O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Vintage Rod ‘n’ Roll for Stewart Fans at the Pacific Amphitheatre

If Rod Stewart hopes to write a third act to his career, his script outline Friday night 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, stretching from the late ‘70s to the late ‘80s, was an extended dull moment given to disco, slickness and schmaltz. It left our tarnished hero seemingly on course for life in a Las Vegas showroom.

Two years ago at the Pacific, Stewart seemed stuck in a revolving door between the sublime and the ridiculous--still an enthusiastic showman able to work some of the old magic, but tied as well to trifles and overblown musical gestures. This time, as he opened a three-night stand in Costa Mesa, 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. Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Rock ‘n’ Roller,” long a staple of Stewart’s repertoire, hit with a clean punch early in the 1-hour, 45-minute set. Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away,” another Stewart signature tune, turned up as the encore, embellished with a delicious a cappella doo-wop break featuring the 46-year-old star and backup singers Darryl Phinnessee and Dorian Holley.

The backward-looking theme deepened with a three-song excursion through ‘60s soul. After plugging the soul music tribute film “The Commitments,” Stewart sang “Sweet Soul Music” and “In the Midnight Hour” while ghostly black and white film images from soul Olympus flickered on twin video screens.

The sequence ended with a pumping version of “Time Is Tight,” the eloquent Booker T. & the MG’s instrumental. It put the spotlight on Carmine Rojas, the veteran bassist whose firm, supple playing was the band’s mainspring throughout the evening, a key component of its exceptional crispness.

In an imaginative move that worked beautifully, Stewart next deployed most of his band in a row of chairs near the front of his elegant, all-white, double-tiered stage and moved into a sequence of ballads.

After good versions of “You’re in My Heart” and “The First Cut Is the Deepest,” Stewart again went back to first principles with a bracing stomp through a 1940s-vintage Muddy Waters blues. In the course of the song, Stewart proved that he can move better while seated than most rockers can standing up. Toward the end of the Waters number, he strolled like a Mardi Gras reveler while two members of his three-piece horn section blew brightly colored solos.

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

He went through the obligatory series of clothing changes, from a glaring, silvery jacket to suits of head-to-toe polka dots, violet blue and canary yellow. But far from throwing things off pace, Stewart’s costume rearrangements fell during sharp instrumental breaks that fit the flow nicely.

Still, the concert’s definitive moment was its simplest: a touching reading of “Reason to Believe.” Backed only by Chuck Kentis’ upright piano and Don Teschner’s violin, Stewart walked the stage slowly, creating a reverie. He became the heartbroken character in Tim Hardin’s song, a man trying to figure out how he could allow himself to be betrayed in love, yet beg for more.

Stewart built the song to a half-cooed, half-strangled, wordless falsetto that spoke volumes about how sweetness can come freighted with pain. In moments like that, Stewart gives you reason to believe in his greatness, no matter how disappointing his second career act has been.

Of course, Stewart immediately swung into “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” that unavoidable nuisance. It was a typically maddening move, but the band made it almost palatable with deft playing that loosened the song’s disco lock-step.

The show’s only really heavy-handed moment was the opening “Maggie May,” which was chained to a stiff, booming beat. Stewart would have been better off toning it down, perhaps as a folk-tinged morsel during the sit-down segment of his show.

Stewart also failed to come up with a satisfying ending to the concert, making two abrupt exits before and after his single encore. Something seemed to have been left out--namely, a full quota of flat-out, rough-and-ready rockers, and a representative chunk of “Vagabond Heart” (apparently, having the album title written on the stage in huge letters wasn’t enough to remind Rod to offer an ample slice of it).

“Rebel Heart” and “Moment of Glory” are two high-spirited cuts from the album that could have filled the live show’s rocker requirements. Also absent and missed was Stewart’s stirring remake of Robbie Robertson’s spiritual love song “Broken Arrow.”

Stewart noted that this month marks the 20th anniversary of “Every Picture Tells a Story,” the classic album that made him a star (in what must be the proudest boast of all for a certain type of middle-aged man, Stewart also noted that his wife, model Rachel Hunter, was 1 year old when the album came out). 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.