Posted on 09/09/2019 11:14:37 AM PDT by simpson96
"Time Passages" is the title of a 1978 US Top Ten hit by singer-songwriter Al Stewart which was produced by Alan Parsons and was the title track for Stewart's 1978 album release. The single reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1978, "Time Passages" also spent ten weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Easy Listening chart, the longest stay at number one on this chart in the 1970s. Billboard magazine also ranked "Time Passages" as the No. 1 Adult Contemporary single of 1979. The song is also of note for having the highest note ever hit on an alto saxophone by Phil Kenzie on a studio recording as a lead into the sax solo as Peter White's acoustic guitar solo was ending.
Al Stewart - "Time Passages" (1978)
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
A history lesson in almost every song ...
Roads to Moscow
Trains
Night Train to Munich
The Last Day of June 1934
Eisenhower Years
Old Admirals
The Running Man
... and many others too numerous to list ...
Same here....most people never stopped to listen to & understand that the lyrics were a history lesson! The music had a nice quality to it and I think that was its appeal.
It might not have been as popular if it was widely know it was educational!
Blows away our family room. It was mastered in DTS and was very well mixed with different instruments and vocals fed to each of the 5 speakers. Yes, I understand that a home theater system is not perfect for music productions but it works extremely well for On Air. Plus the sub woofer affect is very cool too. Especially when the jet flies over head.
I know a guy who sounds a lot like the one who does the bumpers for YR.
What’s even funnier is that the guy is an unbelievable cheapskate.
He had a chance encounter with Paul Simon who gave him some song-writing pointers. He re-wrote the song, re-recorded it and the rest in history. He concludes by saying that this one tune has basically kept a roof over his head all these years.
:)
I didn’t know Peter White played on that album or co-wrote Time Passages. I’ve got several of his guitar releases over the past 25 years. He’s a superb guitarist.
In October 1967, at the age of 18, Parsons went to work as an assistant engineer at Abbey Road Studios, where he earned his first credit on the LP Abbey Road. He became a regular there, engineering such projects as Wings' Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, five albums by the Hollies, and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, for which he received his first Grammy Award nomination.
Thanks for the info. I didn’t know any background of Alan Parsons. Sounds like he’s a versatile musician.
Alan Parsons had the benefit of a fantastic songwriter, the late Eric Woolfson.
I was a huge Al Stewart fan back in college but I couldn’t resist a parody version of the song called “Drug Messages”.
“A girl comes towards you you once used to know
You reach out your hand, but your all alone in those
Drug Messages
I know you’re in there, you’re just out of sight..”
Some deride this type of music - which fits perfectly into the Yacht Rock genre - but it evokes a lot of nice memories for me. In particular, a crush in a girl I had at the time in high school.
Now that I have unlimited streaming for $10 a month, I've been slowly discovering the rest of the Al Stewart catalogue - which is quite solid.
Another artist I've been re-discovering through streaming is A-ha, the Norwegian band best known for "Take On Me" in 1985. They had a string of brilliant albums that never took hold in the U.S.
“...and you follow ‘til your sense of which direction completely disappears...”
Don’t forget “Joe the Georgian”.
Huge fan of Roads to Moscow and On the Border as well because of their historical basis along with the music.
Mr. Stewart was frustrated because “Year of the Cat” was his first major hit and, from then on, Arista wanted a song on every album that had the same sound as “Year of the Cat” with the long sax solo. Hence “Time Passages” then “Song On The Radio”. He said they were commercial pap to sell singles.
I’d say his best song was “Roads To Moscow” which was way too long for radio airplay and quite depressing yet still a masterpiece. I also liked “Russians and Americans” although any song that begins “Here we stand at the edge of 1984...” is going to be dated very quickly.
“Broadway Hotel” is brilliantly done and exudes sexual tension like few songs I’ve ever heard. “Lord Grenville” is a great song for anyone who has wanted to just disappear and never return. “Optical Illusions” is a fabulous reflection of clinical depression. I think my absolute favorite though is “Pandora” which is about a man lost in a woman’s spell.
From the mid-70s to the mid-80s, he had many great tunes with fabulous lyrics but they weren’t commercial and he decided he didn’t want to be commercial.
Al Stewart is certainly one of a kind. Not many rock stars choose to sing about Basque terrorism, Hitler’s purge of Ernst Röhm and his followers, Sputnik I or the Soviet Gulag.
I was born in the Year of the Cat.
You mean Tiger?...............
2020 will be the Year of the RAT!...................
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