Between the Wars (Al Stewart album)
album by Al Stewart
Between the Wars is the thirteenth studio album by Al Stewart, recorded with Laurence Juber. Its major theme is the period "between the wars", from 1918 to 1939. When released it was a critical success but a commercial failure.
Track listing
"Night Train to Munich" – 4:25
"The Age of Rhythm" – 4:00
"Sampan" – 3:37
"Lindy Comes to Town" – 4:24
"Three Mules" – 5:37
"A League of Notions" – 4:17
"Life Between the Wars" – 2:47
"Betty Boop's Birthday" – 2:05
"Marion the Chatelaine" – 3:41
"Joe the Georgian" – 3:31
"Always the Cause" – 3:18
"Laughing into 1939" – 4:15
"The Black Danube" – 2:47
The 2007 Collector's Choice re-release has the following additional tracks:
"The Bear Farmers of Birnam" – 3:29
"Merry Monks" – 1:35
Historical references
"Night Train to Munich": a 1940 film directed by Carol Reed and starring Rex Harrison bears the same title as this song.
"Lindy Comes to Town": the titular figure is Charles Lindbergh, who "comes to town" in a 13 June 1927 "ticker-tape parade". US President Calvin Coolidge is referred to, and the Wall Street crash of 1929 is ironically hinted at.
"Three Mules": tells of British Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain who did little to prepare Britain for war and downplayed the threat Hitler posed to peace.
"A League of Notions": the title plays on and refers to the formation and earliest acts of the League of Nations at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference in Versailles. Several historical figures are mentioned, including US President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Lloyd George, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and T. E. Lawrence (here referred to as "Lawrence of Arabia"). The lyrics bemoan the difficulties of establishing new territorial boundaries for Russia, Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Persia and Iraq.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3639213. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1939, 2007 and 1940.
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This entry incorporates text from “Between the Wars (Al Stewart album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.