“Every Picture Tells a Story” by Rod Stewart

"Every Picture Tells a Story" is the title track of Rod Stewart's 1971 album on Mercury, written with Ronnie Wood and produced by Rod himself, and it's a ragged, rollicking romp that starts out on acoustic guitars and just keeps gathering people as it goes. Micky Waller's drums clatter and crash, Wood is all over it on bass, guitar and pedal steel, Ian McLagan's organ and Pete Sears's piano thicken the stew, and there's Danny Thompson on double bass and Dick Powell on violin for good measure, with Long John Baldry and Madeline Bell in the vocal mix.

It never needed to be a big single to earn its keep; it only came out that way in Spain, Portugal and Japan, backed with "Reason to Believe". But it has become one of Stewart's signature songs, turning up again and again on his compilations and live records.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.