Rod Stewart For Summer

With forty years of chart-topping singles and albums under his belt, Rod Stewart will be bringing his ‘The Hits’ tour on stages in Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne as well as two special concerts at Hope Estate Winery in the Hunter Valley and Hanging Rock in the Macedon Ranges.

Having a phenomenal 62 hit singles in the UK, of which 31 reached the top 10, concert goers can expect to be treated to the likes of Tonight’s The Night, Maggie May, You Wear It Well, Stay With Me, The First Cut Is the Deepest, Sailing, Hot Legs, Da Ya Think I’m Sexy...and no doubt many others. Hopefully he’ll throw in a couple more songs from The Faces, to remind us that before he was a bona fide rock star, he was a helluva rock n’ roll singer.

In 1971 Rod secured his first major solo hit with Maggie May, the b-side to Reason To Believe. The single and album Every Picture Tells A Story subsequently hit number one in Australia, the US and UK. From there Rod didn’t look back, (well actually he did look back a number of times when he released a series of retrospective albums of covers) but he did compile an impressive record of hit singles and albums across his career. Now into his fifth decade in the business, Rod has sold over 200 million records, CDs and downloads worldwide.

Recently Rod entertained a crowd of 65,000 at Hyde Park, with the Mirror UK writing; “Rod Stewart…stole the show…The crowd, young and old, sang along to hit after hit, as Rod took them on a musical journey through his career.”

Notably Rod Stewart is the second ever artist to be confirmed to perform at Victoria’s famous Hanging Rock. Frontier proudly hosted Leonard Cohen as the stunning site’s first ever performer in 2010 and are delighted to announce Rod Stewart’s concert as part of the Hanging Rock concert series. Ticket numbers for this show will be limited so fans are urged to get in early.

Joining Rod on tour throughout Australia is none other than Diesel, whose latest album Under The Influence was released recently to critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone summing things up quite simply with “Damn but this kid can play”, which is pretty condescending statement for a bloke his age. Still the sentiment is correct!

 

Feb 4, 2012 – nib Stadium, Perth – All Ages

Feb 7, 2012 – Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Adelaide – All Ages

Feb 11, 2012 – Hope Estate, Hunter Valley – All Ages

Feb 14, 2012- Sydney Entertainment Centre, Sydney – All Ages

Feb 17, 2012 – Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne – All Ages

Feb 18, 2012 – Hanging Rock, Woodend – All Ages

Feb 22, 2012 – Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane – All Ages

 

Hard Luck Woman – Kiss

One of the most endearing songs that Kiss ever released was this acoustic guitar based ballad that featured lead vocals from drummer Peter Criss. It remains one of writer  Paul Stanley’s masterstrokes in the evolution of the band.

It was a formulaic song in the way in was structured and it was highly reminiscent of a Faces song like Maggie May or You Wear It Well more so than most of the rock music that had carried Kiss into the hearts and minds of fans around the world. It’s no surprise then that Stanley actually wrote it with the intention of Rod Stewart singing it. Hard Luck woman was later covered by Garth Brooks for a Kiss tribute album

Where Stanley was clever here is that he cast the title character as a completely different kind of woman than those usually found in Kiss songs. “A sailors only daughter” was not the image of the kind of woman that Kiss usually lauded and by giving Criss the task of singing this song it helped establish a character for the “cat” that actually had an identity. It was a process that had started with Beth and Hard Luck Woman bought in home.

Criss was a limited vocalist but his raspy tone and sincere performance on this song was ideal for what it sought to achieve.