Rod Stewart – Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright) - Rod Stewart – Tonight's The Night (Gonna Be Alright)

What this video is

Released in 1976 as the lead single from Stewart's seventh album A Night on the Town, 'Tonight's the Night' arrived at the height of his transatlantic commercial dominance. The song was immediately controversial — banned by the BBC and protested by religious organizations including Jesse Jackson's PUSH — yet it spent eight consecutive weeks at #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100, the longest run for any single in 1976…

Why it matters

A landmark in pre-MTV British promotional clip history, this video demonstrated that soft rock ballads could sustain a full cinematic narrative without a performance anchor. Directed by Bruce Gowers — who had just redefined promo aesthetics with 'Bohemian Rhapsody' months earlier — it helped…

The director

Bruce Gowers (21 Dec 1940 – 15 Jan 2023) was a Scottish-born British television director who trained at the BBC and worked at Rediffusion and London Weekend Television before achieving international recognition with Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' video (1975).…