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Al Stewart
Al – “It had been a while since I had seen her perform and I was shocked by her stage fright before the show. She was totally paranoid about going out and singing. She didn’t want to go out there at all and she’d never been like that with Fairport and so it came as a shock for me to see her that shaky. It was upsetting. However once she got out there she was her normal magical self, just as if what I had seen before the gig had never happened.”
The music press that Al had courted so adroitly during his tenure as Bedsitterland’s favourite son were now beating a path to the door of a member of the “musical literati” and his casual mentions of Camus, Sartre or Peake made him a unique interviewee. The column inches he now generated were vast. People began to listen to what he had to say. Throughout these interviews and reviews Al’s made the point on a number of occasions that the highest compliment that you could bestow upon the new album would be to say that it had a ‘60s feel. He spoke to the New Musical Express first of all. Al – “But I don’t know whether the teenagers of today will be able to relate to it all. I haven’t a clue. Actually, of all the albums I’ve made and of all the songs that I’ve written, this is the one that I’m least worried about whether people relate to it or not, because it’s from beginning to end something I’d always told you I was going to do, and I’ve done it, right?.”
Besides “Old Admirals”, which from the outset appeared to be Al’s favourite track on the new album, he was often picking out “Terminal Eyes” for special attention. Al – “The similarity to ‘I Am the Walrus’ was deliberate. I took the Walrus, he could’ve been anyone with long hair at UFO, anyone with a gold face or whatever and I’ve symbolised him as being the symbol of the Woodstock dream. My longhaired Walrus who went out and penned these songs. This is a serious song if you read the lyrics of it and it is the suicide song of the Walrus, hence the tempo and the rhythm and the feel of it.”
The song was a million light years away from those on Orange and Al was very proud of his work.
The entire album was “serious”. He dabbled in surrealism with “Post World War Two Blues”. He called it his “photo-montage song”, as it brings rock ‘n’ roll stars and politicians of his time together in a piece that sets out to be biographical. The songs on the album were also all contemporary, whether they were about a World War I Admiral, the massacre by Hitler of a Nazi leader and 2000 of his storm troopers in 1934, or the German drive into Russia in 1941. The only song that was exactly what it seemed to be about was “Roads to Moscow”, for which Al read a reputed 40 books!
The Future part of the album was provided courtesy of Erika Cheetham. Her book on Nostradamus and her close collaboration with Al on the track were invaluable. In fact, it was Ms Cheetham’s notes for her book that Al worked from, and this research was exhaustive. Did he really believe that a 16th century Frenchman knew about the EEC and that Israel was going to defeat the Arabs? “My impression is that it’s fairly amazing”, he said. “I think it’s very possible” he told Karl Dallas.
CBS, now slightly more interested in Al’s career than before, proceeded to host a bizarre lunch to announce the launch of Past, Present And Future. Jerry Gilbert – “It was all very strange! While the assorted hacks tucked into their Italian fare Al stood at the head of the table explaining, track by track, the background, meaning and references to each song individually!”
Karl Dallas initially found the new role of Al as Professor difficult to accept and was someone who was yet to be won over. Karl Dallas – “This was all new to me and I had known Al for a long time by now you must remember. Up until this point I’d always thought of Al as a very talented singer-songwriter who was basically writing very uninteresting songs. This changed for me when Al wrote and recorded Past, Present And Future.”
Published by Helter Skelter books visit now for details on this and other roots titles
Fully revised and updated with many new sections for January 2006 publication.
BAND ON THE RUN
In which Al writes his masterpiece Modern Times and the
breakthrough album Year Of The Cat.
He moves to Los Angeles.
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