1. Rod Stewart is not a sellout. Assuming Rod was a true rocker who betrayed his huge talent, I'd been wondering all these years how he could keep singing sentimental cringers like "Forever Young" and "You're in My Heart," and leerbait junk like "Tonight's the Night" and "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" (na I dan't). Now it turns out he was always just a sentimental yob with prole manners! How could I have missed signs such as "An Old Raincoat Won't Ever Let You Down" (unpremeditated sentimentality) and his relationship with Britt Ekland (couldn't help it)? Yes, his early music had spark and guts -- when he was just starting out, creative musicians like Ron Wood and Martin Quittenton were all he could afford.
2. The knees are first to go. Rod always loved English football, and played it too. At 74, he often sings from a chair between exhausting costume changes, and lets a squadron of leopard-sheathed nymphs do the strutting; they also sing, play multiple instruments and distract in every possible way. As I hobbled the half mile uphill to my seat with two cups of lidless beer, thankful for my own knee brace, I was wondering how much it would cost to rent the young folks for transport. Not much more than the beer itself, probably.
3. Recycling is a scam. I got in the shortest beer line I could find. When I got to the front, small signs informed me why the line was short: The beer came in "R.Cups." Although the plastic cups, seven times thicker than ordinary event cups, were emblazoned with Rod Stewart's spiky hairdo, the R stood not for Rod but for Reuse and Recycle. The idea: The customer pays an additional $3 for the cup, then returns it for a refund. I wondered how many quaffers walked the half mile back to line up again for the refund, and how many left the cup under the seat, generating seven times the eternal per-container landfill content. I brought mine home for reuse as a durable dunce cap.
4. The memory is second to go. As the words to Stewart's most famous song, "Maggie May," were projected behind him, Rod forgot the words. I feel ya, bro -- the other day I went to the teller machine, a chore I've performed thousands of times, and forgot to take the money. You're one up on me there.
5. In days of yore, "Go Your Own Way" was not a Rod Stewart song. Rod has not exactly made it his own; his young ladies revved it up to give him a breather between his Hits set and the concluding half-century reunion with Jeff Beck. In any Rod context, Fleetwood Mac's "Way" would have been a strange choice, but here, as a prelude to the commemoration of an old musical partnership, it seemed especially odd to showcase a tune whose unmistakable message is "F*ck off, you ingrate."
6. Jeff Beck is an alien. I love Beck's guitar playing without understanding the man in any way. He has described himself as a grease monkey who happens to play guitar. Why does he risk his impossible fingers wrangling with car engines? What's the connection between automotive precision and Beck's olympian level of imagination? Is he intelligent? As almost any youngster would, he got bored with playing the blues; as few other musicians have, he remade the form into a second-by-second journey into daredevil experimentation. He once nearly killed himself in a racecar -- is taking chances the common thread? Anyway, as Stewart sang with soulful simplicity at the Bowl, Beck worked his fluidly crazy magic on four songs from the Jeff Beck Group's 1968 "Truth" and one achingly sensitive take on the Impressions' "People Get Ready." Lights out. No encore. 'Bye.
7. Low expectations are your best entertainment value. Shocked as we were by the rip-off (if someone was sick, just tell us), we knew Rod Stewart has two sides: the roughshod artist who made "Truth," "Beck-Ola," "Gasoline Alley," "Every Picture Tells a Story," "A Nod Is As Good As a Wink" and other classic albums in a three-year stretch, and the entertainer who's been giving us soapy handjobs since 1976. Did we think that dragging Jeff Beck into the frame for one night would trigger a significant change in proportion? Even though Beck too has sold out the Bowl? That was a recipe for disappointment.
8. Being nice to rock stars is not as easy as it sounds. Easier than being a rock star, though.