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Al Stewart

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Glasgow-born Al Stewart has been an amazingly prolific and successful musician across 40 years and counting (as of 2009), working in a dizzying array of stylistic modes and musical genres -- in other words, he's had a real career, and has done it without concerning himself too much about trends and the public taste. He's been influenced by several notables, to be sure, including his fellow Scot (and slightly younger contemporary) Donovan, as well as Ralph McTell, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon -- but apart from a passing resemblance to Donovan vocally, he doesn't sound quite like anyone else, and has achieved his greatest success across four decades with songs that are uniquely his and impossible to mistake. Stewart was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1945, and was swept up a decade later in the skiffle boom that took young Britons by storm -- he decided to take up guitar after hearing Lonnie Donegan's music. By the early '60s, his family was living in Bournemouth, and he joined a local band, the Trappers, in 1963, and was already writing songs by that time. He was an admirer of the Beatles as their fame swept out of Liverpool and across the country, and even managed once to get backstage to meet John Lennon and play a few notes for him, at one of their Bournemouth performances. He studied guitar with Robert Fripp, no less, and later played keyboards in a band called Dave La Caz & the G Men, who managed to open for the Rolling Stones at the outset of the latter's career in 1963. A true milestone for Stewart took place when Dave La Caz & the G Men recorded one of his songs, "When She Smiled," in early 1964.

It was around this time that Stewart discovered the music of Bob Dylan, who was in the midst of his "protest" song phase -- what he referred to as his finger-pointing songs. The mix of topicality, folk melodies, and the growing prominence of rock instrumentation that he heard in Dylan's music inspired Stewart, who was now prepared to devote as much energy to composition as he had to performing. He went so far as to cut a demo single of Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" backed with one of his originals, entitled "The Sky Will Fall Down." Though nothing came of it directly, the demo and the song, and the tenor of the times, inspired Stewart to head to London in search of success. He failed to interest anyone in recording him or his topical song "Child of the Bomb" -- the "Ban the [H] Bomb" movement in England being a hugely popular and urgent cause at the time -- and retreated to performing for a time, as part of the burgeoning London folk scene, which was already home to such figures as Davy Graham, Martin Carthy, and Isla Cameron. He fell in with some of the younger figures on the scene, playing shows with Bert Jansch, Ralph McTell, and Sandy Denny, and also shared living quarters for a time with a visiting American named Paul Simon, from New York, who had already recorded an album, as well as numerous singles with a partner, and was immersing himself in the English folk scene.

His friendship with Simon led to Stewart's first gig as a session musician on record, playing guitar on the song "Yellow Walls" from Jackson C. Frank's album Blues Run the Game, which Simon produced. By this time, Stewart had also appeared on the BBC, and was playing better gigs and starting to be noticed. Finally, in 1966, he was signed to Decca Records to cut a single featuring an original of his, "The Elf," on the A-side (the B-side, oddly enough, was his rendition of the recent Yardbirds LP cut "Turn into Earth" -- even more curiously, in terms of coincidence, future Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page was one of the players on those sessions). Stewart's single was not a success, though the composition has the distinction of being one of the earlier -- if not the earliest -- pop songs inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Stewart was undaunted, and he remained part of the thriving London music scene, and his efforts paid off in 1967 when CBS Records, the U.K. division of Columbia Records in America (which couldn't use the "Columbia" name in England, as it was the property of a division of EMI) signed him to record his debut album, Bedsitter Images. The latter was a superb showcase for Stewart's songwriting, but not for the sound he visualized for his music -- heavily orchestrated and, in his eyes, grotesquely over-produced, he felt his voice and even his songs were lost amid the densely layered accompaniments. But the record generated a massive amount of publicity for him, and put Al Stewart on the pop music map as a contender, and someone worth watching and hearing.

By then, he was known to the music journals, and at his performances he could show off his songs his way (and one of his shows in 1968 featured accompaniment by no less than his former teacher Robert Fripp and several others who would figure large in a group called King Crimson a year or so later). In 1969 came a second album, Love Chronicles, whose epic title track broke ground among respectable recordings for its use of language (a colloquial term for intercourse) as well as running-time barriers, and included Fairport Convention among the backing musicians. Stewart's writing had already showing a remarkable degree of growth from what were hardly modest beginnings, at least in terms of ambition -- his songs were increasingly coming across as something akin to "sung" paintings, mixing topicality, a command of detail and imagery, and distinctive use of language. But with Zero She Flies he took a major step forward with the song "Manuscript," which was his first to draw extensively from history, and also to incorporate sea images. These were elements that would all manifest themselves ever more strongly in his work across the decades to come. Following the release of Orange in 1972, he would turn away from the deeply personal songs and devote an increasing part of his music to sources out of history, plunging into such subject matter in the first person, as almost a musical precursor to Quantum Leap.

Stewart made the leap in October of 1973 with the release of Past, Present and Future, an LP's worth of songs that would explore past lives (and the future by way of the past, on "Nostradamus"). The latter song and "Roads to Moscow" also gave him his first major exposure in America, where FM and college radio stations quickly picked up on both songs. Suddenly, from being all but unknown on the far side of the Atlantic, Stewart had a serious cult following on American college campuses, especially in the Northeast (where New York's WNEW-FM radio gave all of Past, Present and Future, and especially the two songs in question, lots of airplay). He followed this up in the fall of 1974 with Modern Times, produced by Alan Parsons, which was thick with contemporary, historical, and literary references.

It would be a full year before his next album showed up, but when it did, that record completely altered the landscape under Stewart's feet, and far beyond as well. Year of the Cat (1975) turned Al Stewart from an artist with a wide cult following at America's colleges into a fixture on AM radio, the title song rising into the Top Ten in the U.S. and, ultimately, around most of the world. In the United States, in an effort to capitalize on his sudden fame -- as not only "Year of the Cat" but "On the Border" also charted high -- a double album of tracks from his four prior British LPs was issued. And in the fall of 1978, Time Passages, his newest album, was released to great success, including a Top Ten single for the title track. A year of touring to huge audiences around the world followed, all of it very strange when one considers how far removed from the dominant late-'70s sounds of punk, disco, and new wave Stewart's music was. In the summer of 1980 came his next album, 24 Carrots, but neither it nor any of the singles pulled from it were ever able to repeat the success of those three prior LPs or their accompanying 45s. Indian Summer (1981), a mixed live and studio album, also failed to perform up to expectations.

Stewart, who had been a mainstay of Arista Records in America for the last three years of the 1970s, was dropped by that label soon after Indian Summer's release. He didn't disappear, however, either on record or in concert, and continued to tour and record. The much more overtly political album Russians & Americans (1984) and the lighter Last Days of the Century (1988) kept his name out there, and he also recorded another concert album, the all-acoustic Rhymes in Rooms (1992). And in an increasingly rare sort of gesture, in 1993 he released Famous Last Words, and album dedicated to the late Peter Wood, who had co-written "Year of the Cat." He also continued to explore history in song with Between the Wars (1995), which dealt with events between 1918 and 1939. Stewart's 21st century recordings include A Beach Full of Shells (2005) and Sparks of Ancient Light (2008). When he isn't recording or touring, he keeps busy with his hobby of collecting fine, rare wines. His post-1980 work is less easy to find than compilations of his hits from the mid- to late '70s, which are downright ubiquitous, and in 2007 his British CBS albums were released on CD in America through Collectors' Choice. Stewart was also given the comprehensive box set treatment by EMI in 2005 with the five-CD set Just Yesterday. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Al Stewart

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Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Wikipedia
For the English journalist and newscaster, see Alastair Stewart. For the Australian bishop, see Al Stewart (bishop).
Al Stewart

Stewart performing in Santa Monica, California on 13 February 2010
Background information
Birth name Alastair Ian Stewart
Born (1945-09-05) 5 September 1945 (age 66)
Glasgow, Scotland
Origin Wimborne, England
Genres
Occupations
Instruments
Years active 1966–present
Website www.alstewart.com

Al Stewart (born Alastair Ian Stewart, 5 September 1945) is a Scottish[1] singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician.

Stewart came to stardom as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s, and developed his own unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of the great characters and events from history.[2]

He is best known for his 1976 hit single "Year of the Cat", the title song from the platinum album of the same name.

Though Year of the Cat and its 1978 platinum follow-up Time Passages brought Stewart his biggest worldwide commercial successes, earlier albums such as Past, Present and Future from 1973 are often seen as better examples of his intimate brand of historical folk-rock - a style to which he has returned in recent albums.[3]

Stewart was a key figure in a fertile era in British music and he appears throughout the musical folklore of the age. He played at the first ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970, knew Yoko Ono before she met John Lennon, shared a London apartment with a young Paul Simon, and hosted at the legendary Les Cousins folk club in London in the 1960s.[4]

Stewart has released sixteen studio and three live albums since his debut album Bedsitter Images in 1967, and continues to tour extensively around the US and Canada, Europe and the UK. His latest release, is Uncorked, which was released on his independent label, Wallaby Trails Recordings.[5]

He has worked with Peter White, Alan Parsons, Jimmy Page, Richard Thompson, Rick Wakeman, Tori Amos and Tim Renwick and recently has played with Dave Nachmanoff and former Wings lead-guitarist Laurence Juber.

Contents

Early life

Though born in Glasgow, Al Stewart grew up in the town of Wimborne Minster, Dorset, England after moving from Scotland with his mother. He attended Wycliffe College school in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, as a boarder. After that, as he sings in the song "Post World War II Blues" (from Past, Present and Future): "I came up to London when I was 19 with a corduroy jacket and a head full of dreams."

Having bought his first guitar from future Police guitarist Andy Summers, Stewart traded in his electric guitar for an acoustic guitar when he was offered a weekly slot at Bunjies Coffee House in London's Soho in 1965. From there, he went on to compete at the Les Cousins folk club on Greek Street, where he played alongside Cat Stevens, Bert Jansch, Van Morrison, Roy Harper and Ralph McTell.[4]

It was at this time that Stewart also met Yoko Ono, who persuaded him to part with the only £100 he had in the world to put towards her film entitled No 4, a compilation of naked bottoms[citation needed].

Career

Stewart's first record was the single "The Elf" (backed with a version of the Yardbirds' "Turn into Earth"), which was released in 1966 on Decca Records, and included guitar work from Jimmy Page (later of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin), the first of many leading guitarists Stewart worked with, including Richard Thompson, Tim Renwick and Peter White. Stewart then signed to Columbia Records (CBS in the UK), for whom he released six albums. Though the first four of these attracted relatively little commercial interest, Stewart's popularity and cult-following grew steadily through albums that contain some of Stewart's most incisive and introspective songwriting.

Early albums

Stewart's debut album Bed-Sitter Images was released on LP in 1967 (though technically his first recording was 'The Elf', an extract from Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' set to music and released by Decca in 1966, which sold an estimated 496 copies). A revised version appeared in 1970 as The First Album (Bed-Sitter Images) with a few tracks changed, and the album was reissued on CD in 2007 with all tracks from both versions. His first recording of any kind appears on Jackson C. Frank's first album, 1965's Jackson C. Frank, playing guitar on "Yellow Walls".

Love Chronicles (1969) was notable for the 18-minute title track, an anguished autobiographical tale of sexual encounters that was the first mainstream record release ever to include the word "fucking".[6] It was voted "Folk Album of the Year" by the UK music magazine Melody Maker, and also features Jimmy Page and Richard Thompson on guitar.

His third album, Zero She Flies followed in 1970 and included a number of shorter songs which ranged from acoustic ballads and instrumentals to songs that featured electric lead guitar. These first three albums (including The Elf) were later released as the two CD set To Whom it May Concern: 1966–70.

In 1970, Stewart jumped into a car with fellow musician Ian Anderson and headed to the small town of Pilton, Somerset. There, at Michael Eavis's Worthy Farm, Stewart performed at the first ever Glastonbury festival to a field of 1,000 hippies who had paid just £1 each to be there.

On the back of his growing success, Stewart released Orange in 1972. It was written after a tumultuous break-up with his girlfriend and muse, Mandi, and was very much a transitional album, combining songs in Stewart's confessional style with more intimations of the historical themes that he would increasingly adopt (e.g. "The News from Spain", with its prog-rock overtones, including dramatic piano by Rick Wakeman).

The fifth release, Past, Present and Future (1973), was Stewart's first album to receive a proper release in the United States, via Janus Records. It echoed a traditional 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 mainstream radio airplay at that time, the song became a hit on many U.S. college/university radio stations, which were flexible about running times.

Such airplay helped the album to reach #133 on the Billboard album chart in the US. Other songs on Past, Present and Future characterized by Stewart's 'history genre' mentioned American President Warren Harding, World War II, Ernst Röhm, Christine Keeler, Louis Mountbatten, and Joseph Stalin's purges.

Alan Parsons years

Stewart followed Past, Present and Future with Modern Times (1975), in which the songs were lighter on historical references and more of a return to the theme of short stories set to music. Significantly, though, it was the first of his albums to be produced by Alan Parsons, and Allmusic regards it as his best. It produced his first hit single, "Carol", and received substantial airplay on album oriented stations and reached #30 in the US, some 30 years before Bob Dylan would release an album of the same name.

Stewart's contract with CBS Records expired at this point and he signed to RCA Records for the world outside North America. His first two albums for RCA, Year of the Cat (released on Janus in the U.S., then reissued by Arista Records after Janus folded) and Time Passages (released in the U.S. on Arista), set the style for his later work, and have certainly been his biggest-selling recordings.[7]

As Stewart told Kaya Burgess of The Times: "When I finished Year of the Cat, I thought: ‘If this isn’t a hit, then I can’t make a hit.’ We finally got the formula exactly right."[4]

The most amazing fact about this album is that Stewart had all of the music and orchestration written and completely recorded before he even had a title for any of the songs. He mentioned, in a Canadian radio interview, that he has done this for 6 of his albums, and he often writes 4 different sets of lyrics for each song.[8]

Both albums reached the top ten in the US, with "Year of the Cat" peaking at #5 and "Time Passages" at #10, and both albums produced hit singles in the US ("Year of the Cat" #8, and "On the Border", #42; "Time Passages" #7 and "Song On the Radio", #29). Meanwhile "Year of the Cat" became Stewart's first chart single in Britain, where it peaked at #31. The overwhelming success of these songs, both of which still receive substantial radio airplay on classic-rock/pop format radio stations, has perhaps later overshadowed the depth and range of Stewart's body of songwriting.[9] On tour in 2008, Stewart commented that he wished his fans would "never again listen to anything I recorded prior to 1988."

1980s

Stewart then released 24 Carrots (#37 US 1980) and his first live album Live/Indian Summer (#110 US 1981), which both featuring backing by Peter White's band Shot in the Dark (who released their own unsuccessful album in 1981). While "24 Carrots" did produce a #24 single with "Midnight Rocks," the album sold less well than its two immediate predecessors.

After those releases, Stewart was dropped by Arista and his popularity declined. Despite his lower profile and waning commercial success, he continued to tour the world, record albums, and maintain a loyal fanbase. There was a four-year gap between his next two albums, the highly political Russians and Americans (1984) and the upbeat pop-oriented Last Days of the Century (1988), which appeared on smaller labels and had lower sales than his previous works.

1990s

Stewart followed up with his second live album, the acoustic Rhymes in Rooms (1992), which featured only himself and Peter White, and Famous Last Words (1993), which was dedicated to the memory of the late Peter Wood (who co-wrote "Year of the Cat"), who died the year of its release.

Stewart followed these up with a concept album, Between the Wars (1995), covering major historical and cultural events from 1918 to 1939, such as the Versailles Treaty, Prohibition, the Spanish Civil War, and the Great Depression.

In 1995, Stewart was invited to play at the 25th anniversary Glastonbury festival, taking to the same stage he had graced in 1970 at the first ever festival.

21st century

In 2000, Stewart released Down in the Cellar, a concept album themed on wine. Stewart had begun a love-affair with wine in the 1970s when, he admitted, he had more money than he knew how to spend,[10] and so turned to fine wines.

In 2005 he released A Beach Full of Shells, which was set in exotic places from First World War England to the 1950s rock'n'roll scene that influenced him.

In 2008, he released Sparks of Ancient Light produced, like his most recent albums, by Laurence Juber. Here he weaves tales of William McKinley, Lord Salisbury and Hanno the Navigator.

Stewart and guitarist Dave Nachmanoff released a live album, Uncorked (Live with Dave Nachmanoff) on Stewart's label, Wallaby Trails Recordings, in 2009.[11]

Stewart and Nachmanoff played the Glastonbury Festival 40th anniversary in June 2010 on the Acoustic stage.

Stewart sang a duet with Albert Hammond of Hammond's "It Never Rains in Southern California" on Hammond's 2010 album "Legend."

In 2011, Stewart sang a duet with his guitarist and opening act Dave Nachmanoff on Nachmanoff's album "Step Up". The song, "Sheila Won't Be Coming Home", was co-written by Stewart and Nachmanoff.

Residence

Born in Scotland, raised in Dorset and gaining fame in London, Stewart moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s. He married in the mid-1990s, and he, his wife and their two daughters moved to Marin County, California.

Use of historical and literary sources

Historical references

Stewart's historical work includes such subjects as:

Literary sources

"Sirens of Titan", from Modern Times is a musical precis of Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same title.

On occasion, Stewart has set poems to music, such as "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 Leeds City Varieties Theatre show of 7 November 1999.

Discography

Studio albums

Live albums

Compilations

  • The Early Years (1977)
  • The Best of Al Stewart - Songs From the Radio (1985)
  • Chronicles... The Best of Al Stewart (1991)
  • To Whom it May Concern 1966-1970 (1993)
  • Premium Gold Collection (1996)
  • Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (1996) (limited distribution of B-sides and rarities)[14]
  • On the Border (1998)
  • Singer Songwriter (2001)
  • The Very Best Al Stewart Album Ever (2002)
  • The Essential Al Stewart (2003)
  • Introducing... Al Stewart - Running Man (2003)
  • Greatest Hits (2004)
  • Just Yesterday (2005)
  • A Piece of Yesterday - The Anthology (2006)
  • The Definitive Pop Collection (2006)

Charted Singles

  • Year of the Cat (1976 #8 US, #31 UK)
  • On the Border (1977 #42 US)
  • Time Passages (1978 #7 US, #1 US Adult Contemporary)
  • Song on the Radio (1979 #29 US)
  • Midnight Rocks (1980 #24 US)

References

  1. ^ http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/stewart_al/bio.jhtml
  2. ^ Brocken, Michael (2003). The British Folk Revival, 1944–2002. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-7546-3282-5. OCLC 51389150. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2gU4URxmuQ4C&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=%22folk+revival%22+%22al+stewart%22&source=web&ots=0YUVTh02v8&sig=E4Xs_ypZ7aPpd5GxakI8ZtwH1f8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result. 
  3. ^ Brown, Joe (February 18, 2009). "Al Stewart: Heady concert to engage history in singer’s lyrics". Las Vegas Sun (Las Vegas). http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/feb/18/heady-concert-engage-history-singers-lyrics/. Retrieved February 19, 2009. "...Stewart says on the phone from his home in Los Angeles." 
  4. ^ a b c Kaya Burgess (2009-05-12). "Al Stewart, the return of the cat". The Times (London). http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6267857.ece. Retrieved 2009-05-12. 
  5. ^ Al Stewart at Appleseed Recordings
  6. ^ Gelder, Ken; Thornton, Sarah (1997). The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge. p. 413. ISBN 978-0-415-12727-1. OCLC 34513133. http://books.google.com/books?id=1jHcXUTNmIw. 
  7. ^ "Al Stewart's passing time very well after 'Time Passages'", St. Petersburg Times, January 11, 1979, retrieved from Google News Archive
  8. ^ [1] CIUT’s Barry Livingston’s interview with legendary UK singer/songwriter AL STEWART, Thursday June 16th, 2011 at 7am
  9. ^ "Living in the Past", Miami New Times, October 12, 1995
  10. ^ Liner notes, Down In The Cellar
  11. ^ Breaking news from Dave Nachmanoff and Al Stewart, July 23, 2009 . Retrieved July 24, 2009.
  12. ^ a b Nichols, Thomas M. (Spring, 2001). "Soldiers and War: A Top Ten List". International Journal (Canadian International Council) 56 (2): 312, 316–317. JSTOR 40203558. 
  13. ^ Nichols, Thomas M. (Spring, 2001). "Soldiers and War: A Top Ten List". International Journal (Canadian International Council) 56 (2): 312–323, 317 n.1. JSTOR 40203558. "In a 1980 interview, Stewart lamented his reference in the song about More to Henry Plantagenet when he meant Henry Tudor. How many of his fans caught the error is unknown." 
  14. ^ Alstewart.com

External links

Al Stewart
Studio Albums
Live albums
Live/Indian Summer (1981) · Rhymes in Rooms (1992) · Uncorked (2009)

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

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