{"id":14987,"date":"2025-10-22T11:01:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T15:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/millheiser.com\/hokeyblog\/?p=14987"},"modified":"2025-10-22T11:12:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T15:12:29","slug":"buttkickin-halloween-songs-nostradamus-al-stewart-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/millheiser.com\/hokeyblog\/2025\/10\/22\/buttkickin-halloween-songs-nostradamus-al-stewart-1973\/","title":{"rendered":"Buttkickin’ Halloween Songs: “Nostradamus” — Al Stewart (1973)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Oh, I had a dream
It seemed I stood alone
And the veil of all the years
Goes sinking from my eyes like a stone<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A king shall fall and put to death by the English parliament shall be
Fire and plague to London come in the year of six and twenties three
An emperor of France shall rise who will be born near Italy
His rule cost his empire dear, Napoloron his name shall be…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like so many of you, I’m starting to get really creeped out every time a ghost starts lecturing me while I’m at the library. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean it. One minute you think you\u2019re safe, flipping through some dusty old tome about European mystics and the best of the Yersinia pestis<\/a> years. But then the candle\u2019s burned too low and some erudite spook starts whispering about the end of days, in the form of a folksy 70s singer-songwriter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s right; we\u2019re talking Al Stewart and his epic masterpiece Nostradamus<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Released in 1973 on the Past, Present and Future<\/em> album, this track closes the record with over nine minutes of spine-tingling prophecy. So if you’re expecting the gentle pleasant familiarity of \u201cYear of the Cat\u201d or \u201cTime Passages,\u201d go ahead and slap on a turtleneck or something and groove gracefully with those lush soft rock classics. No judgment, no shame in that game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before he was Yacht Rockin’ with those hits, Stewart dabbled in this sweeping folk-rock s\u00e9ance about a sixteenth-century French astrologer who spent most of his spare time jotting down the apocalypse in verse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nostradamus <\/strong>starts slow and easy enough: a haunting guitar figure, a shimmer of keyboard, and then a gently echoing voice that sounds like it\u2019s giving us a tour of some medieval cellar. Off the bat Stewart seems downright eerie, channeling history, madness, and fate, all wrapped up in a calm, propulsive melody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rhythm builds, faint at first, until it sounds like the hoofbeats of some spectral army marching straight into… somewhere, I guess. Some area of awareness we can’t quite perceive. Like precognition, extra sensory perception, spiritual alignment, or perhaps just throwing every prediction against the wall and seeing what sticks and what slithers down the wallpaper like Jello in August. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the while, Stewart\u2019s voice never cracks or wails; it just knows<\/em>. That quiet certainty makes it a zillion times more unsettling. Plague, war, kings, dictators, and fools, all spinning through time under the detached gaze of Nostradamus<\/strong>. The oracle sees it all but he\u2019s powerless to stop any of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humanity just keeps blowing itself up, century after century, and the prophet\u2019s stuck watching the reruns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So yeah, Nostradamus <\/strong>isn’t necessarily your typical Halloween tune. This one\u2019s darker. Quieter. It clings to that hour of the night, the wolflight of flickering candles and fading laughter. Compelling you to remember that Halloween, for all its frivolities, is part and parcel a reflection on death, memory, and both the uneasy beauty and recursive horror of things that outlast us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al Stewart knew. Nostradamus <\/strong>knew. And hopefully, hopefully<\/em>, we probably know too. But during the Spooky Season, it\u2019s OK to listen and pretend we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Castile does Franco come and the Government driven out shall be
An English king seeks divorce, and from his throne cast down is he
One named Hister shall become a captain of Greater Germanie
No law does this man observe and bloody his rise and fall shall be<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Man, man, your time is sand<\/em>
Your ways are leaves upon the sea
I am the eyes of Nostradamus<\/em>
All your ways are known to me…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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