Music review: Rod Stewart, Edinburgh Castle

Rod Stewart rocked the Castle with strutting camp, misty-eyed sentiment and hit after hit, writes Jay Richardson

Rod Stewart at the Castle (Picture: Calum Buchan)

Rod Stewart, Edinburgh Castle ****

Despite preparing to release a swing album, Rod Stewart is signing off his UK tour in familiar style, with two nights at Edinburgh Castle of greatest hits, judiciously selected covers, strutting camp and misty-eyed sentimentality. Thirteen years since he last played the ancient fortress, it rained hard beforehand but mercifully eased off, as the singer led venue staff dispelling water from the stage in an impromptu yet slickly choreographed sweep through You Wear It Well.

He’d opened with the throwback, gentle thunder stomp of Addicted To Love, stealing visuals as well as the tune from Robert Palmer, the six female members of his band identically mini-skirted and swaying sharply through the soft rock standard, as he himself cast flamboyant shapes, attired like an excitable Vegas magic turn.

Paying musical tribute to the late Tina Turner, Christine McVie and his Leith-born father, dedicating a soulful, acoustic Dirty Old Town to him, Stewart also offered staunch words of solidarity to Ukraine. Truly, it was a remarkable gear shift as he lurched straight from calling for Vladimir Putin’s assassination, footage of war graves and tanks rumbling behind him through the jingoistic banger Rhythm of My Heart, into the girls striding out in leopardskin, belting out I'm Every Woman.

Certainly, subtlety was not the order of the setlist. The Bay City Rollers' Stuart Wood and their new vocalist John McLaughlin deputised during another costume change with a respectful version of Sunshine On Leith, glistening optimistically in the ironic, unrelenting Edinburgh drizzle. Happily, Stewart’s own vocals remain lusty but still capable of astonishingly elegant, evocative phrasing on classic ballads such as The First Cut Is The Deepest and I Don't Want To Talk About It. And there was fun, pantomime capering through Da Ya Think I'm Sexy and Sailing, before the closing lochs, glens and Caledonia nostalgia of him choking through Wild Mountain Thyme.