Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story (1971)

There was no doubt about it. "Maggie Mae" was my favorite song of 1971 and the album it came from, Every Picture Tells A Story , had Rod Stewart standing at the top of the rock 'n roll mountain and looking down on everybody else. Stewart never made a better record as a member of the Jeff Beck Group, The Faces, or as a solo artist. The disc is one of the best rock albums of any era for two reasons. First, Stewart was once a great vocal interpreter of other people's work and, song for song, the album's arrangements were a lot more colorful and musically diverse than most of the standard rock productions of the period. Yes, electric guitars were prominent, but so were mandolins, fiddles, pianos, and lots of acoustic guitars. As Every Picture Tells A Story , and his other albums recorded during the late 60s and early 70s prove, Rod the Mod was a master at making soulful, bluesy, folk-rock during an era when most Brits were turning their amps up as loud as possible...