Featured Artist: Backstage with Al Stewart, New York City, 1998 - Page 3

Then Al had another idea. "Have you got your harmonica?" he asked Dawson. "I was listening to you out there [during Dawson's first-show performance, in which he played a blistering harmonica] and heard this thing in my head. You know the sax break in 'Year of the Cat?' I thought it would be cool to have you play something on harmonica there. Do you have your E-flat key?"

Julian said he'd check, and wondered if Al could do the song in E in case he only had the E key. Dawson went out to find his harmonica.

"Great," Al laughed good-naturedly. "Things are going bad enough and he wants me to play the song in a different key."

Dawson showed up with the instrument and Al started playing the familiar opening chords of his most-famous song. On cue, Dawson started to blow a riff that encompassed some of the recognizable sax line from the 1976 tune yet imbued it with newer colors. Sitting there, privy to a performance that only I would hear, I closed my eyes and sailed off to some exotic locale filled with the tumbling rhythms of Al's guitar and the soulful sounds of Julian's harp.

Al stopped abruptly. "No, that won't work. That would only work after the guitar solo, and I'm not doing that," he said. "Maybe some other time when we've more time to work on it."

The musicians worked on the Everlys tune for a bit longer and then Julian took his leave, promising to check around for Al's missing capo.

"Well, why don't we talk now, before I have to look around for the capo," Al said.

During the first show, Al delighted the audience by running through a few character voices from Monty Python, the famed '70s British comedy troupe. Being a huge Python fan myself, I mentioned that his spontaneous riff was hilarious. He replied that he was a big fan, but these days he could only handle it occasionally, in small doses: "After you've heard the lines so many times it all becomes noise. It's only after you've had a break from it, say, 25 years, that it becomes funny again." His favorite sketch, he said, featured John Cleese as a bishop who wanted to be Pope. Stewart's well-known light tenor morphed into a low baritone as he mimicked the comedian: "I want to be Pooope."

Article Author: Natalie Davis

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