“Handbags and Gladrags” (1969) – Rod Stewart

“Handbags and Gladrags” (1969) – Rod Stewart * Written by Mike D’Abo * Produced by Rod Stewart and Lou Reizner * LP: The Rod Stewart Album (US); An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down (UK) * Label: Mercury (US); Vertigo (UK) * Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#42)

Although Rod Stewart had yet to become a chart presence in 1969, radar systems in both the UK and US recognized his soulful rasp as an oncoming event, thanks to his lead vocal stints in both the Jeff Beck Group and Faces. His debut album reached the US first as The Rod Stewart Album (Nov. 1969), then turned up in the UK as An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down (Feb. 1970). The end of side one reaches an emotional crescendo with his version of Manfred Mann alumnus Mike D’Abo’s “Handbags and Gladrags,” a gentle, fatherly scold from the school of hard knocks to a young, trend-chasing girl. The vocal performance, musical arrangement and composition are all stunning. Stewart sings so convincingly, so wisely but wryly, that we forget then remember, on a crucial see saw, that he spent much of his career personifying youthful fashion-consciousness. An oboe and French horn sound pastoral airs from the lost youthful days of granddads, a piano (played by D’Abo) cries with regret, and all instruments rise together at the end for an adamant, overwhelming climax. Its self-effacing poignancy likely haunted Stewart as he wrote some of his own best lyrics (“Maggie May,” “Every Picture Tells a Story,” “I Was Only Joking,” “You’re in My Heart”), and the withering away of this side of his musical persona has indeed troubled his legacy. (Stewart admits in his autobiography that he found lyric writing to be a grueling process.) Probably because Chris Farlowe had already done an admirable hit version in the UK, “Handbags” only charted as a 1972 reissue in the US. The song found a revival audience in 2000 when Ricky Gervais’s The Office used a version by Big George as its smirking small-screen theme, with the Stereophonics cashing in shortly thereafter. Neither brought the chills the way Stewart (and Farlowe) did.