Story Songs: The Hottest Hand

"I had nothing to do on this hot afternoon but to settle down and write you a line…"

Story Songs is a recurring series on MLNP, where I share the evolution and inspiration behind a song I’ve helped create.

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For me, the hottest streak in the history of music belongs to Rod Stewart, a streak that started with the release of his debut solo album in November 1969, and ran through the swan song from his band, Faces, in March of 1973.

Over the course of just three years and four months, Stewart and his collaborators released eight albums:

• Rod Stewart, The Rod Stewart Album, November 1969

• Faces, First Step, March 27, 1970

• Rod Stewart, Gasoline Alley, June 12, 1970

• Faces, Long Player, February 1971

• Rod Stewart, Every Picture Tells a Story, May 28, 1971

• Faces, A Nod’s As Good As a Wink…to a Blind Horse, November 17, 1971

• Rod Stewart, Never a Dull Moment, July 21, 1972

• Faces, Ooh La La, March 1973

Each of these records is made up of a rollicking mix of original songs, well-chosen covers and traditional numbers.

The solo albums come to life through folk, country-rock and soul, while the Faces albums swap (most of) the acoustic guitars, mandolins and fiddles for electric, boozy and brash rock & roll.

You might ask, “What’s so great about the songs on those early albums?” and I might reply, “You mean those bright-eyed songs for the English countryside at sun-up, along with those bleary-eyed songs for the English pub at last-call, like, those songs?”

Well, for starters:

They’re just so vulnerable, so joyous and so heart-busting.

They’re so honest, so self-deprecating, so warm and good-humored.

Those songs are so innocent, so bawdy, so free, so young, and also, so old.

Plus they’re so downright overflowing with affection and amusement.

Affection and amusement and even bemusement, in real time—it’s as if Rod can’t even really believe that any of this is even happening.

That’s how I feel when the band I’m in, The Trainhoppers, are in sync and on fire, on the cusp of careening off the proverbial rails.

I strum a chord on my guitar and it’s slightly off-beat, slightly out-of-tune, slightly too hard or slightly too soft, and I smile, wondering, How’d a humdrum lad like me get so lucky, to even get to do this, and to do it with my more-musical-than-me friends, and to have even more friends pay attention to it, and to (sometimes) get paid to do it?

It’s beyond amusement, beyond bemusement.

It’s downright dumbfounding.

The first drum roll in “Every Picture Tells a Story”
—dividing the tale between home and adventure—
deserves a Nobel Prize for Physics.

– Greil Marcus

Rod’s winning streak didn’t last. (They never do.)

You see, he changed. (We all do.)

Eventually, Rod stopped writing songs with Alger-esque titles like “An Old Raincoat Won’t Ever Let You Down,” or “Three-Button Hand Me Down.”

He stopped opening albums with lines like—

• “Mother, don’t you recognize your son?” (“Bad ‘n’ Ruin”)

• “Spent some time feeling inferior, standing in front of my mirror.” (“Every Picture Tells a Story”)

• “Never be a millionaire, and I’ll tell you, momma, I don’t care.” (“True Blue”)

Those last lyrics are the first words of the first song on Never a Dull Moment—my favorite Rod Stewart album.

The thing is, soon enough he was a millionaire.

And momma, you’re damn right he cared.

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Along the way, his album covers went from looking like this:

Every Picture Tells a Story, 1971

To this:

Blondes Have More Fun, 1978

In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, first published in 1979, critic Greil Marcus opened his entry on Stewart with an unforgettable sentence:

Rarely has a singer had as full and unique a talent as Rod Stewart; rarely has anyone be­trayed his talent so completely. Once the most compassionate presence in music, he has become a bilious self-parody—and sells more records than ever. A songwriter who offered profound lyricism and fabulous self-deprecating humor, teller of tall tales, an honest heartbreaker, he had an unmatched eye for the tiny details around which lives turn, shatter, and re-form—the way a lover tears up drafts of a letter, the way a boy combs his hair in the mirror, the way a man in trouble looks for solace—and a voice to make those details indelible.

Marcus isn’t really wrong in his critique.

But just like in a song, there’s more to the story.

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A dozen years ago, Stewart released his autobiography, helpfully titled Rod: The Autobiography.

I bought the book expecting to only really care about the part of the memoir where he wrote about the albums from 1969–1973. And indeed, that section is great.

Here’s how Stewart concludes the book’s eighth chapter, which covers the Gasoline Alley / Every Picture Tells a Story solo era, and the unexpected global rise of the latter album’s “Maggie May” (which was actually the b-side of the record’s lead single, until a DJ in Cleveland started spinning it on the radio):

“Busy, busy times.

“Hectically busy.

“Impractically busy, you could even say.

“Especially when you factor in the other little detail,
which is that for the whole of this period,
I was also in a band.

“Quite a good one.”

Chapter nine, which follows, is a high-spirited, caterwauling telling of Stewart’s time in the Faces.

In The New York Times review of the book, Janet Maslin wrote, “In a season full of books by or about aging rockers, [Stewart’s] memoir turns out to be the most fun.”

The thing is, and as it turns out, the entire book is fabulous.

Throughout, Rod’s prose is just as charming, funny, self-deprecating, bittersweet and spirited as his very best songs from 1972.

Indeed, it’s like a ~375-page version of one of those tunes: astonishingly candid, warm and amiable and self-knowing.

And when Rod writes about all that happened in the decades after 1973, after those early records, the late-70s, the 80s, the 90s and onward, when he spent his time with the chasing of fads, and celebrity, and trends, and wealth, and supermodels, it suddenly all makes sense.

As reader, you’re right there with him—encouraging, cheering him on (even through those endless Great American Songbook records, which even Rod thinks went on too long) to the present day.

Greil Marcus may be right that Stewart wandered into self-parody, but who amongst us hasn’t?

But to describe it as “bilious” is a bit much, Greil.

Rod owns it, laughs it off, loves it.

Rod: The Autobiography is colorful and generous and unpretentious—it’s a romp.

I’ll never forget seeing the Faces, London’s loud, lean, laughin' louts.

We were at the back of the auditorium, and they kicked into “Miss Judy’s Farm,” and me and my friend were crushed up two-deep in front of the stage before the guitar break.

With a completely strange 15-year-old girl on my shoulders, taking slugs off a passing bottle, the back of my uncool green windbreaker became ever so warm and moist.
I was in heaven.

Two things emanated from that stage to date:
The loudest fucking band I've ever heard, and a strange sense of community.
Aw, hell, man, it was love. Hey, what's your name again?
The Faces captured this feeling and never let go.

– Paul Westerberg

Stewart’s music from those early albums inspired the bands that inspired me the most: The Replacements and their irrepressible singer Paul Westerberg; You Am I and their quicksilver frontman Tim Rogers; Marah, from South Philadelphia, led by the borstal boys Dave and Serge Bielanko.

Plus, Faces bassist and songwriter Ronnie Lane—worthy of an essay of his own—inspired all of the the artists above, and Hiss Golden Messenger, and Danny George Wilson, two artists who have soundtracked the last two decades of my life.

Rod himself seemed to cover a Dylan song with every record, and, well, it all just swirls together.

All told: this is Origin Story stuff.

The Trainhoppers were probably never going to rock hard enough to get in the realm of The Replacements or You Am I, and I knew it.

But the music of Marah, and Hiss, and Danny, and Tim Rogers’ and Paul Westerberg’s solo records, was the sound I coveted us making.

Which is to say, I wished we were making songs that sounded like they could’ve been on one of Rod’s solo records, or a Faces LP.

Sometimes, especially live, we nearly got there.

Oftentimes, we still do.

I bought my current mandolin in 2016; this Faces button has been on its strap for every gig and every recording session since.

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Early in the pandemic, I found myself reflecting on Stewart’s book, deep in the throes of this era of his music.

I thought to myself, the book is a song, it’s just that Rod wrote it on paper instead of cutting it to tape, etching it in vinyl.

The idea occurred to my bandmates and me that maybe The Trainhoppers should write the song for Rod.

So we did.

We called the song “The Hottest Hand.”

In the tradition of folk music (and our own “The Banks of the Cumberland”), the lyrics are just, mostly, the facts—Rod’s life story, set to meter and made to rhyme.

The song goes from the life-changing moment when Stewart first saw Otis Redding in concert, to his early gig in Long John Baldry’s band, to touring the world with Faces, to eventually moving to California, still reflecting, still reaching, still inspired, still driven by everything he experienced at that Otis concert as a teenager. A tale he decides is worth writing down.

Along the way, we break from just-the-facts and have the singer of the song call out to Maggie—the person and the song—to assure her the flame still burns, that at heart, he’s still the same.

THE HOTTEST HAND

When I saw Otis play, I was barely eighteen.
So disillusioned, but he set my mind free.
I daydreamed for hours at my job delivering news
about bein’ a football star, or singin’ rhythm ’n’ blues.

I had the hottest hand.

I met an art student, strollin’ down Muswell Hill.
Oh pretty Suzannah, first love was such a thrill.
We fell in bed together, then we fell apart.
I got dressed up like a mod, I was blowin’ on a harp.

I had the hottest hand,
I had the hottest hand.

I still call Maggie’s name, like a fire burning hot and bright.
Oh, Maggie, I’m still the same, and tomorrow’s gonna be alright.
It’s gonna be alright

Don’t you know about Long John Baldry and the Hoochie Coochie Men?
Making music with your mates, playing gigs for all your friends.
They asked if I could sing, and I let my feelings go;
found the center of the stage, became the center of the show.

I had the hottest hand.

I made my own records, wild and ragged and loose,
it was country, rock and soul, and yeah them rhythm n’ blues;
I toured the world over, we set fire to all the stages,
and that whole entire time, I was also in the Faces.

I had the hottest hand,
Lord, I had the hottest hand.

And we all call Maggie’s name, in the middle of every wild night.
And Maggie, I’m still the same, and tomorrow’s gonna be alright.
It’s gonna be alright.

Those years went flying by, and we effortlessly flowed;
with a bar on the stage, the good times never slowed.
But Hollywood was callin’ with that California sun;
I chased fashions and fads, and they all went number one.

I had the hottest hand.

Some think that I got lost, and that they’d been betrayed;
but stars change their colors, doesn’t mean their lights fade.
I thought back to Otis, I found joy, and spread it ‘round,
and just like it was a song, I wrote my story down…

…with the hottest hand.
I had the hottest hand.

If you wanna play along, the intro goes Bm / Am / Cm / G (twice)
The verse is G / G / G / G / C / C / G / G / C / C /
and the chorus goes Bm / Am / Bm / Am / Cm / Cm

Listen on YouTube:

Listen on Spotify:

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Liner Notes

“The Hottest Hand” was released on December 29, 2020, on The Trainhoppers’ double-album, Hard Times. You can listen to it on Spotify, or buy it on CD (two CDs and a DVD!) from our Bandcamp page.

The song was written and performed by The Legendary Trainhoppers (on this recording, The ’Hoppers are/were Casey Stansifer, Chris Dodds, Dan Smyth, Jon Ross, Matt Kelley and Phil Potts), with guests Derek Reeves (violin) and Susan Mae (vocals).

“The Hottest Hand” was recorded at Berry Street Records with Scott Rottler and Morrison Agen.

Number Five Record

We’re about 80% of the way through recording our fifth album.

It doesn’t really sound anything like the albums Stewart and the Faces made between 1969–1973, and we didn’t want it to.

You see, we changed.

(Who amongst us hasn’t?)

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Greil

I still love Greil Marcus; his Substack is excellent.

Another time, another essay, I’ll write about how Greil’s book Invisible Republic changed the way I—then 23—understood the depth and connectedness and sophistication with which music could be thought about, much less written about.

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WLNP Playlist

Finally, here’s a special Stewart- and Faces-focused playlist from WLNP.

Two songs each (more or less) from the first eight albums.

Prodigal songs, songs about becoming unrecognizable, songs about needing to leave, songs about needing to come home, songs about the mandolin wind.

It’s all so good that “Maggie May” didn’t even make the cut (though its interpolation from 14 months later, “You Wear It Well,” absolutely did), and neither did “Stay with Me.”

Play it very, very loud.

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We still call Geneveive’s name, like a fire burning hot and bright.
Oh, Gen, we’re still the same, and tomorrow’s gonna be alright.
It’s gonna be alright…

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