Available now on the Replay Service
We’re pleased today to be joined by Sughosh Varadarajan to talk about five of his favourite tracks from Al Stewart. Note unfortunately we have a short audio dropout in the last discussion.
Not many songwriters can claim to have invented their own genre — but Al Stewart arguably did exactly that. Born Alastair Ian Stewart in Greenock, Scotland in 1945 and raised in Bournemouth on the English south coast, Stewart came up through the 1960s London folk club scene before carving out a unique niche combining folk-rock with meticulously researched historical storytelling. He called it, simply, his way of writing songs. Everyone else eventually called it historical folk rock.
In this episode, guest Sughosh brings his five favourite Al Stewart tracks — and it’s a selection that traces the full arc of Stewart’s classic period, from the austere epic folk of Past, Present and Future in 1973 through to a blazing live performance at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles in 1981.
It’s a remarkable body of work from an artist who shared a London flat with a young Paul Simon, bought his first guitar from a pre-Police Andy Summers, and took guitar lessons from King Crimson’s Robert Fripp — and who somehow turned all of that eclectic brilliance into music that remains genuinely, enduringly beautiful.
You can find a couple of discussions with Sughosh about Al Stewart’s music on The Music Den YouTube channel:
Tracklist
- Al Stewart — Roads to Moscow — Past, Present and Future
- Al Stewart — Sirens of Titan — Modern Times
- Al Stewart — Year of the Cat
- Al Stewart — The Palace of Versailles — Time Passages
- Al Stewart — Nostradamus (Live 1981) — Indian Summer (Live)
