Extract from 'Al Stewart: The True Life Adventures Of A Folk Rock Troubadour' by Neville Judd.

Now, with Luke onboard things really got moving. It was September 1973 and Luke had been working hard on the tour’s preparation for over a month. It had been a period in which he had taken himself on a crash course in artist management too.

Luke – “I’m in charge now and we go out on the tour for which most of the dates had already been booked by Julia Creasey. At the time I was sharing an apartment with Miles’ brother Ian at 87A Reddington Road where a lot of hard partying and good times were had by all! So Ian had been very busy every day with hundreds of acts that he’d book out for 50 bucks or whatever and I was sharing this place with him whilst he was working flat out and I was sat around feeling frustrated. Ian would get back to the flat in the evening and I would start in saying ‘Well this is all great but what about Al?’ Now this is how we started out and I managed to convince Al that I was right in my opinion that if he wanted to get anywhere with all of this then we were going to have to put a band together because the album that he had was too good to be played on just an acoustic guitar.” If Al had hoped that the timely arrival of Luke would somehow preclude the need for him to ever worry about touring with a band again then he was very wrong. The tour kicked off however with solo gigs in Cardiff and Aberystwyth Universities on October 11th and 12th before a concert in Southampton on the 13th.

Luke – “I was still living with Ian as Al, even when he was touring, couldn’t give me enough to keep me occupied 24 hours a day and so I started hassling Ian for work and I managed to persuade Al that we should at least try having a band. Now he didn’t want to do this really because he said he’d tried it and had found that working with other musicians was fraught with problems and that he’d found it difficult to say the least and as experience proved I ended up agreeing with him!” Meanwhile PP&F had been released. The level of support that Al at once received from Janus was far in excess of anything he had experienced before with his British record company. Al played 35 shows on that tour including gigs in Ireland and concerts at The Brighton Dome, Newcastle City Hall and three performances in ristol where he was still as popular as ever.

Al – “I now played a show at Manchester Free Trade Hall with Canton Trig on November 26th and that was the first time I met Alan Mason. He flew over from America just to see us. Things seemed to be happening at last. I could see, even then, that perhaps I had at last turned a corner with regard to having some sort of a career in the States.” Al had not anticipated any substantial commercial success with PP&F but it instantly became his best-selling work up to that point. “Nostradamus” and “Roads To Moscow” became his most requested songs and it gave his public profile a shot in the arm when it needed it most. “A quantum leap” was Al’s appraisal of its achievements. It opened the doors that took him from the colleges to the concert halls in 1973.

He had seemingly invented historical folk-rock overnight and at 28 was at last a star. As was his good friend Sandy Denny. On September 3rd 1973 Al went down to The Howff in Primrose Hill to see Sandy perform a one-off solo show at Roy Guest’s club. It was over a year since he had last seen Sandy and what he saw just before she was due to go on stage shocked him.

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