A Beach Full of Shells

A Beach Full of Shells is the seventeenth album by Al Stewart

Al Stewart

Al Stewart is a British singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician.Stewart came to stardom as part of the legendary British folk revival in the sixties and seventies, and developed his own unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of the great characters and events from...

, released in 2005. Like most of Stewart's later works, much of the content of the CD alludes to people or moments in history.

1. "The Immelman Turn" – 4:39
2. "Mr. Lear" – 3:00
3. "Royal Courtship" – 4:10
4. "Rain Barrel" – 4:00
5. "Somewhere in England, 1915" – 6:56
6. "Katherine of Oregon" – 3:07
7. "Mona Lisa Talking" – 4:26
8. "Class of '58" – 4:10
9. "Out in the Snow" – 2:51
10. "My Egyptian Couch" – 2:18
11. "Gina in the Kings Road" – 3:49
12. "Beacon Street" – 2:20
13. "Anniversary" – 2:53

• "The Immelman Turn": refers to the aerobatic maneuver of the same name
  Immelmann turn
  The Immelmann turn refers to two quite different aircraft maneuvers. The maneuver nowadays usually called an "Immelmann" has, in fact, no connection with the World War I German flying Ace Max Immelmann and is quite different from the historical fighter tactic....
  
  .

A Beach Full of Shells is the seventeenth album by Al Stewart

Al Stewart

Al Stewart is a British singer-songwriter and folk-rock musician.Stewart came to stardom as part of the legendary British folk revival in the sixties and seventies, and developed his own unique style of combining folk-rock songs with delicately woven tales of the great characters and events from...

, released in 2005. Like most of Stewart's later works, much of the content of the CD alludes to people or moments in history.

Track listing

1. "The Immelman Turn" – 4:39
2. "Mr. Lear" – 3:00
3. "Royal Courtship" – 4:10
4. "Rain Barrel" – 4:00
5. "Somewhere in England, 1915" – 6:56
6. "Katherine of Oregon" – 3:07
7. "Mona Lisa Talking" – 4:26
8. "Class of '58" – 4:10
9. "Out in the Snow" – 2:51
10. "My Egyptian Couch" – 2:18
11. "Gina in the Kings Road" – 3:49
12. "Beacon Street" – 2:20
13. "Anniversary" – 2:53

Historical references

• "The Immelman Turn": refers to the aerobatic maneuver of the same name
  Immelmann turn
  The Immelmann turn refers to two quite different aircraft maneuvers. The maneuver nowadays usually called an "Immelmann" has, in fact, no connection with the World War I German flying Ace Max Immelmann and is quite different from the historical fighter tactic....
  
  . The narrator, a Barnstormer
  Barnstorming
  Barnstorming was a popular form of entertainment in the 1920s in which stunt pilots would perform tricks with airplanes, either individually or in groups called a flying circus...
  
  , pilots a Curtiss "Jenny"
  Curtiss JN-4
  The Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" is a series of biplane aircraft built by the Curtiss Aeroplane Company of Hammondsport, New York, later the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. The Curtiss JN series was produced as a training aircraft for the U.S...
  
  .
• "Mr. Lear": about the nineteenth-century English poet Edward Lear
  Edward Lear
  Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
  
  . Lear's cat Foss is mentioned, and his poems "The Pobble Who Has No Toes" and "Uncle Arly" are referenced.
• "Somewhere in England, 1915": The narrator, living in 2005, dreams many scenes, including the 1945 film Brief Encounter
  Brief Encounter
  Brief Encounter is a 1945 British film directed by David Lean about the mores of British suburban life, centring on a housewife for whom real love was an unexpectedly "violent" thing. The film stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. The screenplay is by Noël Coward, and is based on his 1936 one-act...
  
  , the British poets Siegfried Sassoon
  Siegfried Sassoon
  Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was an English poet and author. He became known as a writer of satirical anti-war verse during World War I...
  
   and Wilfred Owen
  Wilfred Owen
  Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English and Welsh poet and soldier, regarded by many as one of the leading poets of the First World War...
  
   in the trenches
  Trench warfare
  Trench warfare was a form of warfare in which both combatants occupied static fortified fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops were largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and were substantially sheltered from artillery. It has become a byword for stalemate in...
  
   of World War I
  World War I
  World War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
  
   and the last farewell of Violet Asquith
  Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury
  Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, DBE was a British politician and the daughter of Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith by his first wife, Helen Kesall Asquith, née Melland. From 1925, she was entitled to style herself as Lady Violet Bonham Carter...
  
   (daughter of English Prime Minister H. H. Asquith
  H. H. Asquith
  Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, KG, PC, KC served as the Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916...
  
  ) and Rupert Brooke
  Rupert Brooke
  Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War ; however, he never experienced combat at first hand...
  
  . He then wakes up, and sees on that day's newspaper "a man on the cover we all know, defying the fates" who "seems very sure" of himself.
• "Katherine of Oregon": the titular character's name is a play on Catherine of Aragon
  Catherine of Aragon
  Catherine of Aragon was Princess of Wales as the wife of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII of England....
  
  , whose marriage to King Henry VIII of England
  Henry VIII of England
  Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was also Lord of Ireland and claimant to the Kingdom of France. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII.Henry VIII was a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy...
  
   was annulled in 1533. The chorus' tune is adapted from the work of Beethoven. The Scottish musician Lonnie Donegan
  Lonnie Donegan
  Lonnie Donegan MBE was a skiffle musician, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s...
  
   is mentioned. When playing this song in concert, Stewart has jokingly suggested that he may write a sequel entitled "Anne of Cleveland" as a play on Anne of Cleves
  Anne of Cleves
  Anne of Cleves was a German noblewoman and the fourth wife of Henry VIII of England and as such she was Queen of England from 6 January 1540 to 9 July 1540. The marriage was never consummated, and she was not crowned queen consort...
  
  .

Class of '58

Stewart originally wrote the song "Class of '58" as 13 minutes long. When the record company rejected it, he rewrote it to the truncated 4-minute version on the album. The long version was subsequently released as a single. In the blurb on the single, it is suggested that the album A Beach Full of Shells was originally intended to focus around this song, which describes the life of a musician on the 1950s rock and roll scene.