Anthology

Al Stewart is a singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician best known for his late 70s hit albums, “Time Passages” and “Year of the Cat,” both of which had hit songs with the same titles.

Stewart came to stardom as part of the British folk revival in the ’60s and ’70s, and developed his own unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of the great characters and events from history.

Stewart has been apart of rock history for nearly 50 years. In fact, Stewart knew Yoko Onopre-Lennon and shared a London apartment with a young Paul Simon and his first single, “The Elf,” included guitar work from Jimmy Page.

Many of his songs are written about real-life historical events and characters such as the Wehrmacht’s invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II, Nazi war criminals hiding in South America and the Spanish Civil, but just as many are nakedly personal.

In fact, the titletrack of his 1969 album, “Love Chronicles,” an 18-minute tune about his love life that is reputedly the first mainstream record to include a famous four letter verb for intercourse.

Stewart’s biggest hits include “Year Of The Cat,” “Time Passages,” “Song On The Radio” and “On The Border.”

These days, he still records, often with the help of Lawrence Juber and in 2000, he released “Down In The Cellar,” a concept album dedicated to wine.

Stewart’s latest release came in 2009 with his live album, Uncorked. The album features guitarist and vocalist Dave Nachmanoff. With the release of Uncorked, Al and musical partner Dave Nachmanoff take a trip through Stewart’s musical back pages, both in terms of the musical catalogue (they did have nearly 20 albums’ worth of songs to pick from), and in terms of performance style. Recorded live during a springtime East Coast swing, Uncorked is the first live acoustic disc Al’s done since 1992’s Rhymes In Rooms, and both he and Nachmanoff made a conscious decision not to replicate any of the tracks from that disc, even if it meant leaving off such standards as “On the Border” and the two aforementioned Top 40 hits.