More than twenty years have passed since the first time that the Cap Roig Festival filled this bucolic corner of the Costa Brava with music, which last night seemed free of all problems, including the heat, while was preparing to open a new edition with Sir Rod Stewart as master of ceremonies. The British artist was coming to a space that he already knew from his performance in 2016, and he did it with the batteries charged after summoning 12,000 people to Madrid, as part of a tour succinctly called The Hits.
At the age of 78, and with the half-made decision to step aside from the stage to dedicate himself to jazz and swing, Stewart is not about to run away from studying or experimenting. That is why he appeared in front of more than 2,000 people who filled the bucolic stage of Cap Roig (all sold out, like this Sunday with Sebastián Yatra) as only the author of Young Turks or Maggie May can do, a quarter of ‘late hour and wearing a sparkly leopard print dress as she surrounded herself with five beautiful chorus girls in stockings and heels. The quintet played eighties bass, guitar and keytar as they played Robert Palmer’s Addicted to love, the first of many covers played this Friday in an in-form Stewart display.
Not that the veteran rocker is the same as he was in his younger years, obviously. Like other artists of his generation such as Bruce Springsteen, Elton John or Paul McCartney, Stewart adapts his performance to the passage of time, limiting the movements and ceding more prominence to the band, which sometimes gets to take control while the protagonist of the evening the clothes are changed. Despite all this, he maintains that air of undaunted seductress, swagger on, blond hair pulled up, untucked shirt sporting a gold Celtic pendant and skinny jeans, an outfit that would get any 70-year-old man in trouble, unless he knows to go up on stage to perform Oh La Laam with that torn voice that he still preserves, together with the sense of humor that keeps him away from the ridiculous.
The Cap Roig audience believed so, applauding all the songs he performed accompanied by a band of 11 members, they in black with a white jacket, they in a round skirt, white blouse and shiny heels. Stewart gave rocker moments like Sweet Little rock ‘n roller, or an appropriate Forever Young, well-assorted with Scottish bagpipes, accompanied by ballads like Tonight I’m yours, The first cut is the deepest, or Tonight’s the night.
The attendees, middle-aged and above, remained attentive, although without great fuss, a performance that could well be the last meeting with their veteran travel companion who, at the end of this edition, reserved a pyrotechnic party finale with the moving Baby Jane and the ineffable Do ya think I’m sexy, to close the evening sailing towards the nearby – and last night calm – Mediterranean Sea with Sailing.
