STEWART AT BOWL A FACELESS ROCK FEAST.

Byline: Stuart Levine Daily News Staff Writer

With a mountain of hits on his resume, Rod Stewart could have kept fans at the first of his two shows at the Hollywood Bowl guessing, playing ``What's next on the set list?'' Instead, for more than two hours, he decided to play by the numbers.

Actually, years or albums would be a better description. After leading off his show with the Beatles' ``Get Back'' and heading straight into 1984's ``Some Guys Have All the Luck,'' Stewart ventured back to 1971 and his highly successful ``Every Picture Tells a Story'' album. Funny thing was, though, he never got around to playing the title track, which, along with ``Maggie May,'' might be the most popular song from that disc.

So, with the set-list mystery essentially out of the way, Stewart, abandoning

his trademark blond-spiked 'do for a carrot-top look, churned out an impressive list of tracks that had the near-capacity crowd singing along. ``Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?'' ``Forever Young,'' ``Young Turks'' and ``Hot Legs'' were, as expected, all extremely well-received. Just having your radio on for the past two decades is all anyone would need to take part in a Stewart sing-along.

Unlike most arena shows where ticket prices are generally within a narrow range, prices for this performance at the Bowl varied wildly. Fans who sat in the pit area forked over $125 (assuming they didn't get tickets through a broker), while those hunched over on benches near the top tiers of this cavernous structure paid nearly $100 less.

This is worth mentioning only because those sitting close were the only ones who got to see Stewart's face. Not once was there a close-up of the 51-year-old rocker, a member of the Faces from 1969-1975, while the faces of the 10-piece band were often plastered across the three video screens set up to make the evening more intimate for the less fortunate. The Brit never made an attempt to feel intimate with those sitting at the top.

Obviously, Stewart's jumbo-screen absence was intentional. Was it that he didn't want his adoring fans to see their hero aging? No reason to feel ashamed, Rod. Only a handful of rockers his age have been able to reach the top echelons of the music business, and getting old doesn't have to mean becoming stale.