While many have made careers out of covers, one artist stands above the rest as one of the great musical interpreters of the 20th century. That man is, of course, Rod Stewart. Yes, the same man that the E! Channel just aired a True Hollywood Story about, wherein they lumped him and his waste of a life daughter together�an idea that is as insulting as if A&E did a Biography on not just Bob Dylan, but also his son, Jesse Dylan, director of the films How High and American Pie 3 and gave them equal airtime. Most people born after 1980 know him for the mostly embarrassing songs �If You Think I�m Sexy� or �Young Turks.� It�s a sick world, but it wasn�t always that way. Rod Stewart used to be one of the best.

In the late 60s and early 70s, Rod Stewart fronted the Faces; a band whose alcohol infused performances would make The Replacements look positively disciplined. The Faces were also one of the best bands around, a band that stayed in that weird place where they weren�t exactly obscure, but they weren�t hitting up the charts either. But the Faces also did double-time as Stewart�s backing band on his first four solo albums, which are, incidentally, not only arguably superior to the Faces output, but four of the best albums of the 70s. And what helped make these albums so great? That�s right! The covers! Now, don�t get me wrong, the covers weren�t always better-quality than Stewart�s original compositions, which were usually first-rate across the board. But the covers were at least of equal quality, and what�s more, the songs often succeeded in the mostly impossible task of bettering the original versions.

Take his cover of The Stones� �Street Fighting Man� from his first solo album, fittingly titled The Rod Stewart Album. With its brutal drums, driving acoustic guitars anchored by a massive bass line, the song easily out rocks the Stones version and it does it with nearly all acoustic instruments. This isn�t Rod Stewart Unplugged; this guy and his back-up players could probably out rock Sabbath with only spoons and an autoharp. But what�s special about Stewart�s covers isn�t even the quality�it�s how easily they fit alongside every other song on the album. He does what only the best covers do�he makes the listener have to check the liner notes more than once to make sure the name �Stewart� doesn�t appear in the songwriting credits. Even when he does a Dylan song, he doesn�t go and do �Blowin� in the Wind� or �Like a Rolling Stone.� He goes slightly more obscure, with the best example being �Only a Hobo,� from his 1970 sophomore effort Gasoline Alley, which fleshes out the spare melody of Dylan�s original acoustic and harmonica take on the song by adding bottleneck slide guitar, stand up bass, violin, and some perfectly placed percussion at the song�s climax. The take borrows elements of Irish folk music, making Dylan�s song sound more like a beautiful folk standard than even Dylan�s managed to. Did I mention he produced all four of these albums himself? Listen to how Ron Wood�s slide guitars and violins sear through the jangling acoustic guitars, anchored by thudding bass and perfectly placed percussion.

On these first four albums Stewart never went beyond his means with the songs he chose to interpret. That is to say, he never tried some crazy number just to see if he could pull it off�he waited till his fifth album to do that (the cringe-inducing �You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Man�). And yes, I will mention his mostly awful soft-rock cover of Tom Waits� �Downtown Train� (which Stewart managed to take to number one on the Billboard charts) if only to prove how much the man can make these songs his own. The man took a Tom Waits song to #1 on the Billboard Charts! Just say that out loud for me, please. If that doesn�t prove my point, I don�t know what does.

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