Dancing on Ice Sunday 6.30pm ITV1
Sir Rod Stewart and Jools Holland on the power of performing, the perils of TV talent shows – and why the slow death of Britain’s pubs is a disaster for music
ON THE SET of The One Show, the evening’s first sofa-surfers are visions in sharp-suited geometry. “Congratulations on the shoe-sock combo, Rod,” says host Alex Jones as the camera zooms to the floor for a shot of Sir Rod Stewart’s black-and-white-striped winkle-pickers and matching hosiery. “ Wicked, in nit?” replies the legendary rasper, peacocking in tartan-checked jacket, blond thatch as age-defyingly explosive as ever. “He’s the king of the shoe,” notes Jools Holland, resplendent in a midnightblue pin-stripe two-piece.
Stewart and Holland are in the central London television studios on the promotional trail in support of their first album together. Swing Fever is a collection of covers of swing-era classics, sung by Stewart and recorded with the Later… with Jools Holland presenter’s 18-piece live band. There’s no musical performance for the BBC early-evening programme – the duo save that for an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s chat show in New York four days later where, dressed in pretty much the same clobber, they perform Almost like Being in Love.
That Lerner and Loewe show tune, composed for the original 1947 Broadway production of Brigadoon and sung in the 1954 film by Gene Kelly, is typical of the 13 tracks on the album. “It was music we were brought up on, wasn’t it?” says Stewart, 79, to fellow Londoner Holland, 66. Lullaby of Broadway is another example. Plucked from the Busby Berkeley musical Gold Diggers of 1935, the Oscar-winning song originally featured what Holland characterises as “500 tap dancers”. But when the boogie-woogie piano man suggested they could fake that effect in the recording studio, Stewart was having none of it. So, the singer put out a call for “two-dozen tap dancers, please”. Then, in the Essex mansion he shares with his third wife Penny Lancaster – where, I know from a previous visit, there’s easily enough room to swing a cat, or a troupe of tappers – the pair gathered the dancers, put mics on their feet and recorded the perfect percussive accompaniment.
Shortly before their teatime appearance on The One Show, Stewart and Holland are in their dressing room. Avoiding talk of the model railway obsession that also bonds the pair (I said I didn’t want them derailed or sidetracked), I ask Sir Rod about the genesis of this record, his 32nd album
