ROD STEWART – "I Don't Want To Talk About It"/"The First Cut Is The Deepest"

wot, now? I’m just off home!

I don’t remember I Don’t Want To Talk About It and I didn’t realise this was supposed to be a double A-side. I do remember The First Cut Is The Deepest and my view then as now was that it was an insulting, pale imitation of PP Arnold’s classic. There’s no trace of the days when Rod was raw and exciting. He’s just become smug by this time.

As the blood of punk flowed with speed and purpose into the hitherto dessicated pop of 1977, there at number one for a month was Rod Stewart, getting old, feeling older, sitting in the corner of some Valium-strewn living room, wondering what the fuck happened, and why. I don’t know whether there was a deliberate concept to the double A-side; most likely it was merely another cynical attempt by WEA to flog a few more albums, since “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” came from the two-year-old Atlantic Crossing, and “The First Cut Is The Deepest” from the one-year-old A Night On The Town, an argument for punk in itself. But the coupling conveys a nearly stark air of bewildered finality. The careful acoustic guitars and string backdrops could have come out of a Rick Rubin session; for once, Rod looks beyond his own head and dick, and simultaneously further into himself. This isn’t to say that it’s a particularly good single, or one which should be revisited even once – simply that there’s a darkness caught here which we do not get in any of his other number ones.

That having been said, “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” is an etiolated travesty; the Crazy Horse original is a deliberate shambles, Danny Whitten’s voice crumbling and shaking the lyric out of a throat about to be throttled by life-ending blood; when he croaks “If I stay here just a little bit longer…/Won’t you listen to my heart?” you genuinely think that he’s dying and that you need to hang around just to check that he’s still alive at the end of the song (and he didn’t live much beyond the record’s completion). But uptown downtempo Rod the Sod sings it to a housewife staring at the dressing table mirror, her back to him (“And the stars in the sky/Don’t mean nothing to you/They’re a mirror”). Whitten gives us a heart which is barely being held together by psychotic fragments of string (“Blue for the tears/Black for the night’s fears”). After Stewart has stated his case, all he can do is sit and wait as the strings come predictably in and the key changes equally predictably. The end hangs in the air like her question mark (following Stewart’s exhausted sigh of “Oh, my heart,” searching the bedroom cabinet for the stray packet of Clopidogrel), but we are not really invited to give a damn.

The Cat Stevens cover – the only British number one single to involve Stevens, who in 1977 was about to embark on his second career – seems equally to miss the point. The theme is taken up immediately from “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” – “I would have given you all of my heart” – and we see the now alone Stewart, casting around his forgotten soul for the ability to surrender once more (“But if you want, I’ll try to love again”). The song is supposed to depict a raging internal battle within the devastated protagonist – forget the hurt, come to terms with it and move on to something, and someone, potentially far better – and PP Arnold’s 1967 reading certainly emphasises the desperate, near schizophrenic state of mind which is being described; she clings onto the word “try” like a bisected war casualty clinging onto the edge of a narrow, disintegrating cliff. But Rod doesn’t want to seem to be bothered; he is so tired he cannot produce anything beyond a lethargic, doleful moan. The arrangement doesn’t lend anything to the song and takes quite a lot of its spirit away – the harp glissando leading to the second chorus is ridiculously out of place, and the “Whoo!” which Stewart exhales before the final chorus makes you wonder whether he’s even listened to what he’s singing. Fittingly, the record does not climax, but instead limps gloomily and uneventfully into nothingness. Make do and mend. 1977.

And then the sky, and the charts, split open.

No, you’re right – “M&S” reached second place in early ’67, behind “I’m A Believer.” It would have been nice for Cat/Yusuf to have had a number one as a performer, I must say.

Number 2 watch: In addition to the notorious one, there was also an uncontentious week of ‘Ain’t Gonna Bump No More With No Big Fat Woman’ by Joe Tex. Hm, now you see I think that that might count as a Guilty Pleasure… in that I simultaneously think that it’s terrific fun and also a bit demeaning.

Right. This means war, of course. Since it is clear that just about all of us will be making the same angry point about this record (or more properly, the one “below” it), I am just going to publish my own thoughts (clearly recalled from back in the day) as I originally drafted them, mindful of the fact that I shall be replicating those of several of you who feel exactly the same way. For it was nothing short of an outrage. So here we go…

Actually no, I DON’T want to talk about it because this routine and rather uninspiring double-A was at the forefront of the most unconscionable subterfuge involving the government of the day and a slaveringly servile and completely bias BBC (funny how things don’t change much). Not Rod’s fault, of course, but his disc was beyond any reasoned debate out-soled clearly by the Pistols’ admittedly less than deferential salutation to Brenda in the precise week of Her Maj’s 25th wotsit. This alternative National Anthem was deliberately frozen out by being kept in second place behind Stewart and a disaster of seismic proportions was averted in Hazelmere. I was fucking spitting blood back in the day, as the corruption was so blatantly transparent, and democracy (a ballot being cast in the form of the purchase of a record) had not so much been abused as totally ignored. Fast forward to today and I feel much the same way, as I believe, in my stupidity, that fair play is an intrinsic British value and that cheating at games, arguing with umpires and lying about elections are only things that swarthy foreigners do. And then I look at our Establishment today and I wonder who the hell I’m trying to kid.

Apologies and love to Rod the Mod, btw, whom we have not seen the last of by a long chalk. Blameless, obviously. Good man, Rod. Sometimes.

I remember them both about equally, so I’m surprised people are saying that First Cut Is The Deepest got all the airplay. I’m with Chris on that song being overrated – I have a couple of other versions, and it always seemed a slightly inelegant, forced song.

Britt Ekland-era Rod isn’t very good (though it was to get worse) but my Mum loved it. The shot of him on cover of the ‘Night On The Town’ album just makes you want to punch him in the face, it’s like Bryan Ferry’s ‘Another Time Another Place’ cover but without an ounce of wit or style – just a rich rock star looking like a prat in a boater and blazer. He’s the George Best of rock music, great talent brought low by a fondness for blonds and the ‘high life’

Having said that I pretty much like any version of ‘First Cut..’ – even Rod’s I can take.

In case anybody missed it, Dale played ‘I Don’t Want to…’ today. I’m not sure it was quite as good as I remembered it.

Dale termed it a “worthy” number one. I think he got “worthy” confused with “worthless.”

Yeah but usually in those cases the “worthy” gets prefixed by “dull and…”

Incidentally, it was while Rod was number one with this that we had a little bit of anarchy in the UK – or at least Wembley – when Scotland beat England 2-1 on 4 June and the Tartan Army staged their famous pitch invasion, breaking one of the crossbars. Whether Rod was involved is debatable, but he did claim to have a piece of Wembley turf in his possession in later years. (Any comment on this from our Caledonian friends??)

Re: #25

I always considered the Renoir pastiche to be the back cover and the boater ‘n’ blazer portrait was the front. I could be wrong though.

Passing the memorial to Emlyn Hughes, Barrow’s second-favourite sporting son, this morning I was reminded that during the uncontentious part of Rod’s reign and just two-and-a-half months after my father’s death, Dad’s beloved Liverpool FC won the European Cup at last. Although I don’t believe, and never have believed in such things I liked to think as I watched the match that Dad was cheering on the ‘Pool on from the great terrace in the sky. Of course, they kept on winning it after that, year after year (except for the years when Nottingham Forest or Aston Villa won it.)

I don’t recall which side was the more played but ‘First Cut..’ is by some margin the worst offender here. A lazy vocal and soporific band performance do not ‘sell’ the song for me. I wasn’t familiar with the PP version of the song so could make no comparison, I just knew that Rod’s version sucked big ones. ‘I Don’t Wanna…’ however, is an ok song and one that has grown on me over time. In 1977 though I would have viewed both about as welcome as a trip to the dentist as their pedestrian pace would have seemed to slow to a crawl with the imminent arrival of a certain royal salute. It beggars belief how Rod clung to the top an extra week (or weeks) when he had already outstayed his welcome so hats off to Auntie Beeb for ensuring Liz’s parade wasn’t reigned on.

think like one what?

hated the EBTG cover at the time (unaware it was a cover back then) but now I´m quite fond of it/the song generally. most strange. now wondering what motivated EBTG´s decision to cover it incidentally.

I’m sure if money was all they were after they would’ve covered Typically Tropical. And they certainly could’ve done with a bit more sun.

Re 5/6: Pale imitations of PP Arnold classics lacking vim and vigour? We ain’t seen nothing yet on Popular.

Re 27:

I Don’t Want To Talk About It just seems a tad dull and uninspiring to me. 4/10.