Al Stewart for prog related

Stewart's second album, "Love Chronicles" which features "prog related" inductees, Jimmy Page and Richard Thompson (who both contribute grand guitar work) contains a few multi-part songs including the 18 minute title track which like many like epics before and after it weaves several melodies into a single main composition along with several blazing mini solos courtesy of Page. The eight minute folk piece, "The Ballad Of Mary Foster", also has two different parts of worthy notice.

 

On Al's "Past, Present, and Future" album, we're given two more epics, the solemn  "Nostradamus" and "Roads to Moscow" which are also both multipart and eight and nine minutes, respectively. There is also a concept to very much of this album as well: The World Wars.

 

These two albums would be considered the most "progressive" by this website's standards but several other songs on several of his other albums contain a decent amount of prog influences, as well. A large amount of his music during the years with Alan Parsons in the producer's chair have an almost Pink Floyd lite quality to his work. The music from these years is generally very melancolic, haunting, and powerful in the same way as Pink Floyd's music during the Roger Water years and in Alan Parsons' own music too. Songs like "Lord Grenville", "Midas Shadow", "Broadway Hotel", (which is also graced with some classical sounding violin work) "One Stage Before",  "Life in Dark Water", "The Palace of Versailles", "Modern Times", and "The Dark and the Rolling Sea" all have many of the qualities of Floyd especially just their overall feeling.

 

Here is what I could scrounge up on youtube to support Al Stewart's induction. The other song "One Stage Before" is an example of the Pink Floydian sound Stewart had achieved  with Alan Parsons. There is a creeping feeling of desperation in the song quite like the music in "The Wall" as well as a theatrical quality that is comparable to that aformentioned album and the song's coda features a great Gilmour-esque guitar solo to close it.

 

 

 

 

 

On a side note, while it might work for some people on the site, comparing his most "prog" work to PINK FLOYD, partly because of the Parsons association, seems like a stretch to me, and a bit of a put down to Al.  He did what he did, and while he can't compare to Floyd for atmosphere, I daresay he out storytells them by a wide margin.  Plus I feel happy about life after I hear "Time Passages" or "One Stage Before" 

 

So what verdict did the article come up with?  I'm curious because every time he gets recommended (and there have been many) I creep a little closer to saying 'yes' to Prog Folk and have just been waiting for the right pitch to try and make it happen.  Seems silly Dave Cousins, Roy Harper, John Martyn and Robin Williamson (solo) are here but Stewart is not.  Only other one missing is Davey Graham.

 

However, the question asked by this thread back in 2010 was not "Is Al Stewart Prog?" but "Is Al Stewart Prog Related?" ... and that question has merit without having a dig at "elitists and snobs", (inclusiveness stretches sideways and forwards, but not backwards), because Al Stewart was not creating music in a vacuum, certainly the two albums mentioned (Past, Present & Future and Year Of The Cat) would have been viewed as Prog Related back in 1973-6 if such a category existed (which it didn't). 

Since 2010 we have ratified what we mean by "Prog Related", it is no longer the vague catch-all dumping-ground it once was. This was a necessary re-think of PR since by the old methodology the number of artists that could be legitimately included would quickly surpass the total number of "Progressive" artists included on this site and we would become a second-class RYM site instead of a first-class Prog Rock site. While all other subs edge towards inclusiveness (which they inevitably have, or will), PR is deliberately less-inclusive (but not exclusive, by definition Prog Related can never be exclusive).

So the question "Is Al Stewart Prog Related?" has experienced a change of emphasis, (regardless of any shift in our modern perception of "what is Prog"), towards a more meaningful context-related question that weighs up the merits of the suggestion from a historical perspective and not from a modern perspective.