POP MUSIC REVIEW : Rod Stewart Goes Back to His Roots at Amphitheatre

If Rod Stewart hopes to write a third act to his career, his script outline at the Pacific Amphitheatre looked promising. It was based on musical themes that are old, but sturdy.

Career Act One gave us a frequently sublime Stewart, alternately folk-tinged and rocking, always warm and soulful. Act Two was an extended dull moment given to disco, slickness and schmaltz that left our tarnished hero seemingly on course for latter life in a Las Vegas showroom. Two years ago at the Pacific, Stewart seemed to be stuck in a revolving door between the sublime and the ridiculous.

This time, as he opened a three-night stand on Friday, Stewart found a way out by looking backward: not just to his own slate of early hits, which would have been shallow and predictable, but to those enduring sources, soul and blues.

In tapping his roots, Stewart found new freshness, energy and focus. The result was a charming, imaginatively constructed concert that left one wanting more (especially more rowdy rockers, and more than the mere two numbers Stewart included from his solid new “Vagabond Heart” album).

Stewart and an extremely tight and accomplished 11-man backing ensemble put a layer of polish on those roots, but the feeling was there.

The backward-looking theme emerged in a fine, three-song ‘60s soul detour capped by a pumping version of Booker T.’s “Time Is Tight.” Stewart also returned to first principles with a bracing stomp through a 1940s vintage Muddy Waters blues.

Stewart the showman was in particularly fine fettle all evening, jumping, strutting and capering across the stage in a way that had little to do with his old prima donna, da-ya-think-I’m-sexy posing, and everything to do with the lift he was getting from the music.

The concert’s definitive moment was its simplest: a touching reading of “Reason to Believe.” Backed only by a piano and a violin, Stewart became the heartbroken character in the Tim Hardin song, a man trying to figure out how he could allow himself to be betrayed in love, yet beg for more. Of course, Stewart immediately swung into that unavoidable nuisance, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was a typically maddening move, but the band made it almost palatable by loosening the song’s disco lock-step.

Stewart noted that this month marks the 20th anniversary of “Every Picture Tells a Story,” the classic album that made him a star. By firmly grasping the anchors that inspired him two decades ago, Stewart could be reversing his long drift toward Las Vegas, and steadying himself to write a happier ending to his story.