It’s Hits and Misses for Stewart at Bowl

Rod Stewart prefaced his Hollywood Bowl concert on Friday with some home-video footage designed to endear the star as a regular guy: practicing soccer, changing his son’s diaper, shopping, throwing back a pint at a pub.

That was as close as he came to revealing anything about himself during the evening--a pretty good trick, given some of the heartfelt music at his disposal.

But his connection with the meat of that music was fleeting at best. Stewart, as he’s done for years now on stage, was mainly occupied with keeping his large-scale, crowd-pleasing vehicle moving. As a singer, he merely skimmed along the surface of the songs.

When he introduced “Maggie May,” he didn’t reflect on the origins of his enduring classic, nor on what the bittersweet tale might mean in his and his listeners’ lives. With the “Every Picture Tells a Story” album cover projected behind him, he simply said it was 1971, and this song was on the radio.

That set the tone for a retrospective conducted on the most superficial level, presented entirely in context of career progression rather than human experience. It was structured pretty much then-to-now, and if there’s anyone who should avoid a chronological presentation it’s Stewart. But there it was, a 25-year decline from brilliance into trivia and tastelessness telescoped into 2 1/2 hours.

Too bad, because as a performer Stewart was vastly more engaged and engaging than he was his last time through Southern California.

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On Friday (the first of his two nights at the Bowl), he provided a little more looseness and spontaneity than you usually get in these big productions, summoning some of the irreverence that’s a large part of his appeal. His excursions along a ramp through the box seat area--both alone and with his band--were playful adventures.

It’s not easy to combine spectacle and intimacy, but it’s a challenge worth tackling, as such artists as Garth Brooks and Bruce Springsteen have shown--and as Stewart seemed to discover during “Tonight’s the Night,” crooning with his three backing singers in the thick of the crowd, alight with the joy of the moment.

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Stewart has enough of that raspy, pliant voice left and enough material--both packed away and out there for the taking--to offer more genuine moments like that, if he decided that he wants to be more than a predictable jukebox.

He does know better. Introducing the disco dreck of “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” after a version of the Impressions’ classic “People Get Ready,” he offered a rare gleam of insight, saying, “From the sublime to the ridiculous . . . what would a show be without this song?”

Simple. It would be better.