You have to hand it to Rod. Forty years on the road, and he still draws them in droves – two nights’ open air at the RDS is impressive by any standards. Unbelievably, he looks pretty much as he did 20 years ago – slim and fit, rooster hair still intact with a lad-ish smile that might explain the preponderance of well turned-out forty-something females in the audience. He still hams it up too – whether swinging the microphone around his head, kicking footballs into the audience or sidling up to scantily-clad backing singers.
His voice isn’t what it used to be, but that doesn’t seem to matter, and he turns the microphone on the crowds more frequently than he used to. This was a vintage Rod set-list, with nothing from his American Songbook series. He hit an early high point with ‘Reason To Believe’, the Tim Hardin song from his best album, Every Picture Tells A Story.
Surprisingly, the once-derided disco pastiche of ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ doesn’t sound quite so dated any more, while the ’80s pop of ‘Baby Jane’ and ‘Young Turks’ have them on their feet.
But it’s the ballads – ‘You’re In My Heart’, ‘I Don’t Want To Talk About It’ ‘Tonight’s The Night’ and ‘This Ole Heart Of Mine’ that really has the crowd swooning and swaying. There are some unexpected moments, too: a gospel choir is brought out for ‘Sailing’, while a version of ‘Dirty Old Town’ (dedicated to recently deceased Scottish soccer legend Jimmy Johnstone) is accompanied by black and white soccer footage. A touch of the old magic surfaces on the Faces classic ‘Stay With Me’ (with vintage Top Of The Pops footage thrown up on the screen) while the inevitable encores of ‘Maggie May’ and Sam Cook’s ‘Having A Party’ close what was a thoroughly enjoyable show. Sing it again Rod!