AL STEWART

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.

On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time. You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came in the year of the cat.

All those people who go to NASCAR and sing country & western songs and live in Tennessee, they totally ignore me, they don't come to my shows, I just don't exist for them and they don't exist for me.

You reach out your hand, but you're all alone, in those time passages.

I know there's a big bad world out there, but I rarely come across it.

Movie queens diffuse into Cinema haze, while libertines read pornozines in street cafes.

Nothing that's forced can ever be right, if it doesn't come naturally, leave it.

Do you remember the church across the sands? You stood outside and planned to travel the lands, where the pilgrims go. So you packed your world up inside a canvas sack, set off down the highway with your rings and Kerouac. Someone said they saw you in Nepal a long time back. Tell me why you look away, don't you have a word to say?

Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.

Looking so cool, his greed is hard to conceal, he's fresh out of law school, you gave him a license to steal.

There's room in the world for one historical folk-rock singer to make a decent living, and I happen to be it.

We measure our days out in steps of uncertainty not turning to see how far we've come. And peer down the highway from here to eternity and reach out for love on the run.

The evening sings in a voice of amber, the dawn is surely coming.

Jimi Hendrix played loud and free, Sergeant Pepper was real to me.

Only two to three per cent of an audience is interested in words and pays attention to lyrics; most of the rest of it is about image or the beat or the sound, or else it's a tribal thing - country & western, rap, heavy metal, with historical folk rock off in some kind of cult.

Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.

You reach out your hand, but you're all alone, in those time passages.

All those people who go to NASCAR and sing country & western songs and live in Tennessee, they totally ignore me, they don't come to my shows, I just don't exist for them and they don't exist for me.

Louis Armstrong playing trumpet on the Judgment Day.

I know there's a big bad world out there, but I rarely come across it.

Nothing that's forced can ever be right, if it doesn't come naturally, leave it.

Whoever you pretend to be, you must face yourself eventually.

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress, running like a water color in the rain.

Do you remember the church across the sands? You stood outside and planned to travel the lands, where the pilgrims go. So you packed your world up inside a canvas sack, set off down the highway with your rings and Kerouac. Someone said they saw you in Nepal a long time back. Tell me why you look away, don't you have a word to say?

Movie queens diffuse into Cinema haze, while libertines read pornozines in street cafes.

On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time. You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came in the year of the cat.

She doesn't give you time for questions as she locks up your arms in hers. And you follow till your sense of direction completely disappears.

The literati in their cellarsPerform semantic tarantellas.I wish I did it half as well as them.