Year of The Cat (song)

Year Of The Cat (song)

"Year of the Cat" is the title track of the 1976 album Year of the Cat by singer-songwriter Al Stewart, which album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London in January 1976 by engineer Alan Parsons and released in July 1976. The "Year of the Cat" single reached #8 on the Hot 100 in Billboard in March 1977. Although technically Stewart's 1978 single "Time Passages" is his career record with a #7 peak, "Year of the Cat" has remained Stewart's signature recording receiving regular airplay on both classic rock and folk rock stations. The track is noted for its lengthy instrumental sections - in fact, from the 6:40 album version, over four minutes of the song is spent on instrumentals, including a long solo that encompasses cello, violin, piano, acoustic guitar, distorted electric guitar, Synthesizer, and saxophone. The transition from acoustic guitar to electric to saxophone was initiated by Tim Renwick. The acoustic lead is played by Peter White with Tim Renwick then taking the electric lead. 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.

Shorter versions of the track can be found on some European 7" single formats. Though both of the discs carry the same label and catalogue number (RCA PB 5007), the French single features the A side track clocking at 4'30", the Italian one features an even shorter mix of just 3'30" so that the lengthy instrumental intro is completely missing.

Co-written by Peter Wood, "Year of the Cat" is a narrative song written in the second person whose protagonist, a tourist, is visiting an exotic market when a mysterious silk-clad woman appears and takes him away for a gauzy romantic adventure. On wakening the next day beside her, the tourist realizes, with equanimity, that his tour bus has left without him 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.

Subsequent to the entry of the "Year of the Cat" single on the US charts the track afforded Stewart a major hit in Australia (#13), Belgium/Flemish Region (#7), Canada (#3), Italy (#5), the Netherlands (#6) and New Zealand (#15): in the UK, where the single had been overlooked on its original July 1976 release, renewed interest in the track was evident in a Top 40 chart entry although interest leveled off outside the Top 30 with a #31 peak in January 1977. "Year of the Cat" would remain Stewart's sole chart single in his native UK.

The song appears in the film version of Running with Scissors (2006) and in the film Radiofreccia (1998), the directorial debut of Italian rock star Luciano Ligabue.

Another version of the song, also performed by Stewart, appears on Volume 1 of the Cities 97 Sampler.

Hector recorded the song with his own Finnish lyrics as "Kissojen Yö" on his 1978 album Kadonneet Lapset. The Spanish rendering "El Año Del Gato" was recorded by Érica García for her 2001 album release El Cerebro.