Info about Al Stewart

Subject: Info about Al Stewart
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 06 - 02:45 PM

I first became aware of Al Stewart in 1969, mostly because there was a radio station in Toronto that started playing some cuts off his 2nd album, "Love Chronicles", which came out in that same year. I was immediately struck by 2 things: his extraordinary lyrical ability and his obvious intellectual gift. He wasn't writing pop songs. No indeed. He was writing very sophisticated songs of a kind that were "folky", but sort of unclassifiable. They had the richness of really good classical music. As a lyricist he was as accomplished at creating as densely layered, serious a lyric as Bob Dylan at his best...but less inclined toward using mysterious metaphors than Dylan. He was more specific, in other words.

Al Stewart's first 4 albums contained songs on very personal themes, mostly dealing with his own struggles with romance, relationships, and (in the case of the 1st album) trying to get somewhere as a professional musician...which he very rapidly did. There were also some other remarkable songs, however, vignettes of people's lives and personal tragedies, like "The Ballad of Mary Foster".

The 2nd album was really a masterpiece in a number of respects, and it gained him much notoriety. One silly and downright trivial reason for that was: the word "fucking" appeared once in the very long song "Love Chronicles". This was apparently the first time that dire word (smile) had EVER been released to the general airwaves in a commercially released recording by a respectable artist...and it also appeared on the printed lyrics on the jacket of the album! Horrors! ;-)

The fact that the word was contained in a song which was anything BUT offensive in its nature...and that in the context in which it appeared, the word was patently NOT offensive, except in the mind of someone who is completely incapable of appreciating so subtle a concept as "context".....

Well...that was all apparently lost on Columbia Records, who REFUSED pointblank to distribute the album in North America until the aforementioned word...plus the phrase "get laid"...were both removed from both the recording and the printed lyrics.

They were idiots. It had already been released in England, and society had not collapsed. The overall context of the song was not offensive in any respect, being the lengthy story of a young man's entire history of attempts at unravelling the mysteries of "falling in love" that we all go through in our youth...his loves, his heartbreaks, his fumbles, his adventures, and his eventual finding of the woman he considered his soulmate, his partner for life. All of it was told seriously, earnestly, with a bit of wry humour here and there at his own failings....and the use of the two "objectionable" lyrics was totally appropriate within the greater context.

There are legitimate reasons why a person might not like "Love Chronicles"... They might feel that Al was too much into navel-gazing and talking about himself. That he took himself too seriously. Etc. But certainly NOT because of those two little phrases appearing in the song...!

It's laughable that a guy as tasteful and inoffensive as Al Stewart would get banned by an American record company over a rude word! LOL! Kind of like accusing Sophia Loren of not being well-dressed or something...

Al refused to bend on the matter, and so did Columbia, which resulted in the suppression of the early albums from large commercial release in North America. You mostly could only get them by buying English imports...which were much prized among the relatively small number of people in the USA and Canada who knew about Al Stewart at the time. If not for one radio station, I probably would not have known about him.

Anyway, here is an interesting article about the album. I differ with the writer's view regarding the worth of Al's later work, but, it's a good article with much to say that's worth reading:

Head Heritage article on Al Stewart

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 06 - 02:58 PM

Pardon the error I made in the italics code somewhere...

[fixed where it seemed likely]-Joe Clone

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: number 6
Date: 21 May 06 - 02:59 PM

I always liked his song "Swiss Cottage" ... brings back memories.

sIx

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: GUEST,Nicholas Waller
Date: 21 May 06 - 03:14 PM

Did Columbia suppress all the early albums then, just because of that?

I must admit "Love Chronicles" is my least favourite album and indeed song from early Al Stewart, though generally I much prefer early Stewart (up to Year of the Cat) to post-Time Passages stuff (apart from 1995's Between the Wars, which I do like). Songs like "Manuscript", "Roads to Moscow", "The Dark and the Rolling Sea", "Samuel, Oh How You've Changed", "Old Compton Street Blues" and "News from Spain" are still great songs.

I got into him as my older brother John had several of his records. He was a student at Bristol University in the late 60s and was an occasional floor singer at the Troubadour there, sometimes while Al Stewart was playing (which he writes about
here).

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 06 - 05:05 PM

Great link, Nicholas! Thanks for that! I was hoping to generate some intersting comments from people who remember those times. It's a delight to hear about the English folk scene, as opposed to the Greenwhich Village one in North America that we still hear about a lot. I never made it over to the UK back then, but I wish I had. I would have dearly loved to see Al play in his younger days.


"Love Chronicles" itself strikes me now as an overwrought, somewhat self-obsessed song...but that's in retrospect. It's the pespective of youth. That sort of thing seems very awkward in later years, and Al Stewart himself became so uncomfortable with the song, and others of the early ones, that he stopped performing them altogether early in the 70's and would only perform the later material...so I would gather that he became embarrassed by them. (Or perhaps he lost faith in his early starry-eyed idealism about "love"...in which case he certainly would be embarrassed by that song.)

If so, I can relate to it. Most of the early songs I wrote were overwrought complaints and sorrows about my love life (or lack of same...), and I don't sing any of them anymore. Gaaah!

Still, there were at least 3 absolutely remarkable songs on "Love Chronicles"..."Old Compton Street Blues", "Ballad of Mary Foster", and "Life And Life Only". And those were not about Al himself or his love life...they were beautifully told stories about other people. The album as a whole was pretty extraordinary at the time. It was very well written and performed. It seems quite dated now, and in some respects immature (as regards the title song).

Here's a link: Love Chronicles album sleeves, etc.

Al was a good looking young fellow, wasn't he? Nice hair!

On the cover of the rather rare North American issue can be seen a photo of Al Stewart and his girlfriend Mandi, she who proved the inspirition for so many of his songs, and is mentioned by name in "Manuscript". Well, I wonder where Mandi is now?

And then, what about Stephanie? (smile) She was the one he fell in love with back in primary school, and he mentioned her in at least 2 songs.

I can totally relate to Al. He was unabashedly romantic, idealistic, great with words, thin as a rail, friendly, very likable, and quintessentially English in the style of that time. That's a cool combination as far as I'm concerned.

People who prefer singers who sound like rough, tough "real MEN", such as, lemme see....Ted Nugent? Steven Tyler? George Thorogood? Well...they normally just DETEST Al Stewart! They figure he's effeminate sounding. Too sen--si--tive!

I laugh at them. ;-) He sounds exactly like himself, and that's just fine. He sounds like a very bright guy. The people least inclined to listen to Al Stewart would probably also be the people least able to even begin to comprehend the beauty and clear intelligence that is in his songs.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: GUEST,Nicholas Waller
Date: 21 May 06 - 06:16 PM

At one point in his memoir of the Bristol Troubadour my brother mentions "Alex(?) Murphy and Shaggis". Actually it was Noel Murphy and Shaggis, and Shaggis was a teenage banjo player who later got more famous as Elton John's guitarist under his real name of Davey Johnstone. There's a pic of them at the Troubadour in 1968 here.

I never met these people, but I was at a folk club in Somerset a couple of weeks ago (The Old Down Acoustic Club) and Shaggis' ex-wife Diana Johnstone
was playing.

Al Stewart certainly seems like someone it would be interesting to share a crate of wine with.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 06 - 06:46 PM

Definitely. I know some people who did lighting for him at shows in Toronto in the 80's and 90's, and they describe him as a very likeable and easygoing gent, very articulate.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 06 - 08:18 PM

Odd that Al Stewart, a bona fide English folksinger from the late 60's folk scene in England, should get so little attention on a purported folk music site....

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:02 AM

My favorite Al Stewart albums were Zero she Flies, Orange, and Past present & Future. I got an American version of Love Chronicles. There was no lyric sheet, but the words were all on the recording. It was put out on the Columbia subsidiary label, Epic. It cost all of 98 Cents in a record store's cutout bins.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: pavane
Date: 22 May 06 - 03:59 AM

Perhaps it is because he has lived in the US for so long, California, I believe. Saw him in 1969-ish supporting the Strawbs. Also saw Murph & Shaggis about the same time, in Tony Maloney's club in Collier Row, (before it moved to Hornchurch)

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: GUEST,Nicholas Waller
Date: 22 May 06 - 05:31 AM

Even before Al Stewart went to California he was not your traditional folk singer type, though he played a lot of folk clubs in the UK in a period in the late 60s as that was a big circuit and a good arena for a single acoustic singer-songwriter to get going. His subject matter was often very intropectively personal (and sexual) or intriguingly but kind of academically historical. I doubt he often, if ever, played a traditional song or instrument, and he wasn't engaged in current-affairs protest-type songs in the 60s either, or songs of work and industry.

He started his career in a band with Tony Blackburn, of all people, and his first album was orchestrated and premiered in a concert at the Royal Festival Hall with an orchestra. In later years he produced a kind of folky-pop-rock, and even on his early albums his session musicians included the likes of Jimmy Page and Rick Wakeman. The only time I saw him was in Manchester with a rockish band in about 1978, I guess.

My personal album favourites are Bedsitter Images, Zero She Flies and Past, Present and Future, though I like quite a bit from other albums as well, especially the early ones.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 22 May 06 - 07:02 AM

There's a biography available (clickie below) which I have recently read and enjoyed, though it's not without its faults - mainly those of pacing and some looseness of editing. But it's honest and fair, and the writer obviously respects his subject (something you don't always get in these books) and I felt afterwards that I both knew and liked Al Stewart even better. I hadn't realised how horribly painful the split from Mandi was, though this subject is handled sensitively, with no purple prose or fingers of blame being pointed. The chapters on Bunjie's are interesting, especially the images of Al sharing a warm-up stage with Peter Bellamy. Cliff Wedgbury, one of Al's friends from those days who is interviewed, now lives here (Cork, Ireland) and is carrying on the troubadour's tradition. I do think the book's strengths outweigh its weaknesses. As has already been mentioned above, Al comes across as a guy you'd like to know, to invite into your house for a meal or go sink a pint with.

Can't count the number of times his rueful and timelessly true line sings itself through my head, when faced with some painful situation or other: "Ah, you can't make people be what you want them to be..."

Book blurb here: Amazon.co.uk

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 22 May 06 - 07:55 AM

Well, just for the record...

I first met Al in the spring of 1965, at Judith Piepe's flat. At that time Judith was working for the Religious Broadcasting Department at the BBC, and was managing to get some contemporary songwriters - including Sydney Carter, Bert Jansch, Paul Simon - featured on the Five to Ten radio programme. ("Five to ten - a story, a hymn and a prayer").

When Al eventually did his audition I was impressed by his guitar technique, by the inventive wordplay of his songs, and by his obvious dedication to his craft. Some of his material seemed a bit over-elaborate to me - a bit too literary for the folk-club environment perhaps - but he was clearly a young man who was going somewhere. (Though I didn't forsee then just how far he would eventually go.) Anyhow, Al passed his audition, got his slot on Five to Ten, and the rest is history. Didn't the kid do well?

Wassail!

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Nick
Date: 22 May 06 - 08:59 AM

When I first moved back to London after University and lived in Chalk Farm I used to drink with/be friends with a conductor and composer called Alexander Faris (who wrote the music for Upstairs Downstairs amongst other things) who did the orchestral arrangements for Bedsitter Images and can remember listening to it then. He was a sweet man with a penchant for Bells Whisky and a fascinating circle of friends.

He played at Pocklington Arts Centre nr York (which is a sweet little venue in an old cinema with about 200 seats) last October and he is touring in the UK this autumn.

I have been tempted to try and play Year of the Cat a couple of times, perhaps I'll give it another go. Of the British singer/songwriters of about that era I probably listened more to Roy Harper and Bert Jansch. I seem to remember seeing Al Stewart on Tops of the Pops (UK chart TV programme) when Year of the Cat was out.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 22 May 06 - 09:00 AM

Yes I too remember Al from the days of Les Cousins, and the aforementioned club singers who were his contemporaries. Al is a nice guy, and very quiet, I always thought his stuff was too 'introverted' for what was the style in folk clubs then. Today where there is a glut of introspective singer songwriters, he would have fitted in much better.
I was interested to see that Diane, Davy Johnston's first wife was still around and singing too, I must look out for her. Davy was sharing a flat with Johnny Silvo when they got married, and I seem to remember her getting married in a lacy dress, only ever saw the pictures. I had a room upstairs in the same house in Richmond Surrey, where late night Monopoly sessions fuelled by brandy were not unknown.
Oh happy days!
Giok

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Nick
Date: 22 May 06 - 09:06 AM

Sorry that reads wrong and suggests Al Stewart was a sweet man with a penchant for Bells whisky rather than what I meant was that Alexander Faris was! (He might of course like whisky and be sweet...)

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 May 06 - 10:33 AM

Great stuff! This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to unearth by launching this thread. Man, how I WISH I had been there in the early days to see Al play those small clubs in England!

All those comments above ring true to me. His songs were, yes, unusually introverted, introspective, literary, erudite, and they stood much apart from the usual folk style at the time in that sense. It was not the "American" approach at all, and pretty different from most of the English stuff as well.

Al Stewart seems to me like exactly the sort of person I get along best with and enjoy being around, and I love his approach to songs.

Thanks for the biography link, Bonnie! I'll get it ASAP.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: GUEST,Nicholas Waller
Date: 22 May 06 - 10:47 AM

I've read the bio as well... it's quite patchy, but covers the main bases and not very deep. Perhaps the author felt uncomfortable prying too much. There are copies at Amazon USA and via abebooks.com

He (Al Stewart, not Judd) has a good way with a line:

"Money has its favourites, and yours went back to them"
(from Old Compton Street Blues)

Oh I have no need of a chart or creed
You told your waiting crew
For the winds of chance they will bear us straight
And you spoke as though you knew.
So you paid no mind to the warning signs
As you gave your words so free
Don't change your tack when the timbers crack
On the dark and the rolling sea
(from The Dark and the Rolling Sea).

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: pavane
Date: 22 May 06 - 10:53 AM

Try 'On the border' for plays on words

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 May 06 - 02:18 PM

Simply magnificent lyrics, in my opinion, and pretty magnificent music as well.

Here's an interesting detail: He clearly took the concluding Dylan line from the concluding verse of Dylan's greatest song lyric ever "It's Allright Ma - I'm Only Bleeding"....

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

...and used it as the central theme and title of this song:

Life and Life Only - by Al Stewart

Mr. Willoughby, whose only luxury is the sugar in his tea
Teaches history at High Worthington School
His clothing has remained unnoticeably plain
His common room technique suitably restrained, though maybe too cool
Work day done in the summery sun, see the cricket ball fly
Intently, like a strange demented bird towards the sun
Considering its flight, he pauses for a while
Ah, but Mr. Willoughby, we've never seen you smile
Tell me how come?
Ah well, sometimes it must get lonely
Ah, but it's life and life only

"Maurice," said Renee, "Why didn't you say that you'd be so late
The supper that I made is ruined again.
Is there anything you'd like?". "No, nothing", he replied
Standing by the stairs, not looking in her eyes, so stupidly male
All dark and lying in bed, "You've been with her again!"
She blurts out, then turning on her side begins to cry.
At first he doesn't stir but then mumbling his words
He reaches for her hand, she shivers, but doesn't take it away
Ah, yes sometimes it does get lonely
Ah, but it's life and life only.

Oh Smithy Smithers-Bell; clerk from Clerkenwell on the beach at
Bournemouth thinks he very well may be next year in France
Inspired for a while, he decides to risk a smile at Mr. Willoughby
Who passes, polishing his glasses, studiously averting his glance
Renee, several deckchairs away, wonders if they would be better
While Maurice is with the kids out in the sea
And I was feeling small, sitting on the wall
Looking at them all and wondering who will I be?
Ah, but sometimes it does get lonely
Ah, but it's life and life only

Ah, but it's life and life only
Ah, but it's life and life only
Ah, but it's life and life ...


It's a great song, and I would regard its use of the phrase from "It's Allright Ma" as Al Stewart tipping his hat, in a way, to Mr Dylan. He clearly was strongly influenced by Dylan's work, although he developed an almost completely different style all his own. Although Al has done very few cover tunes on his recordings, he did do a neat cover of the Dylan song "I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)" on one of the early albums, and that one suited his style quite well, fitting right in with some of his other rueful comments about love affairs.

The Dylan song came out in '65. Al's "Life and Life Only" was released 3 years later on the "Love Chronicles" album. No coincidence there.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: GUEST,Cliff Wedgbury
Date: 28 May 06 - 09:39 AM

I used to hang around Bunjies Folk Cellar all the time, from the winter of 1964 until 1969. I remember the first night Al Stewart arrived carrying an old "F"Hole jazz type guitar, and shook Peter Bellamy's hand, introducing himself to the packed audience and enthralling everyone with his own composition, "Pretty Golden Hair."
He lent me his guitar on several occasions to do the traditional "floor spot" when he wanted to nip out to the coffee bar for a quick thirst quenching drink.It used to get so crowded, hot and stuffy down there i'm surprised we all didn't suffocate! I also remember the first time he sang me "Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres," at his tiny bed-sit in Lyle Street, Soho. My late brother David also took some publicity photo's there for Al's first recordings on Decca .
I still keep that song as part of my repotoire today and often feel very nostalgic for those exciting bygone days of youth, forty years ago.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 06 - 12:57 PM

Thanks, Cliff. It's great to hear from the people who were there in the early days. I've never heard "Pretty Golden Hair", as it was not included on later issues of the first album. I have heard "Swiss Cottage Maneuvers". Al, like most of us, was deeply concerned with romantic maneuvers at that age.

Subject: RE: Info about Al Stewart
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 28 May 06 - 01:26 PM

Ah Bunjies, who remembers Theo Johnson, and Roger Evans?
Giok