Al Stewart's second album is most renowned for the 18-minute title track, an autobiographical recount of different love affairs with guitar by Jimmy Page.
That track was also quite controversial for its day in its use of the word "f*cking" at one point in the lyrics, though that's not typical of the tone of the composition.
It's actually not the best of the six songs on the record, which saw Stewart wisely discard the orchestration of his debut in favor of fairly straight-ahead folk-rock backing.
"Ballad of Mary Foster" is Stewart's best early song, as a two-part suite neatly divided between brusque cynical commentary on a bourgeois English family and the introspective musings of the ravaged wife.
That second part bears considerable similarity in melody and tempo, incidentally, to sections of the far more famous Stewart song "Roads to Moscow." The rest of the album has additional solid vignettes in the standard gentle yet detached Stewart mold, the best of them being "Life and Life Only," which exploits his knack for insistent, repetitive minor-keyed hooks.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | In BrooklynAl Stewart | Al Stewart | Play | 03:40 | 8 MB | 23 MB |
| 2 | Old Compton Street BluesAl Stewart | Al Stewart | Play | 04:24 | 10 MB | 28 MB |
| 3 | The Ballad of Mary FosterAl Stewart | Al Stewart | Play | 08:01 | 18 MB | 50 MB |
| 4 | Life and Life OnlyAl Stewart | Al Stewart | Play | 05:47 | 13 MB | 38 MB |
| 5 | You Should Have Listened to AlAl Stewart | Al Stewart | Play | 02:58 | 6 MB | 19 MB |
| 6 | Love ChroniclesAl Stewart | Al Stewart | Play | 18:00 | 41 MB | 113 MB |
| 42 mins | 98 MB | |||||
| 42 mins | 274 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Simon Breckenridge | Guitar |
| 2 | Simon Brekenridge | Guitar |
| 3 | Brian Brocklehurst | Bass |
| 4 | Harvey Burnes | Drums |
| 5 | Harvey Burns | Drums |
| 6 | Martyn Francis | Drums |
| 7 | Steve Gray | Organ |
| 8 | Roy Guest | Producer |
| 9 | Ashley Hutchings | Bass |
| 10 | Brian Odgers | Bass |
| 11 | Jimmy Page | Guitar |
| 12 | Ron Pender | Engineer |
| 13 | Hil Phillips | Keyboards |
| 14 | Phil Phillips | Organ |
| 15 | Marvin Prestwick | Guitar |
| 16 | Al Stewart | Arranger, Composer, Guitar, Keyboards, Primary Artist, Producer, Vocals |
| 17 | John Woods | Engineer |
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |
| CD Quality | FLAC | 16bit 44.1kHz | FLAC is an audio coding format which uses lossless compression. Digital audio in FLAC format has a smaller size and retains the same quality of the original Compact Disc (CD). |