Al Stewart, Manuscript (1970) The first of Al Stewarts songs based on historical themes. From his third album, Zero She Flies.

https://www.naval-history.net/WW1Book-Adm_Fisher-Memories.htm

Al Stewart (1945- )

Al Stewart is without any doubt one of the greatest writers of rock songs, written on historical themes. His masterful lyrics and classic folk rock may not appeal to the large stadium arenas and massive attendance, but Al Stewart has found his roots in a willing, listening audience, especially on the universities both at home in the UK and on the colleges in the US, where he toured a lot in the seventies and got a well-earned reputation for his concerts. Actually he packed his guitar and moved to Los Angeles, but is now in Arizona since 2025.

Do not get me wrong. His live performances are not exclusive, intellectual show cases. Personally I think his songs are doing quite well, when they are tuned less folk and more rock. And do not underestimate the fact, that Al Stewart was capable of writing Billboard Top 10-hits. Both his signature song, Year of the Cat (1976) and Time Passages (1978) has still frequent airplay.

Lyrics with historical references

When Stewart wrote Manuscript in 1969, and it was his first song, inspired from his interest in history, that was recorded and released on LP. We are in the aftermath of Woodstock and psychedelic rock. 1970 was the year of Abbey Road (my favorite Beatles album), the terrific Led Zeppelin II and III, the fragile, iconic, harmony masterpiece Bridge Over Troubled Water and the Santana follow up, the frantic, tight latin rocker Abraxas. Why did you leave your playmates for Foreigner, Greg Rolie. I did not understand why.

Except for Simon and Garfunkel the words did not meanthat much on these LPs. But Dylan had paved the street for lyrics to be serious stuff instead of all this empty rhyming on “you and me”. Maybe the protest theme was an easy task in the days of the Vietnam War, but you could do differently. Singing about an English admirasl seemed a bit weird. Louis Battenberg (1854-1921) and John Arbuthnot Fishers (1841-1920), both men, that the chief of The Royal Navy, Winston Churchill (1874-1965) dismissed. Churchill was not a man, whose dispositions you argued against.

Manuscript/Louis Battenberg

Prince Louis Battenberg is burning the Admiralty lights down low
Silently sifting through papers sealed with a crown
Admiral Lord Fisher is writing to Churchill, calling for more Dreadnoughts
The houses in Hackney are all falling down
And my grandmother sits on the beach in the days before the war
Young girl writing her diary, while time seems to pause
Watching the waves as they come one by one to die on the shore
Kissing the feet of England

The song is written from the perspective of the grandson and ends:

Where ten years ago we had stood, my Grandfather and I
And the waves still rushed in as they had the year that he died
And it seemed that my lifetime was shrunken and lost in the tide
As it rose and fell on the side of England

Prince Louis Battenberg is burning the Admiralty lights

https://alstewart.com/songs offers all the Al Stewart lyrics, you deserve. I have chosen a couple of songs in the following blogs.