Al Stewart — Still Working At 78

On September 5, Al Stewart will turn 78. Although he has recorded hardly any new songs for more than a decade, he has an impressive catalogue going back to the 1960s. Many are timeless, which is what one would expect from the inventor of historical folk-rock, but others will strike a personal chord with the listener for other reasons. Great songs often have this tendency. Paul McCartney’s Yesterday is well over half a century old, but many men will identify with it, and so will many women if you flip the gender. Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now is a song of regret with which many older people will identify. Al Stewart has more than a few songs like this, many of his early songs are intensely personal, but emotion is a universal thing.

He will be taking his birthday off but on September 8, 9 & 10 he will be playing venues in Wisconsin with his much younger band The Empty Pockets.

If Year Of The Cat is a certain show closer or encore, when I saw him in London last year he opened with Sirens Of Titan, a track from his Modern Times album based on a Kurt Vonnegut novel. He may also perform what appear to be his two most recent songs; Primo Carnera and Prester John have yet to find their way onto an album, and a new album is long overdue.

The Empty Pockets are a force of their own, scoring a Billboard number 1 last year, they currently have a new album out. And they are true Al fans; when I buttonholed the lovely Erika she knew all about Elvaston Place and Al’s association with Yoko Ono.

You can check out Al on his official website and The Empty Pockets on theirs as well as many live recordings on YouTube.  For Al, if you are into epic songs, he has written a few of those, most recently the autobiographical Class Of ’58; the autobiographical and intensely personal Love Chronicles, whose solitary use of a certain F word was controversial at the time but half a century and more down the line, no one bats an eyelid at it. His two most demanded epic songs are Roads To Moscow and Nostradamus, both from Past, Present And Future. As for The Empty Pockets, That Gun has a certain novelty while Privatize The Profits, a composition by lead guitarist Josh Solomon is sadly thematic in this era of manufactured austerity.