar and Rod all fighting for the same earspace over an aggressively chuntering rhythm. What you really notice is how one-note and shot Stewart sounds – his great strength as a vocalist, that way he could lead you into a story, completely gone. Though even if he did still have the power to turn “Baby Jane” into something that might intrigue you, that clunking chorus would kill the momentum anyway.
3
Jane in the video is a fearsome apparition. Though not as fearsome as the chess computer with a robot claw.
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God, this one had completely wiped from the memory bank. The song is passable enough but the whole performance is horrid and, as Tom said, it’s shocking how weak Rod’s vocal is, just a throaty shout where it was once full of character. He really is the George Best of pop music.
And the old Rod would have been sinking a pint of bitter or bottle of Jack at the start of the video, not what looks like some poncey fruit cocktail in a half pint glass.
My local ourprice had this as a “Free Adidas t-shirt with every copy”, passed on it without realising it wasn’t a “Rod” branded/pictured one, just a nice plain one.
Still, this means my conscience was clear.
This was the season of daft freebies with singles. Usually it was the shop staff that’d get these incentives. As soon as the General Public got in on the ‘act’, it was all above ground, and eventually got banned.
Other frees included:
Fluffy dice with a Tracey Ullman single
Wraparound shades and a 12″ of “It aint what you do” with every fully signed copy of “Cruel Summer”
and so on….
“he really is the george best of pop music”
that does seem to be the general view – even the sleeve notes (i think these ones not written by tom) on a rod compilation my mate has begin “no one in the history of popular music has more comprehensively betrayed their talent than rod stewart”!!!
maybe it’s just because i’m allergic to the faces, but to me it’s difficult to plot that much of a decline, let alone the pissing away of a huge talent. (the great) maggie mae aside, I think his seventies stuff is sort of alright, and i think this is sort of, if slightly less, alright too. also, betraying his talent seems to have left rod a pretty contented bloke, which didn’t seem to be the case with george best, however many times he trotted out the ‘where did it all go wrong?’ story.
what’s the mark btw? I’m guessing 3.
Yeah, 3 – isn’t it showing up? It is for me. Things are a little screwy with the readers’ votes at the moment I think – Alan’s on holiday though so he will sort it out when he returns.
i’m slightly tempted here to argue that it was the faces — ex-mods dicking around in an ultra-laddish rockband — who had been doing the betraying, with rod’s return to fancy clubbing lifestyle a reaffirmation of earlier (anti-rock) values
but such contrarian perversity is not my style
This went nowhere in the Australian charts, and it was a struggle to remind myself how it went, even after watching the video. 3 seems well-deserved.
I don’t think Rod was doing any “betraying” – that would mean I think an artist “owes” something to his/her audience or the Gods of Rock and Roll which I don’t really – he was just following the standard working class footballer/rock star route of talent = money and fame = shagging Britt Ekland/Miss World. Nice work if you can get it.
yes, he’d probably have been betraying a good part of his audience if he hadn’t done those things
The sleeve is a tribute to Elvis’ Golden Records (aka 50,000,000 Elvis Fans can’t be wrong), only with the gold lame suit replaced with Rod’s three-piece bin liner.
A side effect of New Pop’s death was the re-emerge of Rod and Elton (I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues and I’m Still Standing were huge hits in ’83) who had been partially shut down by Punk/Post Punk/New Pop. With the old order restored, and the spirit of independence crushed (unless you count the emergence of Goth, which is maybe pop’s least assertive movement)), it was safe for them to come out of hiding. The Punk wars were truly lost… at least on TOTP. Hell, I felt betrayed!
No doubt, this was a let down after the mighty Young Turks from his previous album. I do have a soft spot for the “when I give my heart again…” section, which harks back to the white soul side of Rod (Killing Of Georgie’s coda etc), but Baby Jane is sunk for me by a particularly unpleasant kazoo-like sax sound – it sounds like it’s being played by a cartoon duck). That, and the strained verse vocals, and the fact that starting with the chorus (?) leaves it heading nowhere but that nazzzty keys/sax riff.
Still, he’s done worse. Oi’ll give it foive.
I can imagine the song being more palatable if performed in a less strident manner – although I’m not sure it would merit much more attention.
The video sees Rod rocking the Miami Vice look of pastel ‘slacks’ and jacket sleeves rolled to the elbow a year before the series aired – was he a style guru for Crockett and Tubbs?
To add to Witchita’s observation at 11, I had a look at the Top Ten albums for the week this got to Number 1.
1 Police – Synchronicity
2 Michael Jackson – Thriller
3 Bowie – Let’s Dance
4 ELO – Secret Messages
5 Rod Stewart – Body Wishes
6 Mike Oldfield – Crises
7 George Benson – In Your Eyes
8 Kool & the Gang – Twice as Kool
9 Spandau Ballet – True
10 Elton John – Too Low For Zero
It’s almost as if 79-82 didn’t happen.
If 1982/83 were the best years of my life the period from about March-September of 1983 were for me as good as it gets and a decent hot summer too.So good that I even have a soft spot for ‘Baby Jane’ and ‘I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues’ as even over 25 years later the sound of them evokes a feeling of sitting outside my local early on a hot Friday or Saturday night as everyone arrives on another evening full of the promise of being 18 when everything seemed bloody amazing and to be getting even better with every passing week…
Those tracks plus ‘Club Tropicana’, the track I can’t mention by ** and the Sunshine Band, ‘La Dolce Vitae’,Lets Dance’, ‘True’, ‘Beat It’ and ‘Billie Jean’, ‘La Dolce Vita’, ‘IOU’, Funkmasters ‘It’s Over’,Gary Byrd’s ‘The Crown’ plus all the soul and funk peculiar to the jukebox in the soulboys’ pub I used to frequent in the outer north west London suburbs instantly take me back to a time when it never seemed to rain.
Having said even the passing of the years hasn’t invested ‘Ever Breath You Take’ with any nostalgic magic. I still hate the dirge…
1988/90 were good too but unfortunately by then the mess I was making of things always took the gloss of those years for me…
I’d never heard this before (at least not consciously), but I have to say I didn’t hate it. And I’m a huge fan of the Faces and Rod’s first four albums who has mostly dismissed everything he’s done since.
I mean, it’s an almost defiantly minor song, with nothing but that swinging-back-and-forth chorus to make it memorable, but I guess I just have so much affection for Rod as a vocal presence that I just smile and nod. He looks like he’s having fun, anyway. (Unlike his clearly nervous bandmates in the video.)
Same as Andy except I was 20, had my first serious girlfriend (I was in love!) just about to start art college, and the pubs were by the river in Hammersmith, Putney and Richmond.
This record didn’t enter into any of that though.
It’s possibly one of the weakest number ones ever.
Rod fans don’t particulalry rate it
It’s not played as a Golden Oldie that much
Most, if not all, number ones have some people that ‘still love it’
That’s the danger of artificially inflating a track by means of hype and creative marketing.
Oh, something that just occurred to me:
“I wish I knew then what I know now, Before!”
.. is a straight lift from The Faces “Ooh La La” which he didn’t sing.
Ahem, I did like this when I was ten, if not much now. I think that it was the distinctive videographic aesthetic of the promo which attracted me most, plus the narrative appeal of the story (such as it is) of Jane, dramatically accentuated by the saxaphone motif, plus the heritage appeal of Stewart’s elder statesman status (this was starting to become a serious selling point to me and, a year later, I was getting albums by The Who and The Stones)
Indeed, I almost got a copy of this as a free top ten single with a pair of Clarks’ shoes, but by the time I persuaded my mother to take advantage of this deal, the promotion had finished.
26 years on, the most interesting thing that I can find about this is its near total lack of any afterlife. I don’t think I’ve ever heard this on the radio, or in a public place, since 1983.
‘I’m Still Standing’, however, would have been a great number one. It’s rockin’!
#2 Watch. A week of ‘Flashdance… What A Feeling’ by Irene Cara. There are good reasons why more people remember that one.
Um, I think the someone who “still loves it” is me. I’m a bit shocked by the negative response here, this has always been my favourite Rod Stewart song.
Course, I now feel like I’ve got to defend it, and I’m not sure I can say much more than “it’s just a good tune”. But I really do think it’s a well constructed melody, in the old fashioned “lots of stepwise movement, a few leaps followed by steps back within that leap, etc etc” sense of melody. This sort of stuff: http://www.donaldsonworkshop.com/coriakin/melody.html
I’ll accept the production has dated badly, and the performance is duff (although I generally think that of Rod’s performances anyway). But it’s still getting an 8 from me, just for the tune.
I’d give it 4/10 so really there are many many weaker #1s imo.
Re#19 – it’s had at least some kind of afterlife in one of 2 Many DJs As-Heard-On-Radio-Soulwax mixes, surrounded-by the electro of Miss Kittin’s Rippin Kittin.
I, too, can’t be as down on it as most people here. Both it and I’m Still Standing by Elton John seemed to be veteran artists, not exactly copying New Pop’s moves, but at least re-aquainting themselves with an unashamed, poppy approach to their music. At least a 6 from me.
#22, well it’s the difference between one you may hate (i.e. 1 point, the Lena Martells, the Winifreds) but are ostensibly ‘strong’, and ones that have no great presence (this one, and one that’s way in the future by a boyband leader that had just split), that I’d call ‘weak’…
It’s all right. Kind of catchy, wriggles in the head. That’s about all really: not much to say against it, not much to say for it.
“Baby Jane” suggests Bette Davis being creepily horrible to Joan Crawford. If that suggestion was intended, it sailed way wide of the mark.
“I’m Still Standing” is tremendous
And a contender for most classically-1980s over the top video. Same guy who did Duran Duran’s vids wasn’t it? Russ Mc-something.
russell mulcahy! director of highlander and etc
#17 not played as a Golden Oldie that much #19 …no afterlife…
if you want to hear it at least a couple of times a day, get listening to capital gold…
i’ll also vouch for the excellence of “i’m still standing”, not least for turning the potentially revolting ‘admire me for being a survivior’ lyric into something genuinely celebratory. the video is pretty amazing too – i don’t think i’d ever seen anything so bright and colourful and sharp.
…i’ve just got a little chill of fear at the thought of robbie williams (who, actually, i suspect i’ve got more time for than most people here) let loose with the same lyric….
It does bring back memories of the summer of 1983 which was one of my better ones so I can’t completely dismiss it. Leaving that to one side the single does nothing for me at all. Rod’s hoary old vocal sounds like he’s on auto pilot and the contemptuous synth & sax backing is just nasty. Yet it’s annoyingly catchy – but then so is Swine Flu.
As seems to be the majority view here Elton’s ‘I’m Still Standing’ is a far superior piece of pop – not that there’s any real reason for comparing them.
The chorus of “when I give my heart next time…” is good but Rod is fighting the rest of the song. I think Stewart would laugh if you brought up this song in a discussion of his 80′s hits (e.g. “Love Touch”). But in the liner notes to his Storyteller box set Rod says, “This is a strange one, insomuch that the melody was already written…and all I had to was make the words fit. We knew we had a good one.” That box came out 20 years ago, so I’d be interested in what he thinks now. In the U.S. this got to #14.
I entirely agree that this is a struggle for Rod and he seems to lose interest by the time he exits, which is just as well because so had I.
I remember loving this song’s swagger. I still like it in a “would rather not actually listen to it” kind of way.
I like it. It’s a fine enough pop song, if a little weak for a 3-week # 1. Along with Bowie and Elton the career resurgences were complete. Punk never happened.
@#35 Bowie being lumped in with Rod and Elton must be one of the most inane categorisations I’ve seen here. Firstly, Bowie didn’t experience a “career resurgence” in 1983 – having not lost any of his popularity in the preceding years, he didn’t need one. Your comment also suggests that he was one of the artists that punk was supposed to wipe out. Far from it – he was a major influence on that movement and even more so on the new wave that followed. Moreover, he made some of the most celebrated and cutting-edge music of his career during the 1977-80 period. Indeed, it was only with “Let’s Dance” (while still a superior pop song and album) that he first showed signs of jumping the shark.