Featured Artist: Backstage with Al Stewart, New York City, 1998 - Page 5

"You're a human being," I said, always playing the World's Mom. "Perfection isn't part of the model."

"I suppose not. But as for recording, I have nothing planned. I've been saying since the tenth album that I won't record anymore, but somehow I ended up making five more," he said. "But I don't have a record deal right now. A&R people aren't all that interested — no one's clamoring for a 52-year-old folk singer."

"I've never trusted the tastes of A&R people anyway. What do they know?" I said. "Are you writing?"

"I've got lots of songs in pieces," he said, brightening. "I have bits of lyric all over the place, and jump from one to the next."

I chuckled. "The supreme multi-tasker."

"If a record company calls me up and says it wants a record, I'll have to scurry about to finish things up and get things in order, I suppose," he said. "We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I'll write and read."

"I have to tell you, I'm forcing my daughter to listen to you..."

"Oh no!" he said

"No, not like that. I listen to it and she hears the music and asks questions about it like, 'What's a Murmansk Run?' And then we go look it up. It's really getting her interested in history."

"Well, that's great," he said, smiling. "I recently heard from a teacher who's using 'League of Notions' with her students."

"What's your favorite period of history?"

"Well, I don't really write about history so much as writing about avoiding it. You look back and see how things were bungled in hopes of not doing the same things."

"Those who don't remember the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them..."

"Yeah, that's it."

"Well, you've written about so much history, but most of it falls into the time between the World Wars. Would that be your favorite era?"

"Well, I know that period well — it's the twentieth century, although I've written about things as far back as the Trojan War."

"True."

"But you're right, I do have a glut of stuff in that period," he said, nodding his head, and musing that he might try something further back, maybe in the 1800s.

"What about America in 1998?"

"Well, how well that's going depends on where you are on the scale..."

"In other words, if you're poor, it sucks."

Article Author: Natalie Davis

Natalie Davis is an award-winning journalist, progressive- and GLBT-issues activist, musician and broadcaster. Davis' All Facts and Opinions - The Armchair Activist has existed since 1996. She is general manager and program/music director of Grateful …

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