Songfacts®:

• This is not a thinly veiled plea by Al Stewart to buy his records, but yet another song inspired by the love of his life at that time and until 1988 when at the age of 42 he met his future wife. Slightly enigmatic, whimsical, and probably with a slice of poetic license, the fragment:
  
  Then she went lazily
  Leaving me crazily
  Wandering lost, the night was hazy...
  
  is perhaps closest to how he was feeling at the time, although it is difficult to see exactly where it fits in the chronology. The song "Night Of The 4th Of May" explains the genesis of Al's split with Mandi, although there was almost certainly trouble brewing before that fateful night. "The News From Spain" relates his flight to see her and to repair the broken relationship, so "You Should Have Listened To Al" probably fits in between the two, alternatively it could be a retrospective, like (the intensely sad) "Elvaston Place." It is the first of his recordings to be visibly identifiable as about Mandi or Mandi-inspired.
  
  "You Should Have Listened To Al" runs to 3 minutes 2 seconds, and is the first track on side 2 of Love Chronicles. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England