About Al Stewart
Alastair Ian Stewart is a Scottish-born singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician who rose to prominence as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s. He developed a unique style of combining folk-rock songs with tales of characters and events from history.
Stewart has released 16 studio and four live albums since his debut album Bed-Sitter Images in 1967, and continues to tour extensively in the US, Canada, Europe, and the UK. He is best known for his 1976 hit single "Year of the Cat", 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 returned in later albums. His 2009 release, Uncorked, was released on his independent label, Wallaby Trails Recordings, and was followed up by Al Stewart and The Empty Pockets Live in 2024. Stewart has worked with Peter White, Alan Parsons, Jimmy Page, Richard Thompson, Rick Wakeman, Francis Monkman, Tori Amos, and Tim Renwick, and more recently has played with Dave Nachmanoff and former Wings lead-guitarist Laurence Juber.
Stewart appears throughout the musical history of the folk revivalist era. He played at the initial Glastonbury Festival in 1970, knew Yoko Ono before she met John Lennon, shared a London flat with Paul Simon , and hosted at the Les Cousins folk club in London in the 1960s.
Although born in Greenock, Al Stewart grew up in the town of Wimborne, Dorset, England, after moving from Scotland with his mother, Joan Underwood. His father, Alastair MacKichan Stewart, who served as a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, died in a plane crash during a 1945 training exercise before his son Al was born. Stewart attended Wycliffe College, Gloucestershire as a boarder. After that, according to the song "Post World War II Blues" : "I came up to London when I was 19 with a corduroy jacket and a head full of dreams."
Having bought his fourth 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 serve as master of ceremonies at the Les Cousins folk club on Greek Street, where he played alongside Cat Stevens, Bert Jansch, Van Morrison, Roy Harper, Ralph McTell, and Paul Simon with whom he shared a flat in Dellow Street, Stepney, London.
Stewart's first recording was on Jackson C. Frank's debut album, 1965's Jackson C. Frank, playing guitar on "Yellow Walls". His first record was the single "The Elf" , which was released in 1966 on Decca Records and included guitar work from Jimmy Page . Stewart then signed to Columbia Records , 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.
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