Al Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Solo Versions, 1965-1969

Al Stewart was an artist that I had heard good things about, but I'd never given his music a listen beyond his big hits like "Year of the Cat" and "Time Passages." But one reason I'm enjoying the BBC project I'm working on is because it gives me a reason to check out some artists I'd missed. This is a good example.

Stewart played numerous BBC sessions from when he was big enough to get noticed, around 1968, until about 1976, when his success with "Year of the Cat" apparently made him think he didn't need that kind of promotion anymore. In collecting his BBC material, I noticed that it fell into two categories of solo acoustic sessions and full band sessions. So I've split things up into two albums of acoustic sessions and one album of band sessions for this early time period. I don't like having two versions of the same song on the same album, but this way, I was able to include an acoustic version and full band version of the same song when he occasionally did that.

The second song, "Pretty Golden Hair," is notable for a couple of reasons. Stewart's first single came out in 1966, and his first album came out in 1967. This song was on that album. But in 1965, a BBC documentary about cultural outsiders called "Outcasts and Outsiders" happened to include the full performance of this song in a small club. (You can find the footage on YouTube.) So it's a very lucky break that this early recording exists. 

It's even more remarkable that the song's lyrics clearly describes the life of a gay prostitute, including details like having sex in public restrooms. The fact that this was allowed by the BBC is amazing, considering how much they loved to censor. (For instance, one year later, they would censor the line "Making love in the green grass behind the stadium" in Van Morrison's song "Brown Eyed Girl.") But it's also lucky this recording exists, because the album version was slathered with a string arrangement, possibly deliberately overdone in order to obscure the controversial lyrics.

Tracks 11 to 20 all come from three different appearances on the BBC radio show "My Kind of Folk" in 1969. Since it was a folk music oriented show, these recordings don't have the usual problem of overly enthusiastic DJs like Brian Matthew talking over the music. Instead, Stewart got to make his own comments between songs. There's one instance of two such talking tracks in a row. That's because one was a comment about the last song, the other was a comment about the next song. I kept them as separate tracks because there was something else in between that I didn't include, such as the DJ talking.

When I first posted this album in February 2022, nearly all of the material on it was unreleased. But later in 2022, a mega-box set (nearly 50 CDs!) called "The Admiralty Lights" was released. That had lots of BBC material on it, but surprisingly, not everything. Seven of the tracks here are still officially unreleased. Eventually, in 2023, I got around to reconciling what I'd posted with what was on the box set. Stewart played quite a few songs more than once, even just in the acoustic format. Acoustic versions in particular don't usually differ much from each other, so I've only included one version of each.

Overall, the sound quality is very good, but not great. It's very listenable, but it's not always as good as some BBC recordings from this time period. It helped that I often found more than one version of any given song, and then picked the one with better sound quality.

This album is 58 minutes long.

UPDATE: On May 29, 2023, I drastically overhauled the mp3 download file. As mentioned above, I included previously unavailable material from the 2022 mega-box set "The Admiralty Lights." There are too many changes to detail. But there was so much new material that I was able to split this album into two. Previously, this dealt with the years 1965 to 1973. Now, it deals with the years 1965 to 1969, and a second volume deals with the years 1969 to 1973. I call that one "Volume 3," because there's a collection of BBC band versions in between.

01 Do I Love My Neighbour (Al Stewart)
02 Pretty Golden Hair (Al Stewart)
03 Who Killed Tommy McGeechie (Al Stewart)
04 The Carmichaels (Al Stewart)
05 Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres (Al Stewart)
06 Samuel, Oh How You've Changed (Al Stewart)
07 Scandinavian Girl (Al Stewart)
08 talk (Al Stewart)
09 Room of Roots [Instrumental] (Al Stewart)
10 Good as Gone (Al Stewart)
11 talk (Al Stewart)
12 My Enemies Have Sweet Voices (Al Stewart)
13 talk (Al Stewart)
14 Clifton in the Rain (Al Stewart)
15 Denise at 16 [Instrumental] (Al Stewart)
16 talk (Al Stewart)
17 talk (Al Stewart)
18 I Don't Believe You [She Acts like We Never Have Met] [Edit] (Al Stewart)
19 talk (Al Stewart)
20 The Elf (Al Stewart)
21 Memphis, Tennessee (Al Stewart)
22 Sparrow (Al Stewart)
23 Just like Tom Thumb's Blues [Edit] (Al Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15212385/AlStwt_1965-1969_BBSessionsVolume1SoloVrsions_atse.zip.html

I don't have any information on where or when the cover photo was taken. But it looks to me like it's from around this time period.