Janus Records (1974)

Biography
Alastair Ian “Al” Stewart is a Glasgow-born English singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician who rose to prominence as part of the British folk revival in the 1960s and 1970s. He developed a unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of characters and events from history. Stewart was a key figure in British music and he appears throughout the musical folklore of the revivalist era. He played at the first-ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970, knew Yoko Ono before she met John Lennon, shared a London flat with a young Paul Simon, and hosted at the Les Cousins folk club in London in the 1960s. Stewart has released sixteen studio and three live albums since his debut album Bedsitter Images in 1967, and continues to tour extensively in the US, Canada, Europe, and the UK. His latest release is Uncorked, which was released on his independent label, Wallaby Trails Recordings. Stewart has worked with Peter White, Alan Parsons, Jimmy Page, Richard Thompson, Rick Wakeman, Francis Monkman, Tori Amos, and Tim Renwick, and more recently has played with Dave Nachmanoff and former Wings lead-guitarist Laurence Juber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Stewart

Album & Cover
The fifth release, Past, Present and Future , was Stewart’s first album to receive a proper release in the United States, via Janus Records. It echoed a traditional historical storytelling style and contained the song “Nostradamus,” a long (9:43) track in which Stewart tied into the rediscovery of the claimed seer’s writings by referring to selected possible predictions about 20th century people and events. While too long for mainstream radio airplay at that time, the song became a hit on many US college/university radio stations, which were flexible about running times. Such airplay helped the album to reach No. 133 on the Billboard album chart in the US. Other songs on Past, Present and Future characterized by Stewart’s ‘history genre’ mentioned American President Warren G. Harding, World War II, Ernst Röhm, Christine Keeler, Louis Mountbatten, and Joseph Stalin’s purges.

Richard Manning explains the process: If my memory serves me correctly, this was the first sleeve I worked on for Hipgnosis. Although, in the book ‘Walk Away Rene’ my good friend and mentor at that time,Terry Day(sadly no longer with us) is credited with working on it. A black and white montage. The figure was cut out physically and the back edges thinned and sanded and stuck in position with Columbia Cement. A Best Possible copy print was made, so now I have a flat print to work on, mounted on double weight mount board. Working to an eliptical guide on tracing paper, I carefully bleached to white the shape. Once washed and dried I then redrew some of the background with Photo Dye with a Sable brush, where the print had bleached a bit too far in the lighter areas. Finally, Permanent White was sprayed to make a sweet, soft edged shape. http://www.richardmanning.co.uk/hipgnosis-album-cover-art/al-stewart-past,-present-&-future–1973/39

Cover Location: The Minac Theatre, set into the cliffs of Cornwall.
Who Did What: Photography – A. Powell. Graphics – George Hardie. Photography[Back] – Jill Furmanovski
Label: CBS 65726(UK-1973), Janus JLS-3063(US-1974)
Source: Vinyl. Album. Cover. Art, The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue: Aubrey Powell

Tracklist

Credits
Acoustic Guitar – Peter Berryman
Acoustic Guitar, Guitar [Spanish] – Isaac Guillory
Backing Vocals – John Donelly, Kevin Powers, Krysia Kocjan, Mick Welton
Bass – Brian Odgers, Bruce Thomas
Concertina [English] – Alistair Anderson
Drums – John Wilson
Electric Guitar – Tim Renwick
Engineer – Mike Stone
Harmonica – Graham Smith
Keyboards – Bob Andrews, Bob Sargeant, Rick Wakeman, Tim Hinkley
Keyboards, Accordion [Piano] – Peter Woods
Mandolin – Dave Swarbrick, Haim Romano
Percussion – Frank Ricotti, Roger Meddows Taylor
Performer [Steel Band] – Lennox James, Luciano Bravo, Michael Oliver 
Producer – John Anthony
Remastered By – Chris Bellman
Steel Guitar – B.J. Cole
Synthesizer [Moog] – Francis Monkman
Written-By, Acoustic Guitar – Al Stewart