‘It Was Very Homemade’: Dave Stewart Went ‘Back to Front’ For His New Album

Dave Stewart has made a great many albums during the past 47 years — on his own, with his bands such as the Tourists, Eurythmics and SuperHeavy, or as a producer for the likes of Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Tom Petty, Ringo Starr and many more.

But the new The Way It Was Back Then , which comes out Sept.

18, is unlike any he’s made before.

“I didn’t know I was making an album,” the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee tells Billboard via Zoom from the offices of Rare , an artist’s rights company he co-founded in London.

And as such he wound up creating the 10 tracks “back to front” at his island studio on Harbour Islands in the Bahamas, rather than in a conventional recording manner.

Inspired by last year’s ad hoc Dave Does Dylan solo acoustic covers set, The Way It Was Back Then developed out of a somewhat similar process.

“I just sang the songs with the acoustic guitar, straight into (the recording), just like the Dylan songs,” he recalls.

“I didn’t have any of the words written down or in my mind; I just sang them stream of conscious, into the mic.

What I got was the spontaneous, one-take vocal and guitar, or with a funny little keyboard called an Orchid.

I just thought, ‘Right, I’ll fix some of this later,’ but the more I listened the more I didn’t want to change anything.

“Usually you play everything and make a track and then the singer sings on top of it.

This was the exact opposite.

It was very homemade.” Stewart and engineer Jesse Samler subsequently overdubbed all the instruments onto Stewart’s vocal and guitar tracks, adding only “a couple of local ladies who don’t really sing — one of them sings a bit in church — to sing these high backing vocals” on some of the songs.

But the result is anything but raw; “Your Wishes,” the album’s second track, features lush orchestrations, while the title track, “He House Where I Was Born,” “Oh Jesse,” the Bowie-esque “Thin Ice” and “All Done” are high-octane, full-band constructions.