Stewart misses mark at MGM Grand

Spencer Patterson

Monday, April 4, 2005 | 8:14 a.m.

The most exciting moment in Saturday night's Rod Stewart concert at the MGM Grand Garden Arena hardly involved Rod Stewart at all.

OK, so Stewart set it up, kicking a soccer ball into the arena stands, as he did at several points during the two-hour show.

But from there, it was a fan -- I'll call him Crazed Goalie Wanna-Be -- who took over.

Reacting instantly, the guy dove to his right to snare the ball, taking out two of his neighbors in the process and launching himself head-first into the railing at the end of his row.

The brazen maneuver drew a collective gasp from the crowd of about 12,000 (roughly 1,000 shy of a sellout), audible above Stewart and his 10-piece band's version of "You're in My Heart (The Final Acclaim)."

By comparison, the rest of the night was a snoozer. Most of the time, I was left scratching my head, repeatedly asking, "Why?"

Why did Stewart place a six-minute drum solo in the middle of ballad "Downtown Train"?

Why did he take a 20-minute intermission, have his crew construct a new stage set, and bring out a string section for the concert's "Great American Songbook" segment, all so he could sing five brief songs from those three chart-busting albums?

Why didn't the British vocalist perform "Mandolin Wind," the song he touts as the best he's ever written?

And why would he follow up "Maggie May" -- the number that finally got the seat-hugging audience up and dancing -- with lame cover versions of "It Takes Two" and "Having a Party," while crowd-pleasing original material such as "Stay With Me" and "(I Know) I'm Losing You" went unplayed?

Not that most of Stewart's fans seemed to mind. The women in his fan-club section near stage left couldn't have cared less what he did, so long as he looked their way every few minutes and shook his hands or frosty, spiked hair in their direction.

I would have liked to see Stewart rock out on more of his vintage material, as he did on a hard-driving version of the title cut to 1971's "Every Picture Tells a Story."

Given the acclaim that greeted last year's Faces' four-disc retrospective, a few numbers from that 1970s Stewart-fronted outfit might have made some sense.

Instead we got just one, "Ohh La La," the folk-rock ditty with the chorus that goes, "I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger."

At this stage of his career, Stewart apparently has decided that his typical concert-going fan wants to hear more recent hits, and he's probably right. So he did "Young Turks," "Some Guys Have All the Luck" and an encore rendition of "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" but not "You Wear It Well."

Say this for Stewart, his voice still sounds strong. Surgery to remove a thyroid tumor five years ago did nothing to strip his famous rasp, which came through best on ballads such as "Rhythm of My Heart" and "Have I Told You Lately."

The latter capped off the tuxedo portion of Stewart's multicostumed show, coming after the quintet of "Songbook" selections. Those American standards were pleasant enough, even if he did little to breathe new life into "As Time Goes By" or "What a Wonderful World."

More interesting was Stewart's take on "Blue Moon," which was affixed with a "preamble" bit, which the singer explained was often the custom in the 1930s and '40s.

Though Stewart's recent "Songbook" work might irk local lounge stalwarts who have spent lifetimes perfecting the same tunes, its commercial success demanded a more thorough treatment on Saturday.

Instead, just as his large orchestra was getting warmed up, Stewart sent them off and returned to his back catalog, and the ill-conceived post-"Maggie May" cover tunes.

He also began firing more soccer balls into crowd, perhaps hoping someone out there would help him make the night memorable.