Here is the second half of my Fall 2005 interview with acclaimed singer-songwriter Al Stewart — yeah, yeah, the "Year of the Cat" guy, get over it. In this installment, we continue discussing his captivating new release, A Beach Full of Shells on Appleseed Records. As promised, the gifted musician and conversationalist recalls English rock's good old days (providing us with some fascinating history lessons), contemplates man's love for felines, and shows he's ready for some football.

ND: The song from A Beach Full of Shells that I hear most people talking about is "Class of '58."

AS: There's a long version of that.

ND: Yes, I finally heard the long version two days ago, and Al, it was such great fun.

AS: I wrote it as a 13-minute epic about the early days of English rock and roll. The story behind that is — well, it's interesting to me — back in the beginning, there were session musicians backing cabaret singers masquerading as rock and roll stars. That's exactly how, in England, it began. In America, it was a long, slow evolution. You had R&B and the country thing, western swing, and these things gradually evolved into different forms that eventually merged into rock and roll. But this took an awfully long time — you can trace rock and roll back into the 1930s and '40s, "Rocket 88", and what everybody talks about and whatever. In England, that tradition was completely absent. We had, I don't know, "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window" and all these terrible 1950s Doris Day songs and whatever, Patti Page...

And then one day, we woke up and there was Elvis Presley. And then a lot of English lads thought they were going to copy this — notably, Cliff Richard. The early people who tried to do rock and roll all came from this sort of cabaret background, and they didn't understand it. Worse still, all the English musicians had never played it. They had no idea; they mostly were dance-band guys playing jazz guitars and all of a sudden, they had to play this stuff they detested. These musicians hated rock and roll — even more than the Parents Music Resource Council or something. (They laugh.) "I'm not playing that!" "Here's five pounds." "Well, all right, I'll play it, but I won't like it."

This, compared with guys like Eddie Cochran in the States who played because they loved it. They were real rock and rollers. The people who were trying to do it in England were B-movie stars and cabaret singers. And then in 1958, all that changed with one guitar riff. It wasn't the song that matter, it was the intro: The record was "Move It" by Cliff Richard. It was a hit single, and the song was actually pretty good; it was written by Sammy Samwell. It's a pretty good early rock and roll song, but that doesn't matter. What matters is the 10-second intro, where the guitar actually sounded like a rock and roll instrument. Up to that point, they'd all sounded like jazz players. This was twangy and it was echo-ey and it was absolutely...It erased the blackboard. It was like someone had taken a cloth and erased everything on a blackboard to start all over again.