Alastair Ian Stewart (born 5 September 1945) is a Scottish-born[1][2] singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician who rose to prominence as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s.

[5] 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.

[6] Although born in Greenock,[7] 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.

After that, according to the song "Post World War II Blues" (from Past, Present and Future): "I came up to London when I was 19 with a corduroy jacket and a head full of dreams."

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.

Love Chronicles (1969) was notable for the 18-minute title track, an anguished autobiographical tale of sexual encounters that was the first mainstream record release ever to include the word "fucking".

[9] It was voted "Folk Album of the Year" by the UK music magazine Melody Maker and features Jimmy Page and Richard Thompson on guitar.

There, at Michael Eavis's Worthy Farm, Stewart performed at the first-ever Glastonbury Festival to a field of 1,000 hippies, who had paid just £1 each to be there.

It was written after a tumultuous breakup with his girlfriend and muse, Mandi, and was very much a transitional album, combining songs in Stewart's confessional style with more intimations of the historical themes that he would increasingly adopt (e.g., "The News from Spain" with its progressive rock overtones, including dramatic piano by Rick Wakeman).

It echoed a traditional historical storytelling style and contained the song "Nostradamus," a long (9:43) track in which Stewart tied into the rediscovery of the claimed seer's writings by referring to selected possible predictions about 20th century people and events.

Other songs on Past, Present and Future characterized by Stewart's "history genre" mentioned American President Warren G. Harding, World War II, Ernst Röhm, Christine Keeler, Louis Mountbatten, and Joseph Stalin's purges.

Stewart followed Past, Present and Future with Modern Times (1975), in which the songs were lighter on historical references and more of a return to the theme of short stories set to music.

In a highly positive retrospective review of Modern Times, AllMusic senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine described the album as "exquisite".

Erlewine wrote that the album "establishes Stewart's classic sound of folky narratives and Lennonesque melodies, all wrapped up in a lush, layered production from Alan Parsons.

Despite his lower profile and waning commercial success, he continued to tour the world, record albums, and maintain a loyal fanbase.

There was a four-year gap between his next two albums, the highly political Russians and Americans (1984) and the upbeat pop-oriented Last Days of the Century (1988), which appeared on smaller labels and had lower sales than his previous works.

After parting ways with his longtime collaborator of almost 20 years, Peter White (who was credited on every studio and live album between Year of the Cat and Famous Last Words and also served as his regular songwriting partner), Stewart joined with former Wings guitarist Laurence Juber to record a concept album, Between the Wars (1995), covering major historical and cultural events from 1918 to 1939, such as the Treaty of Versailles, Prohibition, the Spanish Civil War, and the Great Depression.

In 2005, he released A Beach Full of Shells, which was set in places varying from First World War England to the 1950s rock 'n' roll scene that influenced him.

In May 2015, Stewart performed the albums Past, Present and Future and Year of the Cat in their entirety at the Royal Albert Hall with a band that included Tim Renwick, Peter White and Stuart Elliott, who had appeared on the original recordings.

Born in Scotland, raised in Dorset, and gaining fame in London, Stewart moved to Los Angeles[4] shortly after the release of Year of the Cat.

[19][failed verification] Stewart's historical work includes such subjects as: "Sirens of Titan", from Modern Times is a musical precis of Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name.

On occasion, Stewart has set poems to music, such as "My Enemies Have Sweet Voices" (lyrics by the poet Pete Morgan) on the 1970 album Zero She Flies.

During his 1999 UK tour, Stewart invited Morgan to read the lyrics as he performed this song in the Leeds City Varieties Theatre show of 7 November 1999.

In a 23 June 2012 telephone interview with Bob Reid and Blair Packham on NewsTalk 1010 AM in Toronto, Ontario[22] (partially transcribed below), Al Stewart provided these insights into his songwriting "process": I don't like repetition.

But at the same time it shows so little interest in originality that I can't actually listen to anything called "Hold On" at this point in my life.