Waking Up from History: Music, Time, and Place

EMP 2007

A Seventies Moment

In 1969, in San Francisco, the drummer Mickey Waller came into the Rolling Stone office carrying a copy of the new Rod Stewart album.  It was called The Rod Stewart Album; the cover had black letters on a yellow background. Waller was hoping he could talk someone into reviewing it. 

Waller and Stewart were in the Jeff Beck Band together. Beck was the star guitar player who had left the Yardbirds to go solo. He made a couple of croaking singles before it became obvious he needed an actual singer; he’d signed up Rod Stewart, “Rod the Mod,” the skinny R&B shouter with the scratchy voice, the former folkie, the guy with the big nose, the rooster haircut, the feather boas, the tartan scarves—born in London in 1945, he fetishized his Scots ancestry.