The Year of the Cat by Al Stewart

submitted by Marvin's Underground Music Ondemand on 01/03/18 1

From Wikipedia: "Year of the Cat" is the title track of the 1976 album Year of the Cat by singer-songwriter Al Stewart, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London in January 1976 by engineer Alan Parsons. Parsons had Phil Kenzie add the saxophone part of the song — and by doing so transformed the original folk concept into the jazz-influenced ballad that put Al Stewart onto the charts. Co-written by Peter Wood, "Year of the Cat" is a narrative song written in the second person whose protagonist is a tourist in an exotic market where a mysterious silk-clad woman appears to carry him away for a gauzy romantic adventure. On wakening the next day beside her, the tourist realizes, with equanimity, that his tour bus is gone and he has lost his ticket. He will be staying on for a while. The song "Year of the Cat" began as "Foot of the Stage" a song written by Stewart in 1966 after seeing a performance by comedian Tony Hancock whose patter about "being a complete loser" who might as well "end it all right here" drew laughs from the audience: Stewart's intuitive response that Hancock was in genuine despair led to the writing of "Foot of the Stage". It was the melody for this never recorded song which Stewart set the lyrics of "Year of the Cat" to in 1975: pianist Peter Wood was given a co-writing credit on the song in recognition of his constructing the classic piano riff on the recorded track. Lyrics: On a morning from a Bogart movie In a country where they turn back time You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre Contemplating a crime She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running Like a watercolour in the rain Don't bother asking for explanations She'll just tell you that she came In the year of the cat. She doesn't give you time for questions As she locks up your arm in hers And you follow 'till your sense of which direction Completely disappears By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls There's a hidden door she leads you to These days, she says, I feel my life Just like a river running through The year of the cat She looks at you so cooly And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea She comes in incense and patchouli So you take her, to find what's waiting inside The year of the cat. Well morning comes and you're still with her And the bus and the tourists are gone And you've thrown away the choice and lost your ticket So you have to stay on But the drum-beat strains of the night remain In the rhythm of the new-born day You know sometime you're bound to leave her But for now you're going to stay In the year of the cat.

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