Rod Stewart’s Detroit adventure began 57 years ago at the late, great Grande Ballroom. It most likely ended Tuesday on a nostalgic, rainy evening at Pine Knob Music Theatre.
The British pop-rock star, still wielding oodles of charisma and his signature sandpaper voice, hit the amphitheater as part of his One Last Time Tour, a farewell outing boasting a 1-hour, 45-minute set stocked with hits.
At 80, Stewart has slowed a bit, and the songs are now pitched down to accommodate his vocal range. But Tuesday was an undaunted, upbeat celebration of his career, complete with all the concert trademarks: He flirted with fans in the front row. Each shimmy of his hips drew shrieks from female fans. He even managed a solid punt of a soccer ball into the crowd to kick off “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.”
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The singer — officially Sir Rod Stewart since 2016 — has long spoken of Detroit as a career stronghold, going back to his early visits with the Jeff Beck Group and Faces, when after-show gatherings at the Pontchartrain Hotel would turn into corridor parties with hundreds of fans.
The Motor City journey took him from the gritty small joints (Eastown Theatre) to the big ones (Tiger Stadium). And now he was back to his go-to spot in the 1980s, Pine Knob.
Stewart, like so many Brit rockers of his generation, is a Motown fanatic, and that homegrown music got a pair of nods onstage Tuesday night: First came a cover of Marvin Gaye-Kim Weston’s “It Takes Two” (which he dedicated to his late duet partner Tina Turner), then Stewart’s own “The Motown Song,” which he has dusted off onstage very rarely since the 1990s.
If this does turn out to be Stewart’s metro Detroit swan song, it will go down as a rain-drenched affair streaked with distant lightning — conditions he sympathetically acknowledged for fans on the lawn: “If you have to go home, I forgive you.”
But this wasn’t a night for missing the moment. The vast majority of the 15,000-plus who packed Pine Knob were happy to stick it out for the sentimental, sing-along ride.
These days, Stewart’s concerts take their cues from his long-running Las Vegas residencies, and there was a snazzy polish to Tuesday’s proceedings. He took the stage in one of his classic leopard-print suits, the first in a series of outfits mirrored by the women in his supporting cast, including three backing singers, a pair of fiddlers and a percussionist-harpist.
The band was a star of its own, backing Stewart with precision and impressive solo moments as he strutted his way through a set that kicked off with 1984’s “Infatuation,” where he wiggled his bum to a crowd roar as a show tech scrambled to replace a faulty ear monitor.
On a night of career retrospection, Stewart was generous with the shout-outs: He saluted Tom Waits on “Downtown Train,” Muddy Waters on a blues-via-Vegas rendition of “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” and Christine McVie on “I’d Rather Go Blind,” one of the night’s most inspired musical turns by Stewart and company.
But the spirit of remembrance took one odd turn.
In a show moment that had already sparked viral attention from recent tour dates, “Forever Young” was dedicated to Ozzy Osbourne, with an AI-generated video portraying the late metal icon in the heavenly clouds chumming it up with deceased stars such as Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, Prince and Michael Jackson. It’s a clunky, cringeworthy segment, a case of good intentions wildly missing the mark.
That was a lone sour note in an otherwise rewarding occasion. “The First Cut Is the Deepest” came with poignancy intact, “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright)” summoned sexual sweet-talk ’70s-style, “Maggie May” had the crowd singing in joyful unison, “Young Turks” reaffirmed itself as the underrated ’80s gem it has always been.
There were songs that had couples swaying (“Have I Told You Lately”) and fans shaking their hips (“Stay With Me”). “You’re in My Heart” was, as always, a tribute to Stewart’s beloved Scottish soccer club Celtic, including footage of its recent championship celebration. (The soccer stuff used to be a whimsical foreign element in Stewart’s U.S. concerts. In a mark of the cultural shift since he began his musical journey all those years ago, Tuesday’s video featured the current team’s two American starters.)
When it comes to rock retirement tours, we all know you can never say never. But if this was indeed Rod Stewart’s final metro Detroit show, we can say he bowed out with the confidence of a point proved long ago — and with ageless charm to spare.
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rod Stewart charms with the hits in Detroit farewell show at Pine Knob
