SHAUN TATARKA SPEAKS EXCLUSIVELY TO THE ROD STEWART CHRONICLE...

If Once In A Blue Moon hasn't exactly been the Holy Grail for the Rod Stewart faithful, it's only because we didn't know what we were missing - until now.
This unqiue collection of covers recorded in the summer 1992 is Maestro Stewart at his interpretive best - that magnificent voice yearning, pleading, and shouting in all its gravelly glory while serving as a lethal instrument for the legendary producer Trevor Horn. And though each of these ten tracks has been previously released in various forms in different mixes, together they form an exciting whole that places Blue Moon squarely in the upper reaches of Rod's classic catalog.
 

And so says Shaun Tatarka.  A lifelong Rod fan from Montana USA who has recently experienced the ultimate honour.  He got the chance  to write the liner notes on the newly released 'lost' album, Once In A Blue Moon.

The Chronicle's intrepid reporter Helen's Clowes got to chat to the man about all things Rod...

What's your earliest memory of Rod and how did you discover him?

Shaun - I have no idea how I remember this when I can’t even recall where I put my car keys this morning but I remember watching “The Midnight Special” when I was around 12 years old with my older brother and the video of The First Cut is the Deepest came on. That didn’t leave too much of an impression but it was my first memory of Rod Stewart. About a year later, and this I remember very well, on a cold February Saturday afternoon (1978) I walked a mile or so to my local record shop in Billings, Montana to buy Footloose & Fancy Free on cassette (for all of $4.99). You’re in My Heart  was just ending its chart run and I thought I would try a whole album by that geezer with the big nose and funny haircut.   Funny thing is—some of the lyrics on Footlloose offended my Catholic schoolboy sensibilities and I almost took it back! Here was this horrible man singing of Hot Legs and cocaine and all that However, when I heard the last track—I Was Only Joking—my life was changed—Within four or five months I had about a half dozen more Rod albums. I was hooked and have been ever since. And that was 32 years ago this month!

What has been your favourite period of Rod's music?

Shaun - 1964-1998!   It’s hard to pick an era but really those first 7 albums from The Rod Stewart Album through Footloose are all astonishing. Smiler might be the weakest of those but it is a fair CD. It just got put in the middle of a great stretch. Now most critics of course think the first few Warners albums are weak but I think they’re terrific, different from the Mercury classics but musically as strong. I don’t think Rod made a bad album until Blondes Have More Fun, and even then, at 14 I thought it was great.  

Is there one album you think beats all the rest and why?

Shaun - I could never pick one. Ever. If you put a gun to my head and said I had to pick I suppose I would go along with the critics and say Every Picture is the best but there are a half dozen more that I think are just as good—Never a Dull Moment, Gasoline Alley, Out of Order, A Night on the Town, Footloose, Spanner......I suppose I should stop or I could just list them all! (And right now is there any Rod fan who can stop listening to discs 3 and 4 of Sessions!?!??!)

Is there any of Rods album you haven't liked?

Shaun - To me Songbook IV is just an absolute snoozefest. Now I can literally name every track off every Rod Stewart album in order—but I can’t name you four songs on that CD. To me it was just the worst. I have had people tell me it’s really not much different than the first three volumes so maybe I had just had enough of the songbook era by the time that came around but, oddly enough, I thought volume 3 was decent and the best of the lot.

I also don’t much care for the Still the Same album. You can tell Rod phoned those in—except for Father & Son and Crazy Love. But even Crazy Love had been done so many times no one really cared that Rod nailed it. I also hate the cover art with a passion. Even the font makes me kinda queasy. It looks like one of those Ronco albums from the 70s which maybe was the idea but those were cheesy albums. Course some of the songs on Still the Same are cheesy. I mean I don’t think Rod and Ronnie were listening to the radio in 1971 saying “Man, Bread really kicks ass!”

Were you happy with The Songbook era?

Shaun - Generally speaking, no. I respected Rod for doing it originally—it WAS a gamble at first. But I don’t know that Rod really brings too much to those songs. I mean he did really nail some of them—Blue Moon, Foolish Things, Wonderful World, Time after Time, Berkeley Square, Don’t Get Around Much to name a few. But most were rather bland and missing the Rod soul for me.

As a fan, if you could choose, what would you like to see Rod do next ?

Shaun - Oh that’s easy—write a whole album himself and get Rick Rubin or Trevor Horn or someone really great to produce it. Or better yet bring back Jim Cregan or Kevin Savigar and do it himself. I am a fan of Rod Stewart THE MUSICIAN not just the singer. When I wrote the liner notes for Blue Moon, I knew before I even started that I HAD to include my opinion on Rod Stewart the songwriter, even though it IS a covers album. I went out of my way to mention that he was an underrated songwriter who never should have stopped writing songs.  But whatever he does, I also think he needs to get back in the studio—and I don’t mean a few mics in his library or parlor or shower or wherever he records these days. He needs to be in the same room with the musicians mixing it up—singing live with musicians. This business of coming around to the house with pre-recorded music isn’t what made Rod Stewart great. If you listen to the bonus track on Blue Moon, you can hear him instructing the band and he’s getting down to it! It’s why Blue Moon is a great album—they are covers and it’s produced by someone else but Rod is right there, getting his feet wet and jamming with the band—and it shows on the final product. The new Soulbook isn’t bad because he knows these songs well and the arrangements are decent but you know it would have been even better if it was Rod and his band IN a studio performing those live. The New York Times review of Soulbook said it sounded like Rod had every word and phrase mapped out in his head before he recorded it, and the truth is, he probably had to as it was basically an “insert vocals here” type of approach.

Rod as a live artist?

Shaun - Oh boy, I could get in trouble here. I am well aware that Rod has to do Maggie May every night but do we really need or want to hear The Motown Song and This Old Heart of Mine anymore? I’ve seen him 8 times in concert and have never heard I was Only Joking or I Don’t Want to Talk About it. I think he needs to mix up the set list drastically—do more album cuts. He HAS to do a lot of hits for sure but I do think he could be more creative with the list.

Are you an obsessive concert attender as so many of us are?

Shaun - Until recently, classic rock artists never came to Montana so for me it takes a lot of time and cash to get to a Rod show—which I know doesn’t deter some Rodaholics but for me, it means I have only been able to see him 8 times. The best, I think was at the Gorge in Washington from the front row in Sept. 1998 on the New Boys tour. The last time I saw him was in Las Vegas in 2008 and despite a predictable set list, I thought he sounded great. I think he just now has recovered from his 2000 throat surgery. As everyone reading this knows, Rod is fantastic live. I just think he needs to mix things up a bit. Do things like that great ad-lib thing he used to do with Jeff Golub on guitar at the end of Passion—things like that.   And on that note, I have a great suggestion for Rod on how to start a show. Imagine this. The large Tartan curtain is closed. Its close to show time—past in fact. The lights dim. A spotlight comes on the middle of the curtain and out pops Don Kirkpatrick with his acoustic guitar.  Most people don’t recognize him except the hardcores. Then he begins to play the intro to Maggie May—the long :30 one on the album. In fact he plays it twice building the excitement, then he goes into the REAL intro of the song and is soon joined by the bass player and the other guitar player as the curtain opens up. Then the two drum beats and offstage we hear the first line, “Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you...” and out comes Rod as the place just erupts.

I think if I told Rod that he would likely ask me how the hell he could then sustain a two hour show at that level when he already did his most famous song first? To which I would reply ”I have no idea. That’s why you get the big bucks--figure it out yourself! But it’s a great way to start a show!

What's your opinion on the Faces reunion or Jeff Beck reunion stories?

Shaun - Well I have stopped reading Faces stories because that’s never going to happen. Ever. The four Beatles have a better chance of reuniting for a full tour. The Faces may do some one-off gig where they do three songs, but a tour will never occur. Rod is not about to rehearse for weeks and pick songs and arrangements by committee. He’s been the boss too long and isn’t going to change.  But this recent Jeff Beck story about them maybe doing an album is VERY intriguing. I think that could be amazing—they were still awesome at that gig that Beck did in California last summer. Unfortunately, I think odds are against this as well as I don’t see Rod putting in the time but I think they could do something great together.

In all your years of following Rod have you ever met him?

Shaun - Unfortunately, Rod has not had the pleasure to meet me. He probably wouldn’t like me as I would likely start giving him unsolicited career advice. And when you’ve made 300 million dollars in the music business and someone who hasn’t made a dime in the music business is giving you advice, you probably don’t feel a great need to listen......

Would you like to tell me how you came to write the notes on this album?

Shaun - Well it really was luck. Andy Zax, the lucky stiff who got to spend a year of his life pouring through old Rod Stewart tapes and preparing them for release for Warner Bros., happened to be perusing a music board in which I had made a post stating that I had made a list of what I considered to be the 100 best Rod Stewart recordings—complete with a write up of each song—and it was actually only about 35 percent done. Andy read my post and asked for a copy which I sent right away, not knowing who he was. He then told me he had been spending his nights for the past year with an engineer mixing and cleaning up tapes for release, and we struck up a friendship and then a few months later, he asked me to do the liner notes for a few Rod releases, the first of which is Once in a Blue Moon. And honestly I couldn’t even tell what music board it was but I know it was one I don’t visit regularly so it really was tremendous luck.

Andy is a great music fan and wonderful producer—he and another guy at Rhino put together the 6-disc Woodstock Box set which is up for a Grammy this year. Anyone who has heard The Rod Stewart Sessions knows he cares deeply about these new Rod releases. He truly was the right man for the job, and I must say he did a wonderful job picking writers for the liner notes on the various projects!

How did it feel seeing your name and your words on the finished product?

Shaun - It’s a little surreal honestly. It somehow seems like there has been some sort of bizarre typographical error. I first saw it on a layout that Andy sent me back in September, my wife was nearly in tears and my kids were quite excited, despite no longer believing that Rod is the best singer, ever, as they did when they were young! But it is also very gratifying as well. To think that 32 years after a geeky Montana kid bought a Rod Stewart cassette that same kid would some day write liner notes for one his albums is pretty cool. I just wished my old friend, the late Rita Belcher could have seen it.

Are you pleased with the notes?

Shaun - I really am. Someone posted on a music board recently that the notes were too gushy and had too many long sentences—both of which are totally true! But I was paid to gush and I like long sentences. But overall I am happy with them. I really just hope Rod Stewart fans enjoy reading them. As I said before, the only agenda I had was to get a paragraph or two in there that spoke to Rod’s writing ability, even though it was a covers album. The whole section in which I mention that that the self-penned songs on Vagabond Heart were as good as the singles, was my desperate attempt to get Rod Stewart to write again. We all know that’s probably not going to happen but I had to try!

What's next, are we going to be seeing Shaun Tatarka name on future Rhino productions?

Shaun - Well hopefully. I am not really the person to be asking. It’s totally up to Rhino but the original plan was for me to do 3 projects, but Rhino has shifted their focus a little bit so I don’t think anyone is sure what exactly will come out in what form. I can tell you that Andy discovered a lot of stuff that he would love to see come out.

Just one final question and that is would you ever consider attending The Rod Stewart Chronicle BIG WEEKEND?  This is a big event which takes place once every year where Rod fans gather together to celebrate our love for Rod.

Shaun - Well I have never been to England before but who knows. It certainly sounds like a blast—I mean as long as it doesn’t erupt into a big brawl with the Smiler folks (kidding). Not that I don’t love a good brawl but I wouldn’t know what side to choose! But seriously I would love to.