Rod Stewart “Camouflage”
It’s been said countless times before, but Rod Stewart’s voice is as singular an instrument as has ever been played in pop music. I struggle to think of another voice in rock and roll, maybe outside of Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen, that is so unattainable. There are countless “better” voices. But nobody can really sound like Rod Stewart. With the right band (Faces) and the right song (“I’m Losing You”), he’s the ideal frontman -- an impossible combination of rasp, hair, pints and heart.
As a lead singer, his appeal is almost endless. As a songwriter and artist, though, he redeemed most of his value by the mid 1970s. With his returns diminished and his development arrested, by 1984, Rod Stewart was really just a sound flavor and image on screens and in print. To have called him an “artist” in 1984 would have been a stretch. To have called him a “songwriter” would have been a lie. He was simply an instrument lent out to songwriters, tabloids, managers and producers. He would have future hits, including several in 1984. But he would never again be considered a serious or relevant contemporary rock and roll artist.
And it is within that context that, in the summer of 1984, Rod Stewart released “Camouflage,” a lightweight, occasionally fun, occasionally terrible and mostly disposable pop album. 1984 was also the year that Miami Vice debuted on TV. Looking back, it seems impossible that these two events were unrelated, though I know, objectively, they were. “Camouflage” sounds like a chipper soundtrack to “Miami Vice” -- the intrigue, the pastel sex appeal, the white suit, the synths, the mechanical beats. Had Jan Hammer not been born, Rod Stewart and his producer Michael Omartian would have slid in frictionlessly for Crockett and Tubbs.
Rod Stewart was sitting on the precipice of forty when “Camouflage” was released. He looked great. Ridiculously great. As in ridiculous and great. He looked like he perspired champagne and drove vintage Bentley’s to friendly soccer matches with Mick Jagger. Videos for two of the three singles on this album -- “Infatuation” and “Some Guys Have All the Luck” -- were MTV mainstays nestled between Michael Jackson, The Boss and New Wave. Rod didn’t fit aesthetically or musically. He was more a projection of middle-aged, male radio programmers and TV producers than he was relevant to MTV or pop radio. But Rod went down so easily in 1984, his music so thin and his image so pastel, that we never noticed.
“Camouflage” is barely an album. With eight songs, it clocks in just over 36 minutes. And, if you take out some unnecessary synth intros and outros, it’s probably more of an EP than an LP. The two aforementioned singles are fun as time capsule artifacts to remind us that Rod and Tina Turner once had the same hair style and that Rod had fully transitioned from Rock to Pop Rock to Pop Disco to Dance Pop to something so thin that it bore no resemblance to Rock music. The album’s first side also features a particularly uninteresting cover of Free’s “All Right Now,” which only serves to remind us how powerful and “Rock and Roll” Paul Rodgers sounded and how Rod’s version was the opposite. It also features a cover of Todd Rundgren’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends” that sounds like it may have been intended for a romantic comedy soundtrack until the output was neither romantic nor funny.
The second side is utterly useless, the kind of forgettable 80s synth-driven, adult contemporary music that, mercifully, had an incredibly short shelf life. Jeff Beck plays on this album, but you would barely know it. Everything sounds either like a synthesized instrument or whitewashed to keep it polite enough to play on a small yacht amongst friends. The album’s title track is an insufferable five plus minutes that wants to end up in a Beverly Hills Cop sequel but gets lost before it gets out of the driveway.
As with many album closers, “Trouble” slows down and tries to look within. Rod co-wrote the song and the lyric “I am lost in an ocean of mixed emotions.” As if it was required, this song provides closing argument evidence that Rod should stay away from the pens when in the studio. The album’s second side closes with what amounts to half an album of rasp over no discernible tunes but a lot of synth and synthetic beats. “Trouble” concludes with what I assume is a synth flute, as if for final measure.
It’s hard not to like Rod Stewart. He seems so charming. His voice is extraordinary, in the truest sense. He was capable of making you feel great yearning in Rock music. He had the good fortune of playing with great musicians for quite some time. When he was young, he was a lovable rascal. When he got old, he was an able crooner for grandparents. In the middle, I have no doubt that he lived a lot of life. But good music wasn’t part of it.