Al Stewart

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Al Stewart
Al Stewart on his 1981 album cover Live/Indian Summer
Background information
Birth name	Alastair Ian Stewart
Born	September 5, 1945 (age 61) Glasgow, Scotland
Origin	Bournemouth, England
Genre(s)	Folk, Rock
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Guitar, Computer keyboard
Years active	1966 - Present
Website	AlStewart.com

Alastair Ian Stewart, commonly known as Al Stewart (born Glasgow, Scotland, September 5, 1945), is a British singer-songwriter and musician. He is best known for his 1976 single "Year of the Cat" and its 1978 follow-up "Time Passages" (both produced by Alan Parsons). Stewart's career in music has spanned over 40 years.

Stewart grew up in the coastal resort town of Bournemouth, Dorset, England. He moved to the United States in 1977 and recorded most of his work in Los Angeles during the late 1970's and throughout the 1980's.

While studio albums are now few and far between, he still tours extensively in the United States, and, most years in Europe. Recordings of concerts are often made available through his fan clubs.

1 Recording career
2 Discography
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Recording career

Stewart's first record was the single "The Elf", which contained two songs and was released in 1966 on Decca Records. He then signed to Columbia Records (then using the name CBS Records in the UK), with whom he released six albums. The first four of these attracted relatively minor interest within the British music scene, although they contain some of Stewart's most incisive songwriting, and he became popular on the university circuit. Stewart's debut album [[Bed-Sitter Images]] was released on LP in 1967; a revised version appeared in 1970 as The First Album (Bed-Sitter Images) with a few tracks changed. Its dramatic string orchestrations by Alexander Faris arguably stifled the songs somewhat (Stewart premiered the album with a full orchestra at a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London). The album was reissued on CD in 2007 by Collectors' Choice Music with all the songs from both versions.

Love Chronicles (1969) was notable for the 18-minute title track, an anguished autobiographical tale of sexual encounters which was the first mainstream release ever to include the word "fucking". It was voted "Folk Album of the Year" by the UK music weekly Melody Maker. Orange (1972) was very much a transitional album, combining songs in Stewart's confessional style with early examples of the historical songwriting that he would increasingly come to adopt.

The fifth release, Past, Present and Future aired out the historical storytelling style and contained the song "Nostradamus," a long (9:43) track in which Stewart tied into the re-discovery of the claimed seer's writings by referring to selected possible predictions about twentieth century people and events. While too long for major-market radio airplay at that time, the song became a hit on many US college/university radio stations, which had formats that allowed for such songs.

Stewart followed Past, Present and Future with Modern Times, whose songs were lighter on the historical references and more of a return to the theme of short stories set to music.

Stewart's contract with CBS expired at this point and he signed to RCA Records in the UK and went to Janus Records in the US (later Arista when Janus folded in 1977). His first two albums for RCA, Year of the Cat (released on Janus in the US) and Time Passages (released in the US on Arista), set the style for his later work, which many feel is less incisive than his early 1970s work with CBS.

Stewart himself claims to have never really cared for "Time Passages". In an interview with Acoustic Storm, he stated:

“

I’ll tell you a funny story. I have never really cared for that song; I know it was a big hit and all that. It was just one of those things where the record company asked me to write something that sounded like "Year of the Cat" and we ended up doing that. But I didn’t realize truly how bad a song it was until one day I was in an elevator and I was listening to what I thought was Muzak. About 30 seconds went by, and I finally began to recognize it and said to myself, ‘this sounds pretty horrible’. Then, horror of horrors, I heard my voice come on, it actually was the record. So I’m thinking, ‘oh my God what have I done, this is terrible’! Hopefully in the last 25 years I’ve redeemed myself with other things, but "Time Passages" has just never thrilled me.^[1]

”

The song, however, was used on an episode of the TV show "The Sopranos.

The overwhelming success of the songs "Year Of The Cat" and "Time Passages" — both of which still receive substantial radio airplay on classic-rock/pop format stations — overshadows the depth and range of Stewart's greater body of songwriting work. Stewart managed to take the old folk-song tradition of singing about real events, and produce very contemporary songs in that style.

Stewart's historical work includes songs such as:

"Fields of France", from the album Last Days of the Century, about World War I pilots
"Old Admirals", from Past, Present, and Future, inspired by Admiral Sir John Fisher of the World War I Royal Navy
"Roads To Moscow", from Past, Present, and Future, about the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II
"In Red Square", from Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, about the Soviet Union
"Sirens of Titan", from Modern Times, a musical precis of Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same title
"Lord Grenville", from Year of the Cat, about Sir Richard Grenville
"Palace of Versailles", from Time Passages, about the French Revolution
"Charlotte Corday", from Famous Last Words, about the murderess of Jean-Paul Marat.

One entire album, Between The Wars, covers major historical and cultural events from 1918 to 1939, such as the Versailles Treaty, Prohibition, the Spanish Civil War, and the Great Depression.

On occasions Stewart has set poems to music, as was the case of "My Enemies Have Sweet Voices" (lyrics by the poet Pete Morgan) on the 1970 album Zero She Flies. During his 1999 UK tour, Stewart invited Morgan to read the lyrics as he performed this song in the City Varieties Theatre show in Leeds on 7 November 1999.